Now the Body Is Everywhere

The biological body has been peripheral to much feminist theory, at least partly because of that very necessary rebuttal of biological determinism. The one exception was the part played by the body in the activist work of feminist health groups (mostly in the 1970s); for to understand women's health and our relationships to the medical professions required women to grapple with medical knowledge about the (biological) body. But apart from that, the emphasis in our theory was on the social construction of gender; the body hardly featured at all in emerging feminist theory-until recently. (1-2)

Biomedical Ethics and Regulation · History · Race, Genetics, and Society