Chapter 1

NIKHILESH KUMAR MH PHOTOSTATE 9891442390,9599572390

Liz Stanley

SHOULD 'SEX' REALLY BE 'GENDER' OR 'GENDER' REALLY BE 'SEX'

NIKHILESH KUMAR M. H. PHOTOSTATE 9891442390.9599572390

This was one of the earliest challenges to the sex-gender distinction, arguing that treating
biological sex as unproblematic limited the scope of social constructionist critique.

From R. Anderson and W. Sharrock (eds) Applied Sociology, London: Allen & Unwin (1984),

The social construction of biology

The argument

T HE BASIC ARGUMENT IS whether 'sex' (our 'maleness' or 'female ness', the biological basis
of sex differentiation) causes 'gender' (culturall) ascribed notions about 'femininity' and
'masculinity'), or whether and to what extent 'gender' is a social construction. Two polarised
positions on this can be described as 'biological essentialism' and 'social constructionism'.
Paradoxically, it has more often been natural scientists working on these questions who have
taken an unequivocally social constructionist line, while most academic feminists have occupied
the so-called 'middle ground' of arguing for social constructionism which takes place on a
biological base.

'Biological essentialism', then, argues that the social roles and psychological attributes of
females and males in relation to a whole range of behaviours and personality traits are
biological reductionism', for the essentialist view is that what exists now is a direct product of
biological factors still operative, while the reduc-tionist view says they are the indirect product of
biological factors no longer operative.
The feminist response has identified biological essentialism in the social and natural sciences
as importantly involved in the maintenance of 'biology is destiny' ideas within commonsense
views on this topic. It is, however, equally possible and equally likely that scientific views are the
product of commonsense ones rather than the other way around. The feminist response has
thus gone about disman-tling what has been seen as 'popular ignorance with an attack on
scientific conservatism and prejudice, through the use of a very wide body of evidence drawn
from various disciplines; these main kinds of evidence are now outlined.
The evidence

Previously reference has been made to the fact that fifteen years or so of feminist activity in the
social sciences and elsewhere has resulted in a huge amount of work of various kinds. Again,
because of this it is impossible fully to account for all the research involved. And so, instead of
this, brief overviews are presented of this work under three headings. These are variations
between cultures, variations in one culture over time, and variations in one culture at one point
in time.

1. Variations between cultures. Here the main body of work is anthropological in origin and
concerns a very wide range of different cultures indeed. This evidence suggests that 'sex' forms
a universal categorisation in all known societies; and in all known societies it also involves a
hierarchy in which it is men and men's activ-ities and attributes which are the more highly
valued. Earlier work which had claimed the existence of totally non-stratified societies to a large
extent now recants this view and accepts that within it the anthropologist had been 'blind to sex',
in the sense of simply 'overlooking' women's inequality.

In addition, anthropological work has pointed out the fascinating and, for feminist theories of
women's oppression, crucial fact that within this what is believed to constitute maleness and
femaleness is subject to seemingly endless vari-ation. Some of the best examples of this come
from the work of Margaret Mead and in particular her Ses and Temperament in Three Primitive
Societies (1935), where she describes three cultures, all existing in close proximity to each
other but which nevertheless have very different constructions of 'gender'.

In addition, there is now an increasing amount of anthropological work which focuses on the
different, and not so different, meanings attached to various behav-iours in other cultures, which
can be used to illustrate similar ones in our own.

One example of this is in the work of Yolanda and Robert Murphy among the Mundurucu, where
group rape is an explicit and widely used means of control-ling women's behaviour (Murphy and
Murphy 1974). Another is in the work of Margery Wolf in rural Taiwan, which examines the role
that gossip plays among seemingly powerless women in order to gain power (Wolf 1974). Both
of these examples concern sex-related behaviours which occur in our own culture, but which
may be seen and understood very differently in others; and it is precisely from both the
similarities and the differences that we can learn.

The overall import of this kind of research is that 'gender' is a lot more complex than it at first
may appear; that it is variously constructed; and that even the 'same' behaviours may be seen
and understood very differently in different cultures. Because of this it has formed a very
important plank in feminist writings concerned with 'gender'.

2. Variations in one culture over time. The key discipline involved here is history, and in
particular both economic and social history. Within work here two different, and sometimes
opposing, strands can be discerned. Perhaps the more significant, certainly in terms of the
volume of work available, is that which is concerned with the changes brought about by
capitalism in the economic and social roles of women and men.

Sheila Rowbotham's Hidden from History deals with the hidden history of women, hidden
because mainstream history has not seen women's lives as either significant or interesting
(Rowbotham 1974). It examines changes brought about by capitalist development but also by
developments within capitalism. In some ways it exemplifies the central Marxist tenet that in a
sense 'gender' as a hier-archy of social value is a product of capitalism. However, in some other
respects it just as clearly shows some of the differences between Marxist and Marxist-femi-nist
analysis. For one thing, it is centrally concerned with women's place both in history (and the
discipline of history) and in Marxist theory itself. And for another, it is written in a very different
style. It deliberately sets out to make its own argu-ments and even 'facts' redundant, in the
sense that it necessarily skims over the surface of the things it discusses; for the failings of
history as a discipline have ensured that all that exists, with regard to women's lives, is surface.

Rowbotham's work has been superseded as more research has been done on the vast number
of issues, problems and very wide time-period touched on in her book. Nevertheless, in a sense
its central argument remains alive and flourishing, for whether men and women were different
but not 'genders' before capitalism has not been satisfactorily 'answered'. Indeed, the second
strand in historical writ-ings illustrates fairly clearly the fact that it is unanswerable in any final
sense, for neither question nor 'answer' is to be seen as theory-free. This second strand
addresses itself, in,a direct sense, to the question of women's and men's situation in
pre-capitalist and capitalist periods.

Alan Macfarlane's The Origins of English Individualism rejects various of the key Marxist
arguments about the nature and origin of capitalism on the basis of very detailed historical
researches (Macfarlane 1978). Macfarlane points out that most of the characteristics associated
with 'capitalism' existed in England certainly as far back as the fourteenth century; and therefore
that work which dates it as a seventeenth and eighteenth-century phenomenon in fact results
from theoretical imperialism rather than close attention to historical fact. It also deals with,
among other things, women's situation in the geographical locations he is concerned with; and
emphasises that in the 'pre-capitalist' period women were controlled and the subject of
discrimination, but also that they could and did inherit, run businesses, and the like. In other
words, their situation was complex, much more complex than Marxist and Marxist-feminist
theory usually recognises.

In a quite different vein, Dale Spender's Women of Ideas points out that, as far back historically
as one cares to research, women's resistance to various aspects of their situation can be found
(Spender 1982). Concerned with finding 'feminist writings', that is, those of women who offered
a conscious critique of women's then-existing psychological sex research literature (Maccoby
and Jacklin 1975). Many interesting points are made by Maccoby and Jacklin concerning the
quality and focus of much of the research, but also about the main overall conclusions to be
drawn from it. Generally, they suggest, almost all the popularly supposed sex differences in
psychological functioning could not be demonstrated in research, which often tried very hard
indeed to find them. They argue that the only psycho-logical sex differences which research
supports the existence of are four in number. First, females have greater verbal abilities than
males. However, this difference begins to show only at around the age of eleven; and so its
often assumed biolog-ical basis must be doubted. Secondly, males have greater visual-spatial
abilities than females. However, this difference begins to show only at around the age of
thir-teen; and so the often assumed biological basis of this too must be doubted. Thirdly, males
have greater mathematical abilities than females. This too only manifests itself at around the
age of twelve; and its biological basis is again in doubt. Fourthly, males are more aggressive
than females. This difference begins to manifest itself at around the age of three, when social
play begins.

Maccoby and Jacklin are willing to consider the possibility that this last psycho-logical difference
between males and females may have a biological basis. However, they also note that its
existence neither means that all males are more aggressive than all females nor that male
aggression is immutable. In other words, they suggest that although biology may be important it
can be changed, modified and indeed completely overturned in particular societies or particular
groups within a larger society (an example might be men who are Quakers and women who are
polit-ical terrorists in our own society).

Some conclusions?

Both biological essentialists and social constructionists claim that the weight of evidence is on
their side; and this highlights something of the practical difficulties involved in the operations of
science within the social sciences. That is, it is most certainly easy to find evidence which
categorically supports the essentialist posi-tion but it is just as easy to find categorical rejections
of it; and similarly so with the constructionist position.

That being said, it seems that the general trend has been towards a much greater acceptance
of constructionist ideas about biological sex. Paradoxically,. constructionism is found more
within certain of the natural sciences involved in research and counselling in this area of
practice than within the social sciences. And interestingly, a large number of academic feminists
have eschewed construc-tionism in favour of the 'middle ground' of arguing that social
construction takes place, but on a given biological hase of physiologically determined traits,
attrib-utes, and so forth. This is a variation within the position earlier referred to as 'biological
reductionism'. Nevertheless, the overall trend is still that 'sex' should really be considered as, to
a large extent, 'gender'. Perhaps ideas about 'normal science' and what is and is not thought to
be professionally acceptable in the social sciences play a part here, for while much of academic
feminism is to be found in this middle ground, feminists outside academic life are to a large
extent construc-tionists.
Since the differentiation between females and males is seen as something socially sustained,
much research concerned with explaining this has emphasised the 'coer-cive' aspect of
socialisation, the extent to which gender identities are imposed upon people, through
internalisation by the child during primary socialisation and rein-forcement by social control
mechanisms. Power certainly operates in the construction and allocation of sexual identities, but
the next section suggests that such an interpretation of it is not only too crude but also sets up a
particular reading of the nature of interconnection between 'gender', 'sex' and 'biology' which
can be similarly characterised.

'Biology', rationality and 'sex' as a 'natural order'

Scientific and everyday rationalities

In the last section some of the now vast body of evidence which has been used in debates
concerning the 'sex/gender controversy has been outlined; and the general tenor of conclusions
to be drawn from this were summarised as an increasing acceptance that 'sex' should really be
construed as 'gender'. However, 'gender' is conceptualised in much social science theory and
research as a set of 'internalised traits, attributes, behaviours, and so forth. Much recent work
on 'socialisation', whether by feminists or not, has focused on what is known as 'primary
socialisation' (sometimes referred to as 'sex role socialisation'); and is concerned with the period
from birth until the age of about four or five, during which, it is assumed, 'gender' is somehow
'laid down' through the pattern of interaction between the child and its social and physical
environment. Much of this work has been located within psychology or a sociology very heavily
influ-enced by psychology. There is, however, another sociological way of understanding
'gender' and around which some extremely interesting work has been carried out. Some of this
will be outlined later; and around this an alternative way of under-standing the persistence of
biological considerations will be discussed.

Within the general movement of social scientific opinion towards various versions of social
constructionism there has been a sometimes implicit and some-times explicit judgement of
popular opinion', with its continued support of essentialism. Essentially this support is depicted
as irrational or perhaps 'pre-scientific', for it is seen to fly in the face of scientific facts of the kind
earlier outlined. However, such assessments of 'popular' as against 'scientific' not only treat both
as having the same purposes and goals but also treat the realm of the scientific as by definition
more advanced in its understandings, modes of procedure, and so forth.

Instead of seeing everyday and scientific theorising as competing forms of expla-nation, the
philosopher Schutz prefers to see them as different attitudes, each with different purposes,
procedures and desired outcomes (Schutz 1967). In everyday life, our 'commonsense
knowledge' is practical and contingent on what Schutz calls 'projects', our concern with various
features of the here and now rather than the pursuit of 'truth'. In this sense scientific knowledge
is not 'practical' at all because it is not dependent on everyday knowledge and standards but
those specific to "science. Behaving in a "scientific way in everyday life, unless acknowledged
and licensed as such through the recognition that this is indeed "science', can lead to behaviour
being seen as old, eccentric, or even as a kind of madness.

An alternative way of seeing and understanding the persistence of biological invocations in

relation to 'sex' and 'gender is to see these as part of everyday theorising and thus as practical,
contingent, purposeful and rational, rather than as the result of ignoranice and confusion which
will disolve on receipt of 'scien tific fact', 'Gender" is conceptualised in psychological, rather than
sociological, terms in most of the relevant literature. That is, gender' is seen as internalised
behaviours, traits and the like which are then later 'released' into various social situations,

This can be seen as a kind of psychological essentialism', which may not be biologically
determined but is certainly deterministic. However, sociology sees social life as intersubjective,
as the result of negotiation and interaction, and not as the release of something 'inside". It
argues that the social world is one shared in common between us and to be seen as a human
social construction rather than as a multiplicity of inner worlds. Thus the way into an alternative
understanding of biological invocations is through reconceptualising 'gender' in more sociolog
ical terms.

"Gender" in sociological terms

In Gender Advertisements Erving Goffman examines various features by which 'gender' is

pictorially constructed in a range of media advertisements (Goffman 1976).

However, as well as demonstrating the very stark way in which 'gender' and 'power' overlay
each other in these, Goffman also emphasises that advertisements deal with an obviously
unreal world, unreal in various ways. One feature of its unreality is the starkness of 'gender
advertisements; and Goffman argues two things out of this. One is that 'gender' in this form is an
atypical feature of social interaction; most everyday behaviours are equivocal, and stark and
unequivocal instances of 'gender and of other forms of behaviour are rare. The other is that the
atypicality of gender' does not mean its unimportance; indeed rather the reverse. By presenting
images which stand out in the way that these do, gender advertisements mark out 'ideals and
these feed back into the construction of 'gender' in everyday life.

A discussion of male/female, and parent/child, conversational interactions by Candice West and

Don Zimmerman in 'Women's place in everyday talk' (West) and Zimmerman 1977) notes both
the interactional construction of 'gender' and also its close similarity to other forms of power.
West and Zimmerman note in particular that men in conversation with women, and adults in
conversation with children, 'do power' in comparable ways through interruptions and other ways
of disturbing turn-taking sequences in conversational structure.

Both Goffman and West and Zimmerman stress the interactional construction of "gender" rather
than its release into social situations and that the specific mech-anisms by which this occurs can
be analysed by close attention to detailed pieces of recorded interaction. Harold Garfinkel's
work concerned with 'Agnes', an appar-ently intertexed person, is ostensibly in a different vein
(Garfinkel 1967). One of Garfinkel's concerns is with the role that 'passing', or achieving and
security rights to live as a normal, natural female', plays in Agnes's life. However, an implication
of Goffman's and West and Zimmerman's work is that 'passing', with its attendant possibility of
failure, is a feature of 'gender' for 'normal' males and females also, although the
'taken-for-grantedness of interactional response some what differs, along with the specific
consequences of failure.
Garfinkel treats Agnes as an intersexed person concerned with the manage ment of what she
perceives to be her natural, original, real 'sex', and only residually as someone who might be
actually involved in the production (through the use of hormones) of her 'real sex' attributes; and
indeed this possibility becomes more residual over time. However, an appendix deals with
Agnes's disclosure to Garfinkel's medical collaborator that she was in fact not intersexed. In
essentials, as Garfinkel notes, the practical accomplishment by Agnes of her intersexuality was
achieved in a specific setting through the establishment of a determinate account of 'Agnes and
her past', whereby alternative accounts are ruled out.

In this work, the usually symbiotic relationship of 'sex' and 'gender (and whatever the culturally
specific content of 'gender') is demonstrated. By estab lishing claims to her 'real sex', Agnes
also achieves a determinate reading by others of her behaviours as 'gender' (and this in its turn
reinforces the claims to her 'real sex') rather than 'effeminacy' or other terms which deny a
correspondence between them and 'real sex'. In a sense, then, 'gender' 'works' because of the
assumption of various links, most importantly between 'gender' and 'sex', and between 'sex' and
ideas about 'natural orders'.

'Sex as a natural order

The idea of a 'natural order' is one which includes the notion that what is 'natural' is also given,
fixed, determined and non-volitional, and is thus not socially con-structed, changing and
volitional. 'Sex' construed as a natural order is thus concep-tualised in ways which cut out the
possibility of conceptualising it as 'really" "gender", really socially constructed and so mutable.
Moreover, implicit within ideas about 'natural orders' is a way of treating and understanding
alternative, non-natural, con-ceptualisations. These are indeed seen as 'non-natural', as
unnatural in the sense that they fly in the face of what is self-evidently fixed, given, and so forth.

'Sex' as a natural order includes more than ideas about our 'biological selves' and our social
behaviours and attributes. It also importantly includes ideas about people as sexual beings in
the sense of 'doing sex', 'having sex'. That is, the 'natu-ralness' of 'sex' extends to, indeed
crucially includes, sex as innately heterosexual reproductive behaviours. 'Sex' in the strictly
biological sense is thereby not only an outcome of 'doing sex' but also what this is naturally 'for';
and a number of interesting pieces of work have taken up this idea and explored it by looking at
sexual behaviours and 'sexual roles and their relationship to 'gender'.

At this point it becomes possible to return to the question of the persistence of biological
invocations in the explanation of sex differences and sex inequalities; and to examine this
around the ideas briefly summarised above.

Biological invocations persist because these are rooted in a supremely rational way of
interpreting and constructing what it is to be a man or a woman in our society.
Commonsensically 'gender' is instead seen as 'sex' because in a practical sense this explains a
great deal more, and is much more useful, than the other way around. Ordinarily, normally,
typically, 'sex' has a great deal more explica-tory power, for it is linked in with ideas about
'sexual orientation' and thus into 'doing sex' as reproductive behaviour. This 'correspondence
theory', as it is known, states that ordinarily a correspondence is assumed between 'sex',
'gender', 'sexual orientation' and 'reproductively sexual behaviour' with, standing behind these
constituent elements, the notion that these constitute a 'natural order'. In a sense these form an
'impermeable theory', one not amenable to modification through, for example, new evidence. It
constitutes an internally consistent self-fulfilling prophecy in which 'contrary evidence' is instead
treated as a confirmation of the theory because its very existence demonstrates its own
unnaturalness and thus irrationality.

Here it is instructive to consider that, very frequently, feminists are construed as failed 'real
women', who hate men and want to castrate them, and who deny not only biology as related to
'sex' but also as related to the assumed ideas that 'doing sex' is necessarily penetrational and
that childbirth and child care are neces-sarily central in women's lives. In this can be seen the
implicit argument that feminists deny the natural order of 'sex' and are thus not only unnatural in
doing So, but unnatural in themselves. 'Sex' as a natural order is also an order involving power
and its distribution; and feminists and feminism threater the present distri-bution of power within
this order. Responding to the message of feminism in terms already set within the notion of a
'natural order', however, removes this threat because one consequence is that the debate
opened up by feminism is thereby depoliticised by being taken out of the realm of the social and
mutable and back into the realm of the natural and immutable.

The recent growth of interest in the social position of women is obviously, from what has been
said above, connected with the rise of the feminist movement; and it is feminists who have
made much of the running in attempting to explain the persistence of sexual differences and
their associated inequalities..