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After the presidential election, I asked an artist about her definition of feminism. She explained that she is a
feminist because the very physicalization of her body is read as transgressive.
I could not resist this line of reasoning. In 2017 women’s bodies are hardly the only bodies read this way. The
confluence of transgression and bodies calls up some crucial questions about the body essentialism of some feminist
definitions and the regulatory coercion of gender binaries. We know from the important work of Judith Butler and
colleagues that while gender is “performed,” this performance is never …