Reproductive Rhetoric and the Blaming of the Body

Abstract

I know no woman – virgin, mother, lesbian, married, celibate … for whom her body is not a fundamental problem: its clouded meaning, its fertility, its desire, its so-called frigidity, its bloody speech, its silences, its changes and mutilations, its rape and ripenings … the fear and hatred of our bodies has often crippled our brains. (Rich, 1986, P. 284)