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In Gut Feminism, Elizabeth A. Wilson challenges feminist theory on two fronts. She proposes that feminists reconsider the value of both biology and aggression, two subjects deemed objectionable in most strains of feminist thought for their assumed correlation with authoritarian political projects. Wilson rejects the usual feminist tendency to equate biology with essentialism and negativity with absolute harm, and proposes instead a vision of feminist ethics that engages with a different understanding of both. Wilson encourages feminists to take up a more dynamic conceptualization of biology as well as to recognize the necessity of tolerating harm, which she describes as inextricably tied to repair. She describes this approach as “gut feminism,” a feminism that recognizes the irreducible entanglement of body-wide and even trans-bodily systems of chemicals, transmitters, words, and negative and positive affects. In this effort, Wilson joins a number of other recent feminist scholars, including Karen Barad, Evelyn Fox Keller, and Anne Fausto-Sterling, who argue for the usefulness of the natural sciences for feminist analysis. As a contribution to the redrawing of disciplinary boundaries between fields like political theory and neuroscience (Connolly, 2002), democratic theory and ecology (Dryzek, 2005), and social theory and animal studies (Chen, 2012), Gut Feminism exposes the culture vs. nature distinction as a limiting dualism detrimental to progressive political aims. Wilson suggests that a careful consideration of the ties linking biology and social construction, as well as health and harm, should replace typical feminist anti-biologism and unease with negativity, positions which she reveals as underwritten by dualistic thinking.
In the first part of the book Wilson interrogates the origins and political implications of feminists' rejection of biology as deterministic, and proposes an alternative understanding of biological structures as dynamic and inseparable from