Choosing Submission: Advances in Understanding Agency and Embodiment

Abstract

Purpose

This chapter aims to advance understandings of agency and embodiment by considering the relationship between identifying as a feminist and choosing to engage in sexually submissive practices with men.

Methodology/approach

Thematic analysis of seven feminist-identified women’s solicited diaries and follow-up interviews are paired with a feminist phenomenological framework of agency and embodiment in order to highlight how inhabiting and investing in dominant heterosexual norms is a means of locating oneself in one’s own desires and sexuality.

Findings

Engaging in sexual submission as a feminist can be met with feelings of guilt and a sense of justification; a number of participants questioned whether these sexual choices put their political identity in crisis or open to critique. Others felt that their choice to be submissive warranted no problematization – even if the female, feminist subject inhabits dominant heterosexual norms surrounding what it means to be a woman as defined by heteronormative, patriarchal terms.

Research limitations/implications

The present study is part of a broader PhD project based on heterosexuality and feminism in practice, where choosing submission also occurs between instances of sex (in everyday encounters with men) and beyond the context of sex (within the broader context of a romantic relationship). As such, choosing submission within the context of sex is only one aspect of this much more complex relationship.

Originality/value

This chapter aims to contribute to a growing body of literature that considers the way agency is conceptualized and in doing so, offers empirical evidence to show these theories are applicable to sexual practices as well as understandings of gender and feminism.

Citation

Edwards, N. (2015), "Choosing Submission: Advances in Understanding Agency and Embodiment", At the Center: Feminism, Social Science and Knowledge (Advances in Gender Research, Vol. 20), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 65-84. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1529-212620150000020017