The Fighting Spirit: Women's Self-Defense Training and the Discourse of Sexed Embodiment
- ASU Author/Contributor (non-ASU co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Martha McCaughey Ph.D., Professor (Creator)
- Institution
- Appalachian State University (ASU )
- Web Site: https://library.appstate.edu/
Abstract: This article presents ethnographic research on women’s self-defense training and suggests that women’s self-defense culture prompts feminists to refigure our understanding of the body and violence. The body in feminist discourse is often construed as the object of patriarchal violence (actual or symbolic), and violence has been construed as something that is variously oppressive, diminishing, inappropriate, and masculinist. Hence, many feminists have been apathetic to women’s self-defense. As a practice that rehearses, and even celebrates women’s potential for violence, women’s self-defense illustrates how and why feminism can frame the body as both a social construction and as politically significant for theory and activism.
The Fighting Spirit: Women's Self-Defense Training and the Discourse of Sexed Embodiment
PDF (Portable Document Format)
128 KB
Created on 12/8/2014
Views: 2939
Additional Information
- Publication
- McCaughey, Martha. (1998) “The Fighting Spirit: Women’s Self-Defense Training and the Discourse of Sexed Embodiment.” Gender & Society 12:3:277-300. (ISSN: 0891-2432) [ June 1998]The version of record is available from Sage Publications. http://gas.sagepub.com/content/12/3/277 DOI: 10.1177/0891243298012003003
- Language: English
- Date: 1998