Parton Chloe M, Ussher Jane M, Perz Janette
University of Western Sydney, Penrith, New South Wales, Australia
University of Western Sydney, Penrith, New South Wales, Australia.
Qual Health Res. 2016 Mar;26(4):490-503. doi: 10.1177/1049732315570130. Epub 2015 Feb 4.
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.
癌症及癌症治疗会对女性的性健康造成显著影响。我们探究了女性在患癌背景下如何构建对自身身体及性“自我”的认知。16名年龄跨度为20至71岁、患不同癌症类型及处于不同癌症阶段的女性参与了深入的半结构化访谈。我们运用女性主义后结构主义理论进行了主题话语分析，确定“遭弃之躯”为主要主题。参与者将遭弃之躯构建为“超乎异常”“脱离理想化的具身女性气质话语”且“失去控制”。通过隐藏身体的行为、抵制女性美的话语以及将身体重新定位为个人转变的场所，这些女性在应对和抵抗遭弃之躯话语方面各有不同。癌性身体的物质性可被视为对女性气质和性取向的霸权话语的扰乱，这对女性如何践行具身性性主体性并赋予其意义产生了影响。
