Oliveira, Eleonora Menicucci de

English

Cadernos Espinosanos (E-Journal)

Special PresentationGender, Body and KnowledgeScientific knowledge is marked by approximation, asit is a construction based on other types of knowled-ge upon which one exercises apprehension, criticismand doubt. Feminism has caused and installed pro-cesses of attempts, ruptures in the Cartesian convic-tions, deconstructing what is “true”, medicalized, bi-ological and the social fact. They are no longer fixed,immutable problems.It is in this way that feminism has brought aboutone of the most radical epistemological ruptures inthe scope of instituted knowledge. It has broadenedand deepened the notion according to which the disco-very of the feminine presence, always necessary butalways repressed, will enable the woman who is a thin-ker, a researcher, to recover her “self-affection” and,with it, a new relationship with herself and the others.This new perspective on the way of being and speakingmakes us reflect on symbolic languages, which arefull of meanings related to women’s exploitation andvictimization. They reveal the nuclei of conflicts andpoint to a possible dialogue between knowledgefrontiers so as to apprehend the different possibili-ties of knowledge.One of the most important contributions of femi-nism to the different fields of knowledge and, in thiscase, to the field of Collective Health, more specifi-cally, to research, has undoubtedly been the construc-tion of categories of analysis such as daily life, expe-rience and emotion.If, on the one hand, feminist thought has causedsuch epistemological ruptures, on the other hand, ithas built, within this process, the gender category asa relational category that explains the different pla-ces women and men occupy in cultures and societies.However, the gender category is neither fixed norunique; it is mobile and strategic, exactly to makevisible the micro power relations that exist in thedifferent weavings of macro and micro relations, ofsymbolic and rational relations.Why should gender, body and sexuality be articula-ted in this text? They are fields (in the sense given byBourdieu) that are expressed as the locus from wherethe subjects place themselves in the world(s) andthrough which they cross all relations of power anddomination. And it is due to this possibility that webelieve in the interrelation between them, whichshows the meta-languages of the body and of sexualityembedded in gender relations.The gender category is rigorous in its constructionand tells us about women and men in multiple powerrelations. Here, I draw attention to theoretical mista-kes that some texts repeatedly make, namely, theysubstitute women for gender, or they say they use thegender category but in fact they use the sex variable orthe concept of woman not in the relational perspective.The use of the gender category as relating to powerin studies in the area of women’s integral health,reproductive rights and sexual rights discusses thepractices and exercises of sexualities by (de)naturali-zing and (de)trivializing the relations between sexesand also the intra-sexes ones. This discussion illumi-nates the expressions of health needs, articulatingthem beyond biomedical assistance, with needs thatare anchored on the spheres of subjectivities andmentalities like prejudice and discrimination.Thus, women’s health needs, seen under the pers-pective of gender relations, have the sense andmeaning of those that are in the field of objectivity,such as diseases, violence, pregnancy and so manyothers, and those that are in the field of subjectivity,such as attitudes, behaviors, judgments, moral values.Due to this, we reaffirm that assistance to women inany level of Brazil’s National Health System, when itis integral, expresses the complexity of the factorsthat should be considered in this assistance.The journal Saúde e Sociedade contributes to thestrengthening of the field of gender studies by dedica-ting a special issue to research on gender, body andsexuality, and their intersection with collective health.The articles that compose this issue can begrouped into three thematic blocks within the fieldof gender studies.The first block approaches the question of repro-ductive and sexual rights focusing on the exercise ofsexuality as a right. It also deals with the access ofSaúde Soc. São Paulo, v.17, n.2, p.7-10, 2008  9heterosexual women, lesbians and transsexual womento health services, pointing to the peculiarities in thedifferent complaints and the particularities of eachone of them. They also draw attention to the ethics ofthe professionals who provide assistance, so that thisassistance is free from judgment and/or discrimina-tion. In short, this block of questions emphasize thenecessary enlargement of the concept of “damagereduction” beyond biomedical sequels, including mo-ral, social, sexual and cultural damages deriving fromassistance marked by prejudice.The second block of papers brings us reflectionson “care” in the areas of Nursing and Mental Health.It also approaches how the gender category mayexplain “care” as a power relation that breaks the“supposed subordination” of women in the scope ofthese professions, giving a new meaning to the con-cept of women caregivers, as giving care is thought ofas a knowledge and power relation inside multi-pro-fessional health teams. This possible reversionbetween knowledge and power was headed by womenwho professionalized as caregivers, through homecare that acquired a new meaning compared to theone that exists in the family tradition – care and treat-ment in the territory, which follows the decentrali-zation guidelines of SUS (Brazil’s National HealthSystem).Still in the block about care as a social relationalpractice, we have self-care in the aging process, mainlythat performed by women in the menopause period,because they are the ones who go to the basic healthunits searching for information on self-care.Once again, the women are the ones who continueto attend the health services searching for an impro-vement in the quality of their lives. Life experiences,always connected with care and time, which is not thetime of the clock, but the time of losses and gains,the time of recollections and memories, lead somewomen to interrupt the secular use of medication,resorting to alternative cure practices that cause lessdamage to integral health. The interesting thing aboutthese women is that this change in attitude con-cerning self-care is in a dialectical relationship tothe losses derived from age throughout time.The third block of questions refers to the produc-tion of madness in women. In the majority of cases,madness results from sexual, social and culturalinterdictions imposed on women. This situation hasalready been analyzed by Vilela in her 1992 doctoraldissertation: the author discusses that, in a largenumber of cases of madness in women, the powerrelation between sexes not only is present, buttriggers the signs and symptoms of “gender madness”.It can be observed in the three blocks that life-styles incorporate normative social impositions, whilethe concept of ways of life points to social, culturaland sexual constructions acquired by life choices ofthe women themselves. These choices necessarily aredaily exercises of citizenship and autonomy.Finally, I draw attention to the mobility of theconcept of gender, mainly in the gender approachesof contemporary theories, which bring us the conceptof nomadic, not fixed identities, of multiple subjectsthat act and build different networks outside the“socially accepted circuit”.Eleonora Menicucci de OliveiraFull Professor of the Preventive Medicine Department of UNIFESP;Member of the Advisory Board of Saúde e Sociedade10  Saúde Soc. São Paulo, v.17, n.2, p.7-10, 2008

Gender, body and knowledge

https://www.revistas.usp.br/sausoc/article/download/7572/9094/

Gênero, corpo e conhecimento

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Cadernos Espinosanos (E-Journal)