A Self narrative on conflicts/empowerment of body experience

• Main Authors: Hung, Chien Ya, 洪千雅
• Other Authors: 洪素珍
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/08734096429114894501

碩士 === 高雄師範大學 === 性別教育研究所 === 95 === In this thesis, I, a female graduate student of gender education, taking life history narrative and praxis-oriented research paradigm as my research methods and taking myself as the research subject, narrated/wrote my own life story and retold/rewrote it. The reason why I started this study is because after I acquired gender knowledge in graduate school and brought my newborn gender awareness back to my daily lives, I often felt inner conflicts and perplexity when I faced my family members, friends, and boyfriend who still have stereotypical gender ideology. As time went by, my self-concept, gender consciousness and relationship also changed. Focused on narrating and analyzing “emotions” and “physical body” this thesis explored the process and contents of conflicts and empowerment of body experience in the development of gender consciousness. Through the process of narrative inquiry, I wished I could find the relation between gender consciousness and my construction of subjectivity, and gain subjective power to deal with my conflicts. This life narrative inquiry focused on three issues. First, in my process of gender consciousness development how did my conflicts and empowerment correlate with my self-concept and subjectivity? Second, how did my emotions (cry, anger, and emotions in relationship) correlate with interpersonal relatinships and the relationship with self in the process of gender consciousness development? The third issue was focused on my physical body—what kind of body experience/body feeling and what kind of subjectivity construction did my female body (appearance, breast, and figure) and erotic body bring about? According to the result of my self meta-analysis, the main findings were as follows. In relation to emotions: i) My cries have multiple facets and a core concept-- the desire to control. ii) Anger was regarded as a display of subjective power; however, poor command of anger turned out to be a kind of repression. iii) My negative emotions in relationship showed “self-in-relation” and my strategy of playing the role of child in order to gain power. In relation to physical body: i) I learned to get rid of gender stereotype, and say “yes” confidently to my desired appearance. ii) In the issue of wearing a bra or not, I saw my obedience to authority; in my bigotry of breast size, I saw the imprints of social pressure. iii) “The techniques of the self” helped me fight against the fear of fatness and construct my desired body image; yet it also made me alienate my own body and others’ bodies. iv) Female gaze and my own internalized fat-oppressive attitude acted as the jailers of panopticon more than the male in relationship. v) Female dressing was restrained because of the following three factors: a) feminine dressing, b) hegemony of clothes sizes and the phenomenon of shaping body to fit clothes, c) close attention to specific body parts. vi) On the issue of nudity, I realized “gain and loss logic of body eroticism based on seeing and being seen” and conflicts in erotic autonomy.