What about vulnerability?

I have been considering how contemporary and historic notions of gender inform Brownmiller’s theories of sexual assault as well as current conversation about body politics. Brownmiller’s understanding of sexual violence is rooted in the belief that rape is a political act that is done to one type of body by another. It assumes that there are two distinct, gendered bodies: the penetrating male body that commits the assault, and the vulnerable female body that is constantly under threat. This threat exists, according to Brownmiller’s framework, primarily because of the male body’s mere capacity for violence, whether the individual chooses to act on it or not. I don’t think this assertion is intended to overlook the fact that all bodies are capable of violence as much as it is serves to affirm the narrative that only some bodies are seen as vulnerable. Gender is obviously a defining factor in determining how bodies are inscribed with meaning, but is by no means the only factor. Dominant discourses on how a body should act are deeply entrenched in society’s commitment to social scripts of masculinity and femininity, which are identified by their displays of dominance and submission, respectively. It is interesting, however, that the embodiment of dominance is assumed to exist only in the absence of vulnerability. Or that by embodying a male body -a body that is permitted and expected to exhibit dominant behavior- assumes vulnerability is not needed or desirable. Like the binaries of male/female, masculine/feminine, dominance is defined in opposition to submission and vulnerability, which continue to be regarded as aspects of femininity and reflections of fixed, biological definitions of what it means to be “woman”. In reality, all bodies are vulnerable. It could be argued that vulnerability is even a necessary condition for bodies to be inscribed the very meanings that define them into categories like male and female or that assume them to be masculine or feminine, dominant or submissive. If we’re going to talk about sexual assault, I think we need to start with an ethics of vulnerability- recognizing all bodies are vulnerable and all bodies have the potential for violation. I wonder, how does this inform the ways we learn to interact with other people’s bodies as well as our own?