One of the main traits of a society of reflexive modernity is the critical analysis of categories that in the past appeared unquestionable. Socio-cultural gender and health or illness/mental disorders are categories of this type. Above all, they are socially constructed, that is, they are dependent on culture and on political, economic, and religious factors. The author undertakes to analyse the relations between the diagnostic criteria used in the international system of classifying mental diseases (DSM-IV and ICD-10) and traditional schemas of masculinity and femininity. Confirmation of the incidence of particular diseases in connection with gender is the author’s entry point for seeking answers to why individuals suffering from certain illnesses/mental disorders display behaviour corresponding to traditional gender roles, even though contemporary gender roles are fluid in many respects, and hypotheses about biological differences as causes of incidence of disease in men and women have not been empirically confirmed.
Cwaniary (Female Wanglers) is not only a metatextual novel with numerous references to popular culture, but above all an important contribution to the discussion about the place and role of women in contemporary society. The author breaks with the nineteenth-century image of matka Polka, the Polish Mother, whose existence is confined to family and home. The creations and actions of the female wanglers in Cwaniary, outsiders who defy popular stereotypes by pursuing outré lifestyles, are underpinned with allusions to a nascent rebellion against patriarchy, systemic suppression of women's rights, and the resulting marginalization of women in society. Unfortunately, Poles still have great problems with openness to other cultures, nations, and non-heteronormative sexual orientations. The Poles, it seems, are caught between an irrational fear of disintegration of the structures of their relatively homogeneous society and the need to move on and reinvent themselves as the 'modern subjects' of critical theory. It is a choice between holding on to an anachronistic model of Polish culture founded on suppression or catching up with the 21st-century world of openness, diversity and multiculturalism.