Feminist Solidarity or Moralized Body Politics? Online Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer Communities and Feminist Health Politics
研究遗传性乳腺癌和卵巢癌患者在线社群中的团结与行动主义，发现团结背后存在道德化的身体政治，排斥异己并强化个体责任，对女性主义健康运动有启示。
In this article, we extend the study of the embodied health activism of breast cancer survivors to the relatively neglected peer-to-peer groups now proliferating online. We conducted in-depth interviews during COVID-19 with individuals with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC) mutations because, with heightened risk of disease, they are unusually active online. We asked participants with diverse racial-ethnic, gender, and sexual identities about online experiences to understand solidarity and activism, particularly within the context of a neoliberal emphasis on taking individual responsibility to overcome health risks. We found that (1) most reported finding solidarity and shared experiential knowledge, yet desires for positive uplift to overcome cancer led to a moralized body politics of exclusion and individualized responsibility, and (2) such boundary making, particularly over breast reconstruction, has contradictory implications with larger lessons for social movement scholars. While boundary making builds solidarity among insiders, it threatens connections to others, as was also the case with the ideological and identitarian politics that limited second-wave feminism. In our case, boundary making limits transgressive body politics, leaving a moralized body politics of heteronormative femininity.