The Body in Extremist White Supremacism

Abstract

This article advances the study of racial extremism by analyzing how its practices of violence and sexuality are marked on the bodies of participants in the form of scars, physical stances, abuse, tattoos, pregnancy, injury, strength and size, using an extraordinarily rich and extensive set of narratives collected from lengthy in-person interviews with 47 former members of U.S. extremist white supremacist groups. It asks how embodied practices of violence and sexuality enable extremist white supremacist groups and actors, how embodied practices of violence and sexuality disable these groups and actors, and how gender matters in embodied practices in these groups. As a lens into embodied practices of violence, interview narratives about participants' preparation and deployment of their bodies in violent situations are analyzed, with attention to the gendered nature of these processes. Similarly, interviewees' narratives about their racialization of sexuality and sexual transactions are analyzed to understand embodied practices of sexuality and their gendered aspects. The embodiment of racist violence is found to be important in making racial extremism a visceral aspect of the lives of its adherents. This is highly gendered, as women and men use and experience violence in different ways. The embodiment of racist sexuality is found to be an iterative process of assessing one's sexuality and the value of one's sexual body to others, a process that serves as a portal to women's victimization while allowing some women to gain access and influence in a highly misogynistic world.