Women phase of narrative = Hikayenin kadın hali

Abstract

Women's sexuality, still a taboo subject in Turkey, is often associated with immorality, shame and embarrassment. Such taboo manifests itself in every aspect of social life from advertising and soccer culture to honor killings and virginity tests. Everyday language remains phallogocentric defining sexuality as an act of violence and domination where women are represented as the passive victims. Such predominant representations, including the "virgin" versus "whore" dichotomy, alienates women from their own bodies ("disembodies" them) and disempowers them not only in sexual relations, but in all aspects of life. A web site design where women can be informed and can share their own narratives with the others and thus, constitute a common conscious and a book design in which some of the narratives from the web site are planned to be published are the core of this project which started in purpose of designing a visual language for a research project aiming to draw an atlas of women's sexuality in Turkey. A critical point of view against the cognition of women' sexuality in society and representations of women in women in society is aimed with the images and the visual language used in designs.