The male/female opposition has been closely allied with the mind/body opposition. Typically, femininity is represented (either explicitly or implicitly) in one of two ways in this cross-pairing of oppositions: either mind is rendered equivalent to the masculine and body equivalent to the feminine (thus ruling out women a priori as possible subjects of knowledge, or philosophers) or each sex is attributed its own form of corporeality. However, instead of granting women an autonomous and active form of corporeal specific, at best women’s bodies are judged in terms of a ‘natural inequality,’ as if there were a standard or measure for the value of bodies independent of sex.
Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies.