Embodying Core Activities: Gendered Performativities

Abstract

In the discussions in the previous chapters I have focused more on women than on men. This is not because I see women as passive victims, because I want to create a separate or ‘essentialist’ women’s space or because I define a seamless theoretical category, women, in opposition to men. No. I want to uncover the sometimes obscure gendering processes at work in our field. While both women and men drug users will experience the damaging effects of these gendering processes, women are more disadvantaged than men because ‘masculinist’, patriarchal and paternalistic rather than gender-sensitive configurations and epistemologies predominate (Ettorre, 1994). My contention is that these gendered and gendering epistemologies permeate all our theories and practices.

Femininity pleases men because it makes them appear more masculine by contrast; and in truth, conferring an extra portion of unearned gender distinction on men, an unchallenged space in which to breathe freely and feel stronger, wiser, more competent is femininity’s special gift. One could say that masculinity is often an effort to please women, but masculinity pleases by displays of mastery and competence while femininity pleases by suggesting that these concerns, except in small matters are beyond its intent.

Susan Brownmiller (1984: 4)