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My body is a cage, that keeps me from dancing with the one I love (but my mind holds the key)

– Arcade Fire, My Body is a Cage

Acceptable and (arguably) possible ways of doing gender are shaped by the

discursive constraints, and also by related constraints of the body. Masculinity and femininity are not performed in the abstract, but by, with and on individuals’ sexed bodies. Again, these bodies do not exist outside of sociality; they are produced in a social world. Foucault theorises the human body as constituted by a range of

discourses: the state, lega l, medical, educational systems and so on produce the body as a seemingly natural object – the product of “bio-power”. While Foucault's early

28 work has been criticised for his apparent lack of attention to corporeality; the body seen as entirely written by external discourse, his later work develops theorie s of “technologies of the self”. Through these, subjects work upon and constitute themselves, within and utilising power (though Foucault’s body remains unproblematically, marklessly male (cf. Ramazanoglu 1993; Grosz 1994)).

The body is the most salient and obvious signifier of gender. Its materiality

influences and can limit the range of possible actions; and alter how these actions are understood and reacted to by others. First and most simply, the body sexed as male is allowed and expected to perform masculinity; the body sexed as female is allowed and expected to perform femininity. The penalties for not so doing can be severe. Of course, the uncertainty and inevitable slippages of meaning in “masculinity” or “femininity” complicate such a task; indeed, it is impossible to fully and

permanently achieve either (e.g. Butler 2004; Kehily and Nayak 2008). But gender is written on the body and with it, in interaction with other bodies, institutions and environments.

Bodily forms of signification can be experienced, and represented, as choice and/or constraint. Normative femininity and masculinity both involve practices of bodily regulation. The female/feminine body, in particular, is often figured as excessive, as naturally in need of regulation to control it; a figuration which is bound up with class regulation, frequently attached to the working class female body (cf. Skeggs 1997). As Deborah Youdell puts it, “[u]nlike the feminine body, the masculine body does not need to be reigned in or controlled – it is in control” (2005, p. 256). The centrality of bodily control to femininity, and the way it connects policing (by self and others) of sexuality with other forms of perceived bodily transgression, will be taken up in my analysis of social cultures of sexuality in chapter four, where I connect it to classed forms of identification and othering.

Youdell's observation is in the context of the distinctions between girls’ and boys’ bodily postures in school, and the adolescent body in particular is a site oversaturated with tension and contradiction, where the discourse of excess interacts with – and is

29 produced by – that of adolescence. Catherine Driscoll, discussing the physiological discourse around puberty and adolescence, describes it thus: “late modern puberty marks a crescendo of bodily disruption that should ideally be resolved in the course of puberty” (2002, p. 82), characterising the modern conception of adolescence as an “unwilled and uncontrollable assertion of the sexual body” (ibid.: 84). Thus

physiological change is represented as and often understood as an unwelcome imposition, constraining the actions and possible expressions of the body. As Butler points out, “The body not only changes, but changes in ways that others see, and both desire and dread emerge in the course of that transformation that is, after all, a social one ” (2006, p. 2). This visibility is heightened by the perpetual social

surveillance of teen school cultures, as I argue in chapter four, that works not only in-the- moment but also longitudinally, as young people's current performances of gender – as created with and on their current bodies – exist on top of, and haunted by, their earlier performances.

Allowable gender performances are constructed in conjunction with discourses of age and maturity (Hauge 2009). Research with children often highlights their

understandings of the differing bodily practices that are required with increasing age, and sometimes their sadness at these: for instance, Paechter and Clark report a girl regretting the fact that “apparently you’re not allowed to run in year six or year seven. ” (2007, p. 321). This can be shaped by individuals’ differential rates of physical development. In general, too, one’s physical appearance can shape how particular gender performances are interpreted; for instance, boys or men who are physically large/strong can express behaviours which would be coded as feminine in a less physically “masculine” individual, without sanction (Thorne 1993; Francis 2008).

A body, sexed in a particular way, gendered in a particular way, according to the desires of the subject interacting with and produced by the constraints of the

discursive and economic positions available to it, does not then exist in a vacuum or present the same impression everywhere it goes. It continues to produce meanings (and itself) in interaction with the environment, or rather, with different

30 environments. We have already seen that mobility becomes gendered at an early age, and it remains the case throughout the lifecourse that men tend to take up more space through their activities and through their bodily posture (McDowell 1999) – a point that has been remarked upon and changed little since Goffman’s analysis of gender in advertising (Goffman 1976). Those with bodies that do not fit gendered norms can starkly highlight how gender is created in and by place. Halberstam discusses “the bathroom problem”, whereby she as a masculine woman finds herself often being challenged in her use of the women’s toilets (1998, pp. 20-29: 20-29). It is not simply the appearance of her body that produces this reaction, but the fact of the construction of toilets that are divided by binary gender. Rasmussen, discussing the same issue, elaborates on how the very existence of such architecture creates difference and enables power:

toilets give truth to the presumption [that bodies fit into two neat categories] – in effect, they tell us who we are, and how to define those around us. We do not simply choose to be queer in response to the space of the toilet; rather, public toilets are an architectural feature that can make us feel queer, or cause others to police gender identity: putting the lie to the idea that we can

somehow free ourselves of the gender binary (Rasmussen 2009).

The important point here is that, as I argued previously in discussing agency, gender – and sexuality, and class, and other aspects of the self – is not determined solely by the actor. Although this is not a position explicitly argued in any research or

theoretical accounts, the importance of others’ readings, and of social interaction, in producing gendered performances, is not always clear in some of the more abstract gender theorising. This is not necessarily an inherent failing; neither Butler nor Halberstam attempt to approach gender from an explicitly social perspective, as their work is situated within philosophy, literary theory and cultural studies. But as their theories have been extremely influential within the social sciences, it is important to recall the location of their work within these different paradigms. They cannot necessarily be applied wholesale to analysis of the social; their discussion can operate at a level of abstraction detached from everyday experience, focussing on signs and neglecting their reception. As Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott point out in their discussion of theorisations of sexuality, in which they argue for a rehabilitation

31 of interactionist approaches, such focus has sometimes led to an underemphasis on social interactions and embodied practices (2010, pp. 141-145). The abstract

performing subject discussed by Butler cannot be uncritically transferred into studies of the social, but needs to be embedded in time, place and interaction (Nelson 1999). Throughout my discussion I take up the situation of a particular subject in its

embedded context, investigating the social practices of young people's interactions (while, as I discuss in the next chapter, taking heed of the methodological shaping of my understanding of these social interactions).