TY - JOUR
T1 - Women’s construction of embodiment and the abject sexual body after cancer
AU - Parton, Chloe M.
AU - Ussher, Jane M.
AU - Perz, Janette
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - Cancer and cancer treatments can cause significant changes to women’s sexual well-being. We explored how women construct a sense of their bodies and sexual “selves” in the context of cancer. Sixteen women, across a range of ages (20–71 years), cancer types, and cancer stages, took part in in-depth semistructured interviews. We conducted a thematic discourse analysis, drawing on feminist poststructuralist theory, identifying “the abject body” as a dominant theme. Participants constructed abject bodies as being “beyond abnormality,” “outside idealized discourses of embodied femininity,” and “out of control.” The women’s accounts varied in management and resistance of the abject body discourse, through bodily practices of concealment, resisting discourses of feminine beauty, and repositioning the body as a site of personal transformation. The corporeality of the cancerous body can be seen to disrupt hegemonic discourses of femininity and sexuality, with implications for how women practice and make meaning of embodied sexual subjectivity.
AB - Cancer and cancer treatments can cause significant changes to women’s sexual well-being. We explored how women construct a sense of their bodies and sexual “selves” in the context of cancer. Sixteen women, across a range of ages (20–71 years), cancer types, and cancer stages, took part in in-depth semistructured interviews. We conducted a thematic discourse analysis, drawing on feminist poststructuralist theory, identifying “the abject body” as a dominant theme. Participants constructed abject bodies as being “beyond abnormality,” “outside idealized discourses of embodied femininity,” and “out of control.” The women’s accounts varied in management and resistance of the abject body discourse, through bodily practices of concealment, resisting discourses of feminine beauty, and repositioning the body as a site of personal transformation. The corporeality of the cancerous body can be seen to disrupt hegemonic discourses of femininity and sexuality, with implications for how women practice and make meaning of embodied sexual subjectivity.
KW - cancer
KW - feminism
KW - psychological aspects
KW - sexuality
UR - http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/uws:34247
U2 - 10.1177/1049732315570130
DO - 10.1177/1049732315570130
M3 - Article
SN - 1552-7557
SN - 1049-7323
VL - 26
SP - 490
EP - 503
JO - Qualitative Health Research
JF - Qualitative Health Research
IS - 4
ER -