Rupture, leakage, and reconstruction: the body as a site for the enforcement and reproduction of sex-based legal norms in the breast implant controversy

In everyday discourse, the terms "sex" and "gender" are used as if they are interchangeable. There are, however, distinct meanings for the two terms. "Sex," as it is typically understood, refers to a stable and pre-political biological reality that may be assessed and verified through a visual assessment.(29) According to this definition, some people are born female and others are born male. "Gender," by contrast, is defined in more socially contingent terms. Thus, what it means to be "masculine" or "feminine" varies with time and place. In short, sex is viewed as an immutable, physical quality, while gender is conceived as a culturally constructed set of qualities that reflects the values of a particular community.(30) Judith Butler has described the construction of sex and gender as the practice of "girling."(52) "Girling" is a process that is compelled by the naming of a "girl" as a "girl."(53) According to Butler, the symbolic power of this naming effectively "governs the formation of a corporeally enacted femininity."(54) This is because a "girl" (and, by extension, a "boy" as well) is "compelled to `cite' the [gender/sex] norm in order to qualify and remain a viable subject."(55) In other words, social survival requires males and females to enact the expectations of their designated sex, not only in terms of social performance but also by constructing bodies that fit the physical demands of their categorization. Butler also points out that the process of materializing sexed and gendered bodies is a forcible act.(58) This is revealed by the fact that there are gaps between the normative demands of sex and gender and the performance of those demands. In other words, the performance of sex and gender is imperfect; there are sex and gender categories and norms by which we understand what it means to be "male" and "female," but the actual experience of sex and gender does not quite match up to these normative categories. Nevertheless, society still demands and expects "girls" to be "girls" and "boys" to be "boys."