Probing Protocols: The Genital Examination as a Pedagogical Event

Abstract

The authors interrogate genital examinations as events in which both client and practitioner are `produced' as relational subjects in quite specific ways. This article explores the way one female sex health worker talks about her work as a form of cultural exchange, noting what she requires of her clients and seeks to give of herself. Of particular importance is the way the practitioner produces the client as a social subject amenable to intimate examination, while resisting some traditional means for doing so. The authors use a Foucauldian conceptual framework to signal their departure from feminist analyses which explain such practices in terms of a patriarchal medical system.