This week, the University of Toronto Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education (KPE) hosted its inaugural Dr. Brian Pronger Lecture, with a keynote talk by Genevieve Rail, distinguished professor emerita from the Simone de Beauvoir Institute & Women’s Studies at Concordia University.
The lectureship was established in memory of KPE Associate Professor Brian Pronger, who died in 2018. A scholar and an activist, Pronger was a founding member of U of T’s Sexual Diversity Studies undergraduate program. The series aims to celebrate his legacy of teaching and social justice in critical studies of sports and physical activity.
“I am humbled and honoured to be here,” said Rail. “I see this as an occasion to celebrate his life, writings and activism, and a chance to honour his memory.”
Reflecting on Pronger’s legacy and ground-breaking writings on the body, gender, sexuality, desire, health, science and technology, Rail discussed her research documenting how sexual minorities navigate fields of knowledge shaped by dominant discourses on biomedicine, risk, neoliberalism, homophobia and the stereotypical rhetoric around women’s and lesbians’ health.
Based on over 100 interviews with a diverse sample of lesbian, bisexual, trans and queer (LBTQ) persons diagnosed and treated for breast or gynecological cancer, Rail's research explored the notion of vulnerability and its applicability to LBTQ individuals living with cancer.
Rail examined how members of the LBTQ communities appropriate - and resist - dominant discourses in health, challenging the notion of them being labeled as a “vulnerable population” considering the fact that their decision-making is marked by efforts to contest or manage discrimination and institutional effacement within health systems.
“Their stories reveal a relationship to cancer health and knowledges that challenge sex, gender, sexuality and medical norms and suggest, in line with Pronger’s teachings against patriarchal, homophobic and territorializing projects, the need to consider “carnal,” subjugated knowledges and queer health promotion interventions,” said Rail.
Rail also delivered a master class to graduate students, discussing Pronger’s critique of the “technology of physical fitness” and its applicability to current times. Expanding the discussion to include the concepts of biopedagogy and biocitizens, Rail argued that since Pronger published his ground-breaking book Body Facism, digital technologies and social media have greatly enhanced the reach of biomedicine and body fascism through various apps that facilitate self-tracking and self-diagnosing of fitness and health.
“The imperative to be lean and well obliterates political engagement as the focus is on the creation of happy, fit and productive biocitizens, who are juxtaposed against unfit, unwell and unproductive bio-Others,” said Rail.
The class also heard Rail’s critique of the purported “humanitarian” interventions to save “abject” bio-Others as expressions of sexist, classist, ableist, ageist, neo-colonial, Islamophobic, homophobic and transphobic power dynamics. She specifically discussed the “ill-conceived rescue missions” of kinesiology and public health approaches that exacerbate class divisions and reproduce patriarchal and colonial hierarchies.
Expanding on Pronger’s work, Rail speculated on the instrumentalisation of physical activity and sport within corporate schemes that seek to expand markets in the name of wellbeing, juxtaposing it to her - and Pronger’s - thoughts on the place of physical education in the larger projects of justice and social wellbeing.