Abstract
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Highlights
Transabled women lost in translation?When the guest editors of the special issue of Recherches féministes entitled ‘Extreme women’ approached us in 2013 to publish a piece on transability as a form of extreme body transformation, we decided to take the notion of ‘extreme’ as a starting point for our critical reflections
We argue that the variation in what constitutes ‘extreme’ body modifications reveals less about these practices themselves than it does about the norms and the social, cultural, political, legal, and other contexts in which the ‘extreme’ label is applied
What does it mean to be ‘extreme’? According to which criteria is this concept defined and who establishes these criteria? What kinds of power relations inform the categorization of behaviours or practices as ‘extreme’? In what ways do women who undergo supposedly ‘extreme’ body modifications represent a threat to dominant understandings of femininity in which women are associated with passivity and docility, among other things, and with productivity in terms of work related to care, and to caring for others? This article suggests answers to these questions based on a case study of women9 who seek body modifications considered ‘extreme’, a practice called ‘transability’, in order to reveal the ableist, sexist, heteronormative, and classist/neoliberal structures that inform negative judgments of their claims
Summary
Transabled women lost in translation?When the guest editors of the special issue of Recherches féministes entitled ‘Extreme women’ approached us in 2013 to publish a piece on transability as a form of extreme body transformation, we decided to take the notion of ‘extreme’ as a starting point for our critical reflections. This article suggests answers to these questions based on a case study of women9 who seek body modifications considered ‘extreme’, a practice called ‘transability’, in order to reveal the ableist (oppression based on ability), sexist, heteronormative, and classist/neoliberal structures that inform negative judgments of their claims.
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