Sex and Gender

1. Sex and Gender • Feminism Lecture 6 21/2/14

2. Introduction • The Sex/Gender Distinction • Traditional Feminist Accounts of Womanness • Objections to Traditional Accounts of Womanness • Objections to the Sex/Gender Distinction • Contemporary accounts of Womanness & Gender

3. The Sex/Gender Distinction • People used to hold Biological Determinism: sex determines gender • 19th Century: women as sluggish, passive, and conservative because they conserve energy • 70s: women should not pilots due to hormonally instability • 90s: much research supposedly showed that differences between men & women were due to the particular thickness of the tissue connecting womens’ brain hemispheres • In response: feminists argued that gender is a social/cultural phenomenon

4. Traditional Views of Womanness • Gender and Womanness is socially constructed

6. Traditional Views of Womanness • Chodorow: feminine personalities develop in early infancy in response to parenting practices • Mackinnon: Gender as sexuality: femininity as being treated as an object for the satisfying of men’s desires. • (Gender Realism) There is a single feature or set of features that women have in common that makes them women

7. Objections to Traditional Accounts of Womanness (in virtue of gender realism)

8. Spelman Against Gender Realism • 1. White Solipsism • But the problems with narrow understanding of womanness does not undermine gender realism

9. Spelman Against Gender Realism • 2. Inseparability of womanness from race and class • A: If gender were separable from race and class, then women would experience their womanness in the same way • B: If gender were separable from race and class, then we would have no trouble imagining that a white woman would have just the same understanding of herself as a woman if she had been black • If gender is so inseparable from race and class, then there is no one property of being a women that all women share • But RE A: (i) It is compatible with B that women all share the same feature but experience it differently (merely epistemic); (ii) womanness might not be the kind of thing that can be experienced like this; (iii) Worry that this objection proves too much

11. Spelman Against Gender Realism • 2. Inseparability of womanness from race and class • A: If gender were separable from race and class, then women would experience their womanness in the same way • B: If gender were separable from race and class, then we would have no trouble imagining that a white woman would have just the same understanding of herself as a woman if she had been black • If gender is so inseparable from race and class, then there is no one property of being a women that all women share • But RE A: (i) It is compatible with B that women all share the same feature but experience it differently (merely epistemic); (ii) womanness might not be the kind of thing that can be experienced like this; (iii) Worry that this objection proves too much

12. Spelman Against Gender Realism • 2. Inseparability of womanness from race and class • A: If gender were separable from race and class, then women would experience their womanness in the same way • B: If gender were separable from race and class, then we would have no trouble imagining that a white woman would have just the same understanding of herself as a woman if she had been black • If gender is so inseparable from race and class, then there is no one property of being a women that all women share • But RE A: (i) It is compatible with B that women all share the same feature but experience it differently (merely epistemic); (ii) womanness might not be the kind of thing that can be experienced like this; (iii) Worry that this objection proves too much • But RE B: (i) other reasons why we might not be able to imagine these things: lack of ability to imagine being of a different race or class (ii) this is only an epistemic issue not a metaphysical one

13. Spelman Against Gender Realism • 3. The social construction of gender undermines gender realism • But equivocation on Realism • But essential features need not be intrinsic features • Being the President of the US, Being a wife in our culture, Being a friend,

14. Spelman Against Gender Realism • Are Gender Realists and Spelman talking past one another? • The debate as about how gender, race, and class intersect: Do they add up [building blocks] or are they simply not independent things? • It seems that they are not (at least wholly) independent things

15. Butler against Gender Realism • In proposing a uniform account of womanness feminist gender realists imply that there is a correct way to be gendered a woman • It is not possible to use the term ‘woman’ purely descriptively. • Making claims about what it is to be some thing is always exclusionary • But: Substantive Vs Formal Accounts

16. Objections to the sex/gender distinction

17. Is sex classification purely biological? • Uniformity in shape, size, and strength within sex categories depend on exercise opportunities. • Some people’s chromosomes do not match their genitalia • But this only shows that the XX/XY + genitalia way of making the biological distinction doesn’t work

18. Butler against the sex/gender distinction • Sex and gender are the same thing as they are both socially constructed • However this does not establish that sex and gender are the same thing

19. The counter-intuitive consequences of the distinction • Could we take someone’s gender away from them and leave them the same person? • For a week last summer, James was a woman • For a week last summer, James was a US senator • After seeing John’s body, I realised that John is a woman • After seeing John’s body, I realised that John is a US senator

20. Contemporary Accounts of Gender and Womanness

21. The Representation Problem • (Gender Realism) There is a single feature or set of features that women have in common that makes them women • If gender realism is false, then there is nothing that women have in common • But if there is no real group ‘women’, it is incoherent to make claims on their behalf

22. Desiderata for an account of womanness • Must take account and reflect the particularity of women and the intersection between gender, class, and race • Mustn’t be exclusionary or at least over-exclusionary • Should not make ‘woman’ as convention dependent as ‘US senator’ or ‘judge’

23. Haslanger’s View • S is a woman iff S is systematically subordinated along some dimension (economic, political, legal, social, etc.) and S is “marked” as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of a female’s biological role in reproduction • Problems: • Is this too dependent on convention? • Follows that we should abolish woman • Is the queen a woman? • Women not in bodies marked female

24. Haslanger’s View • Distinguishes 3 types of project: conceptual, descriptive, and analytical • Worry: analytical projects give us answers to questions we were not asking • The analytical project with gender hopes to explain persistent inequalities between male an females in a framework sensitive to differences between males and female • That it follows that the queen might not be a woman and that we should abolish women is not a problem for this type of account

25. Bach’s View: Gender Kinds are Historical Kinds • Some kinds are historical kinds

26. Bach’s View: Gender Kinds are Historical Kinds • Some kinds are historical kinds • To be of a certain gender is to have features that associates one with what has historically been deemed a particular gender • (Binary) Gender systems have a certain interdependent set of components • Can take account of the particularity of women and their experiences: can particularise historical gender kinds • Not too convention dependent • Is it too exclusionary?

27. Butler’s Account of Gender • Gender is not something that one is it is something that one does (Gender Performativity) • If it is a performance, then must there not be a performer behind the gender performance? • Don’t some of our expressions of our gender reflect who we are? • Is Butler engaging in the same task as gender realists? • Is gender entirely subjective on Butler’s view?

28. Butler’s Account of Gender • Butler’s view is not exclusionary and takes account of particularity • But radically departs from our concepts of ‘woman’ & ‘man’ • Butler + Haslanger?

29. Summary • Spelman and Butler’s objections to the metaphysical essentialism of traditional accounts of womanness do not undermine this metaphysical essentialism • Problems and Prospects for contemporary accounts of Womanness and Gender