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Tracing a matrix of gender: An analysis of the feminine in hospital-based treatment for eating disorders

Malson, Helen; Ryan, Victoria

Authors

Victoria Ryan



Abstract

Numerous studies have elucidated how a multiplicity of contemporary western cultural ideas and values that constitute 'normal' femininity are enmeshed in and central to the discursive production and regulation of girls' and women's 'eating disordered' subjectivities, bodies and body management practices. In this article, we seek to build on that work by exploring how discursive constructions of 'the feminine' are articulated in nurses' accounts of nursing in-patients diagnosed with 'eating disorders'. We have used a feminist post-structuralist, discourse analytic, interview-based methodology to explore how gender and gender power-relations are articulated not only in constructions of 'eating disorders' and of those diagnosed as 'eating disordered', but also in constructions of nurses and their relationships with (and to) patients. Our analysis illustrates how 'the feminine' persistently appears and reappears as a multiplicity of binarized gendered subject positions that constitute, delimit and regulate 'pathology', patients and nurses, suturing nurses and patients into a matrix of dichotomously structured femininities and a complex circulation of gender power-relations. © 2008 SAGE.

Citation

Malson, H., & Ryan, V. (2008). Tracing a matrix of gender: An analysis of the feminine in hospital-based treatment for eating disorders. Feminism and Psychology, 18(1), 112-132. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353507084955

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Feb 1, 2008
Journal Feminism and Psychology
Print ISSN 0959-3535
Electronic ISSN 1461-7161
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 18
Issue 1
Pages 112-132
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353507084955
Keywords anorexia, bulimia, nursing, patients, femininity, discourse, body image
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1020157
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0959353507084955