Female Sexualization: A Collective Work of Memory

by Frigga Haug (Editor), Erica Carter (translator)

This collective work explores the sexualization of women's bodies, charting the complex interplay of social, political and cultural forces which produce a normative 'femininity'. A series of projects which focus on concrete instances of sexualiztion lead to a broader examination of the relationship between power and sexuality, the social and the psychological.. "Vitally, these accounts do not present sexualization as a passive inculcation of social norms: the individual is presented as taking an active role in the construction of gendered identities.

Genres: Feminism, Gender, Sociology, Nonfiction, Womens

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

German feminist and Marxist.

Reviews

[Kristel · Rating 4 out of 5]

a little pretentious but i loved it

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

I initially read this about 20 years ago but revisited again because I have just taken on a PhD student who is using part of the methods involved as part of her project. The methods are certainly able to disrupt much of what we do in social research – they are resolutely collective. The book itself, and the case it makes using those methods, remain lively and relevant nearly 30 years after it first came out: it is a collectively written text that explores how it is that women become sexualised in the way they do – but does so by a focus on the ways women are taught about and acquire knowledge of their bodies: so they write about ways they learned about what to do with their hair, how through use of their legs certain types of approved of movements became naturalised, and so forth. There is also a powerful set of theoretical interjections into debates about sexuality and the church, power, Marxism, and the like. These have dated a little, but only in some of their specifics, not their overall case. I am very pleased that I went back to re-read the whole thing, and not just the methods discussions. It reminded me just how good the body of work done by this group of women activists in Germany in the late 70s and most of the 1980s was, and how useful it remains.