Girl, sister, daughter, friend, nurse, mother, teacher, volunteer, grandmother, mentor, great-grandmother: these were the words used to define Maureen McGovern Hoegen.  On September 26, 2011, just weeks after we arrived back on campus and just as I was delving into my studies of feminist and gender theory, my Nana passed away.  She had been ill with an early form of dementia for most of my life, but she still had lived out the roles expected of her fully and even some that very much were not.  

We learned in our course through reading Michel Foucault, Simone de Beauvoir, Jessica Valenti, and Judith Butler that many of our societal rules and norms have evolved out of social constructions.  

French philosopher and thinker, Michael Foucault, in his repressive hypothesis explains that sexual repression is entrenched in our society and in power relations to the extent that it seems almost impossible to open the dialogue on sexuality. A chapter from his The History of Sexuality entitled “We other Victorians” details that we live in a construction of society “in which repression had indeed been the fundamental link between power, knowledge and sexuality”. Despite this, Foucault explains that people do talk about sex and sexuality more often than we realize; not only do they work within dynamic power relationships, but they have also figured out how to operate externally by challenging established laws or mores and assuming different kinds of freedom. 

Nana was not afraid to talk about sexuality despite her seemingly conservative self.  She was devoutly Catholic, but she was not afraid to open up the conversation that is so often repressed and unrecognized in our society.  Nana challenged the Church's stance on gay marriage before she died which took a great amount of courage considering that my Papa, her husband, is a deacon in the Catholic Church.  This courage makes her one of the "others" that Foucault lauded in his text for being able to keep the discussion open; oddly enough, I believe her interactions with the mentally ill and with prostitutes is what informed her views on this subject (Foucault is known for saying that the few "other Victorians" who existed had to turn to asylums or prostitutes to talk about sex and sexuality in their puritanical society.)  

In the 1970s my Nana created a room in their house to serve as transitional housing for former prostitutes—a daring move for a mother with five children in the house. She defied the typical role of woman and challenged societal norms because she truly believed that women could moved beyond a life of physical, sexual and mental harm.  She, like Jessica Valenti, found that the emphasis on purity in our nation was causing more harm than good to its young girls ( Valenti ).  The women she took in often did not believe in their own goodness anymore because they were told they were worthless by those who should have helped them.  Although, Melissa Febos describes the sex trade as somewhat liberating and empowering she also often cites it as sometimes frightening and degrading--and she was a domme, one of the safer areas of the sex trade.  

According to Melssa Febbos’ account women in sex trade tend to have very intimate relationships with the other women they work with, but not with women with strong self-confidence and strong educations telling the girls that they do have self worth and can a different life if they choose and many of them did. After they, like Febos, were able to step away from lives controlled by drugs or alcohol. 

Simon de Beauvoir tells us that "one does not born a woman, but rather becomes one." By taking in these women who were never exposed to good, strong influences, she did reinforce social mores and their typical "requirements" for being a "woman", but it did help with reintegration. Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, reshapes what we think, experience and perform with our minds and bodies. She discusses and questions, at length, the cultural constructs of being, especially pertaining to gender.  For Butler, Gender is what we do, not who we are.  It is a performance or acting out of social constructions developed from the binary nature of our bio-determined sex.  Gender is imposed on our society in a dualistic sense because we are ourselves with or without it--gender both makes us and prevents us from making ourselves.

  So what is right and what is wrong? To expose these women to strong influences and to introduce them to societal mores and thus restrictions of behavior or tell them interact with the world unprepared to deal with the societal norms and mores that would persist? Foucault might say that we should talk about it, but that we won't. Beauvoir might say that one must understand what it means to be a woman in order to overcome their status as "other".  Valenti might say that education is crucial so long as it is comprehensive and not simply pushing forward regimes that will render the women to feel dirty or powerless.  Febbos might say that their tough experiences will make them stronger as they reenter a world that considers them to be deviant.  Butler might call for an analysis and the deconstruction of how their former and attempted new performances of their sexuality construct or reconstruct their self-worth and individual ways of being in the world. Purity does not matter--it is feeling love and being love that matters.  

Thus, my Nana’s death was a great loss and a trauma for me, but her passing and her memory has greatly influenced my experiences this semester and my current and future explorations of my feminist curiosity. She did not do everything right, but she tried to explore her many roles and identites in this world.