Warwick’s review of Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity > Likes and Comments
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Thank you. And you're right on all counts! Slashes a-go-go.
Lacan and Freud are very important (though not accepted totally uncritically), as are a lot of continental feminists that I haven't read, like Irigaray and Kristeva. There is a lot of stuff here about the inherently gendered nature of language that I suspect makes a lot more sense in French than English, which doesn't have grammatical gender.
Brilliant review. You probably know Butler has received the Bad Writing Award.
"Professor Butler’s first-prize sentence appears in “Further Reflections on the Conversations of Our Time,” an article in the scholarly journal Diacritics (1997):
The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."
Am I weird for getting that? Maybe it's cuz I've read so much worse. Compared to some queer film theory, that Butler quote seems like Parade Magazine.
Very interesting to read this today, Warwick, having just finished Orlando in which Woolf argued nearly one hundred years ago for the existence of different gender identities within the same person, and emphasised that the perception of the chosen gender by others influenced how the person was then treated which led in turn to the decision on which gender to finally adopt.
Anyway, just to say that I found your writing very clear. You make a lot of sense and you make it well.
I didn't know that, Howl! That's a nice example, though like Greg I feel I've seen worse. You have to wonder if even she understood what she was trying to say.
Fio, Orlando is a really interesting example, because like this book it seems to blur physiological sex as well as gender. It's been years since I read it, I should probably revisit. Thanks!
Excellent, Warwick.
"However, more recent waves of feminism have instead chosen to see sex as a matter of felt identity – one's ‘brain sex’, as some call it – which might eventually be found to have some neurological basis or might just be a matter of profound feeling. On this view, transwomen are not men who have cut off their genitals to ‘become’ women: they are women, in some essential sense, who happen to be lumbered at birth with a male physiology."
This is the position I defend, and I have a good deal of personal experience with transsexuals, both pre- and post-op. And biological essentialism is already questionable because of the existence of true hermaphrodites and those with somewhat less severe mixtures of biological male and female characteristics such as Klinefelter Syndrom.
Gregsamsa wrote: "Am I weird for getting that? Maybe it's cuz I've read so much worse. Compared to some queer film theory, that Butler quote seems like Parade Magazine."
I have to agree that some of the worst prose I have ever read is to be found in texts of queer theory...
Steve wrote: "Excellent, Warwick.
"However, more recent waves of feminism have instead chosen to see sex as a matter of felt identity – one's ‘brain sex’, as some call it – which might eventually be found to ha..."
I agree with all the above - excellent review Warwick - and the work I have done with transpeople places me firmly in Steve's camp re: brain sex etc.
As to her prose...well...I was talking to my wife about this the other day - she did her PHD on gender/sexuality issues, and this sort of language was all over it - the issue is that there are a vast number of terms which have very specific meanings and link back to very specific items of theory, so that it is simply impossible to write without filling your sentences up with it all and endlessly adding clauses and sub-clauses which seek to show you are very aware of all the possible arguments etc etc
It is simply impossible to use Lacan, Heidegger (and now Butler) etc without bringing in all that lingo....In a sense it is a vicious circle.
We use words like "heteronormative" so much in my household that I forget people will give me funny looks when I use them in ordinary conversation...
Thanks both. That is the position I prefer, too, if only because it seems to come with more respect built in. Nevertheless – and with the proviso that I have much less personal experience than you two do – the debate seems not clear cut to me, and I learn a lot every time I see it discussed. Which is partly why I dislike the attempts to shut it down (so typical of modern discussions on anything to do with identity politics)…
"As to her prose...well...I was talking to my wife about this the other day - she did her PHD on gender/sexuality issues, and this sort of language was all over it - the issue is that there are a vast number of terms which have very specific meanings and link back to very specific items of theory, so that it is simply impossible to write without filling your sentences up with it all and endlessly adding clauses and sub-clauses which seek to show you are very aware of all the possible arguments etc etc "
I understand your point here, Jonathan, but it is possible within the constraints imposed by technical terminology and career-normative considerations to write more clearly. I assure you that there are mathematics and physics texts (where technical terminology and professional expectations play a huge role) that are much better written than others. The same is true of philosophical texts. To write clearly is not a trivial or easy matter, and I wish it were more explicitly recognized and rewarded in professional circles.
Steve wrote: ""As to her prose...well...I was talking to my wife about this the other day - she did her PHD on gender/sexuality issues, and this sort of language was all over it - the issue is that there are a v..."
You are entirely correct, apologies if I implied otherwise with my ramblings. It is, as the old saying goes, much harder to make complex things simple than the other way round...And people do have a tendency to assume that incomprehensible prose is indicative of genius...
What a cool thread this is becoming.
I would love it if you thoughtful people would respond to a question that's been nagging me on this very issue.
While the trappings of gender (hair length and style, pink/blue, dresses/suits, etc.) are so clearly socially constructed, how is the body then the source of the need to adopt the trappings of the gender opposite to one's biological sex? If we were to evolve societally such that these gender signs no longer existed, what would it mean to be trans-? Would it be "merely" biological, in the most reductive clinical sense?
OK sorry that was 3 questions.
It does not surprise me one bit that so many of these writers of theory are sceptical about language's communicative ability, and question whether language can really communicate anything meaningful at all. If I wrote as poorly as they do, I'd have similar concerns.
heh, heh :)
Warwick: have to take issue with you on one point. Sex is not a biological fact, but a matter of social convention. There are, of course, a variety of biological facts that that convention is founded on: hairiness, curvyness, shape of genitals (not a binary choice in practice!), testes vs ovaries (or both, or ovotestes!), testosterone levels, oestrogen levels, XX vs XY chromosomes (vs XXY, X, etc), presence or absence of the particular 'sex-encoding' gene on the Y chromosome, and so on. But which facts are relevant is determined by society - sexual orientation and certain behavioural patterns, for instance, used to be considered part of how sex was defined, and so you had the concept of 'sexual inversion' (gay men and househusbands were women in pseudo-male bodies and vice versa for lesbians and spinster businesswomen) before "orientation" and "gender" were invented as perpendicular categories. And even given the above array of biological facts, we still have problems, because in practice any combination of those facts can occur with any other combination. Therefore neither any one fact nor any one combination of facts actually amounts to being 'male' or 'female'. In confusing cases, it largely comes down to what the individual wants to claim to be (and that has a lot to do with what their parents and doctors told them they were). In some cases, it's not even necessarily true that people have only one sex - some people might be female, say, for all ordinary purposes (and be curvy and have a vagina) and yet be considered a male for the purposes of sporting regulations (who have long wrestled with sex, but who I think now mostly define it purely through testosterone levels (which means, interestingly, that there is no difference between a 'woman' who is doping in certain ways and a 'man')).
And that's all just bearing in mind natural human variation, before we even start to consider people who intentionally 'change' their 'sex'.
So I think that 'sex' is 'a biological fact' in the same sense that tasting sour or being green are physical facts - the core data is factual and objective, but the classification is entirely cultural, and will vary from culture to culture.
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The idea of 'brain sex', however, also has a problem, which is that there's little or no evidence that it is in any way true that there is any discernable difference between male and female brains. [Coincidentally, another goodreads friend has just read a book on this topic that thoroughly debunks this notion. One fact I particularly liked: even one of the leading theorists who believes in male and female brains admits that not all women have female brains. Specifically, only 40% of women have female brains. It doesn't take a philosophy student to observe that that renders the label 'female brain' somewhat tendentious...!]
I think transsexuals are a big problem for 'progressive' views for two reasons. First, and more specifically, because they do undermine the edifice of 'gender' as a perpendicular category from 'sex'. If the 'brain sex' idea is correct, then many of the core elements of gender are in fact not social at all, but physical (i.e. gender is only just sex after all). On the other hand, if 'brain sex' does not exist, then transsexuals are indeed reinforcing negative gender stereotypes.
The second, deeper problem, though, is the problem of false consciousness in practice. There are two pretty fundamental principles of certain brands of progressivism:
a) commonly held beliefs about the way the world is are often the result of social pressures and exploitation - even those beliefs held by the exploited may exist only to further that exploitation;
b) everyone has a right to determine their own identity, and must be spoken of respectfully and without being patronising.
But these principles, while each individually appealling, are contradictory!
And transsexuals are a glaring example of this. Because on the one hand, those who believe in purely social gender roles must patronising pity transexuals as labouring under (and perpetuating) false consciousness. But on the other hand, they can't very well back down from that position purely because it's offensive to transsexuals, because doing so would mean denying that false consciousness could exist (if false consciousness can exist then 'the people I'm describing refute my description and find it offensive' is only to be expected, not a counterargument at all).
And i think a lot of people haven't really come to terms with not being able to have it both ways.
Cynically, one might suggest that this is because a lot of feminist, socialist, anticolonial and otherwise socially progressive, social-democratic theory was written by people in positions of power. It was OK to talk about those foolish proletarians, deluded housewives, hoodwinked natives, confused gays and misled transsexuals, defending them while patronising them, because none of those people were part of the academic discourse. They applauded your efforts to support them while not really knowing what you were saying behind their backs about them. But now there's a lot more publicity. People know what academics say, and academics have to confront what people say more often too. In a way, it's the core problem of studying people: it's very hard, perhaps impossible, to treat people as fully-independent individuals AND to treat them as statistical or conceptual objects of study at the same time...
Anyway, if it's not obvious, and despite reservations, I'm on the false consciousness side with transsexuals. I absolutely don't doubt the strength of their feelings - but I also know that other people believe equally strongly that they are really dragons (/wolves/werewolves/vampires/fairies/etc) trapped in the 'wrong' body (or indeed just a bodybuilder or ultrathin supermodel trapped in the body of an ordinary teenager), and feeling something strongly doesn't make it true. It makes it meaningful - but the meaning isn't always what is apparent. I don't see a great evidential or conceptual difference that leads us to regard sexual dysmorphia (but only when it conforms to existing sex/gender roles, not when it's the belief that one is a third sex or hermaphrodite!) as one thing and all the other dysmorphias as something completely different.
I completely support people who want to live as the other sex, with or without surgery - but that doesn't mean I have to accept their philosophical theories as well.
And, to be fair, some of the transsexuals I've known in person (albeit online) have actually been much less dogmatic than their defenders about the theory. They mostly haven't felt a need to stick specifically to the tendentious 'I'm really a woman' rather than the more neutral 'I'd be more comfortable as a woman' or 'I'd like to be a woman' or 'I'd like to be recognised as a woman', or 'I feel womanhood is more appropriate for me' or 'I identify as a woman' or any of the other things that don't make ontological claims. [Then again, I have known one transsexual who was very firm on the ontological nature of her identity; and I've hardly known enough in total to know how representative those I've known have been]
Anyway, I'm off on a tangent now I guess, or at least a ramble.
[Real tangent: I wonder whether the rise of a homosexual identity has lead to the rise in transsexual identities. Many ways in which men could act 'like women' have been subsumed into the popular image of the gay man, which may make those behaviours less available for men who do not consider themselves gay (or who at least don't consider themselves 'gay men', which is an identity that even many men who are attracted to men seem to be ambivalent about, let alone men who aren't attracted to men). Possibly going the whole way and identifying as a woman is made a more attractive option when it licenses behaviours that would otherwise lead to labelling as a gay man? But I'm musing here, and have no feelings nor evidence one way or the other]
Oh, less controversially hopefully, I've got to take issue with something Warwick says Butler said. It may have been on Warwick's reviews that I've pointed this out before, but: language is not a male creation. Not only is language a joint creation between men and women, but women actually have much more power than men over language. Young men are the primary innovators linguistically, but it is young-to-middle-age women (mothers and mothers-in-law) who are the linguistic gatekeepers of innovation: the changes that succeed are the ones that are approved of and adopted by women.
[This is certainly related to women being the usual primary language-tutors for children. It may also be due to the role of language use as a form of sexual display among young men to (indirectly) impress girls. Language that the girls don't like is therefore selected against.]
gender is only just sex after all
Well this is exactly the suggestion that sometimes seems to lie at the far end of Butler's arguments, and those of many others that I've read on the subject, but which everyone seems too nervous to spell out. I think what you say about the arguments having it both ways is quite right, that's what makes the debate so charged and so interesting to watch.
My question to you is, if "feeling something strongly doesn't make it true", then what *does* make it true, given the points you raise in your first paragraph?
Wastrel wrote: "
My goodness what a lot of straw men you knocked down in that post Wastrel!
I wish I had the time to really debate it all with you, as have great respect for the intelligence you repeatedly demonstrate on this site, but sadly I am snowed under with work and typing this as a brief break.
Nevertheless, my disagreement could probably be summed up by the fact that you are dealing in such massive generalities about the experiences of trans people and about current theories regarding gender/sex/sexuality etc.
It is, for example, entirely possible to be a trans woman who performs her gender in a completely queer fashion - to give a silly example, there are butch trans women who love other women.
i would suggest you read Stone Butch Blues, if you have not already, as it gives a really great idea of some of the nuances within the particular community.
One can say "I am really a woman" and mean, by that term, something entirely non-heteronormative.
This means that your contradiction simply does not hold up. Not least because, by definition really, being a trans woman puts you at odds with the oppressive patriarchal norm.
To quote Feinburg - ""Are you a guy or a girl?" I've heard the question all my life. The answer is not so simple, since there are no pronouns in the English language as complex as I am, and I do not want to simplify myself in order to neatly fit one or the other. "
There are also very few 5 year olds who feel themselves to be dragons trapped in a human body to the extent that it makes them dangerously unhappy. There are, however, many such children who feel that way about their designated gender, long before society has set out clearly what that gender is. It is pretty offensive to imply an equality between a young teen dealing with gender dysphoria and someone who thinks they are a wolf (particularly with the horrific levels of suicide prevalent amongst such people).
I also disagree with what you say about language - men remained (though perhaps less so today) the gatekeepers of language and the only ones with the power to designate what is"correct" - Keeping with your example (which is problematic but I dont have time to go into it) a mother will encourage her child to use "correct" language in order to give it the best chance in life to succeed - the language it needs to use it that of authority and of power. It is not women who historically selected what this was, but men.
Males of our species also use language as a means of establishing status with other males. It is not simply a sexual display.
well Wastrel, the meanings that words have in political debate and legal discourse and medical discussion have until quite recently all been calibrated by men. Often that doesn't really matter but sometimes it matters a lot. Now I am more sceptical than most people about the extent to which this affects modern language use, but I don't think the historical principle is seriously doubted. And while young women do seem to be trend-setters when it comes to slang vocab and pronunciation changes, I've not yet seen a study that suggests language that women dislike is "selected against". At the least I think you probably put it too strongly.
Jonathan wrote: "Wastrel wrote: "
My goodness what a lot of straw men you knocked down in that post Wastrel!
I wish I had the time to really debate it all with you, as have great respect for the intelligence you..."
With respect, I can't argue against you because I don't understand what you're arguing against, or its relation to me. What is 'my contradiction', and what does it have to do with the existence of lesbian transsexuals (something I would obviously never deny)?
On language: ideology aside, the primacy of female control of language change has been well demonstrated crosslinguistically and crossculturally through statistical, longitudinal studies. In general language that is, of course - warwick is quite right to point out that the jargons of traditionally male-dominated occupations, like law and medicine, will indeed historically have been more shaped by women.
Warwick: "then what does make it true?" - !!! Isn't the question "so, what is truth, really?" a bit of a heavy one to get into? It also assumes that truth is a reducible concept at all - I think there's an appeal to a Davidsonian deflationary account of truth, personally.
Short version: I'm not sure right now what 'truth' is. Or even if truth is always one thing. I think it's probably reasonable to think that if something is a fact, that probably must make it true, but whether there might be things that aren't facts yet are true nonetheless is a more difficult question. And then what is a fact (beyond 'something that's true')? Maybe we could pragmatically say something like "a society that is aware of a fact is, ceteris paribus, possessed of greater capabilities for succesful intentional action than one that is not", but that doesn't adequately weed out sociopolitical constraints from physical ones. The aphorist in me would probably like to say something like "a fact is a limit that eliminates limits" - the idea being that by limiting our language and behaviour in a way prescribed by the fact (people can't fly - so we limit ourselves by not trying to fly, and not telling people we can fly) we end up giving ourselves more freedom overall (by not falling to our deaths, we can do other things with our lives). But whether that's true, I don't know, and if it is I can't demonstrate it at the moment.
The contradiction is that of your a) and b) - the "womanhood" you are being or performing as a trans woman is incredibly varied and also, by definition, not the societal norm. Even those trans women who adopt the traditional gender stereotypes (pink dresses etc) are always already queering this performance.
And what about trans men and trans people who consider themselves a "third gender" etc?
My point is simply that the second wave feminist arguments against trans women, which mirror some of your points, only even remotely hold water if you deal in massive, and inaccurate, generalities.
Jonathan wrote: "The contradiction is that of your a) and b) - the "womanhood" you are being or performing as a trans woman is incredibly varied and also, by definition, not the societal norm. Even those trans wome..."
OK, I get that I said there was a contradiction between two ideological statements. [Although if i'd been being more moderate, I should probably have said that there was 'an irreconcilable tension' between them, or something like that, rather than flat-out 'contradiction']
But I don't see what that has to do with the rest of what you say. "the "womanhood" you are being or performing as a trans woman is incredibly varied and also, by definition, not the societal norm. Even those trans women who adopt the traditional gender stereotypes (pink dresses etc) are always already queering this performance. - I don't tend to use phrases like 'queering their performance', but that aside I agree with all that. Where did I say otherwise?
And what about trans men and trans people who consider themselves a "third gender" etc?
Well... what about them?
The only thing I said that was related to that was to point out that dysmorphias not associated with conventional gender roles (including nonconventional gender roles, which obviously will vary with culture) aren't typically treated the same way as dysmorphias involving switching between the two gender/sex roles offered.
And I guess with an open-ending 'what about' question, I'd also say that I'm not sure most third genders can really be considered 'trans', both because they inherently are open to biologically 'male' and 'female' people (I'm not aware of any cultures with genders solely for 'intersex' people that can't also be shared with others) and because 'trans' specifically means crossing over, rather than taking a detour. I think the issues with traditional third gender options, and the issues with self-created gender identities, are probably quite different in some ways from the issues around a person whose public identity crosses from one category to another in a way that is not traditionally sanctioned by that culture the way that third genders have been.
But that's all just pedantry and nuance, and I'm not sure what it has to do with anything else you or I have said.
I'm particularly puzzled by why you raise 'trans men' as an issue for me, since I didn't limit what I was saying to women in the first place. [Except that parenthetical rumination at the end about the relationship between gay identity and transsexual identity, which had nothing to do with anything else and which I said I had no real opinion on. Obviously, if that rumination were accurate, the converse could equally be true about lesbians and transsexual men - although my understanding was that transsexual women were far more common today? Do correct me on that if it's not true, though it's not relevent to anything else I said, I don't think]
incidentally, on your earlier comments on dysmorphias: whether something is offensive or not does not determine whether or not it is true. In any case, I think the converse is also very offense to people suffering from other dysmorphias, ranging from the 'ordinary' (body image issues) to the 'bizarre' (dragons, anthros, otherkin etc). Who ALSO, incidentally, suffer from very high suicide rates, and I don't know whether it's been known to occur as young as 5 specifically but it does often begin in early puberty, for what it's worth. [For what it's worth, I'm afraid i have a bit of a kneejerk reaction to soi dissant progressives who use "urgh, how offensive, don't you DARE compare us to those weirdos, we're totally different and completely normal really, not like them" as an argument. I'd much rather we develop ways of respecting everybody and their differences, and that's part of why i'm skeptical of mores (like 'we must accept the ontological theories held by activists from this minority because otherwise it's offensive') that cannot be practically applied to everybody (because no amount of activism will persuade people to accept the theories of draconics or anthros).]
As for '5 years old, before they're really aware of gender roles' - as uncle to a 5-year-old girl, boy is that naive! My niece and her friends have very firm ideas about what boys and girls should wear, what colours they should like, what toys they should like, who they should congregate with (my niece is a nice girl so is friendly with one or two boys, but her friends apparently insist on girls-only) and so on. And that's despite having parents who are strongly against gender roles. Seriously, we get to them young. And in many respects younger and more forcefully than our generation, I think.
![s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all]](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1735525095p1/6431467.jpg)
Wow, excellent review. I'm glad to see this for many reasons:
A. It's been in my Amazon cart for a few days as I debated if I wanted to order it.
B. This review summarizes the novel with great depth and insight while pointing out its opacity and I feel I no longer should order it.
C. Makes me realize I should just read in-depth all the thinkers she discusses before ever trying to read this.
Wonderfully argued, and now I need to look up this Vancouver incident. Real shame about the bad writing too.
Wastrel wrote: "But which facts are relevant is determined by society"
Surely one of the distinguishing differences (in mammalian species) is that females bear offspring, and males beget offspring. In the case of human societies, I doubt that one has ever existed that that did not hold this distinction to be relevant. Indeed for even an individual to claim it was not relevant (much less an entire culture) is difficult for me to envision.
In cultures which at one time did not comprehend the true nature of the male role in producing offspring, some rather strange questions can arise I suppose. But to me, such a lack of understanding of the "basic facts" makes such a society simply a special case; a special case that might be useful for studying some questions, but not for others.
s.penkevich wrote: "Wow, excellent review. I'm glad to see this for many reasons:
A. It's been in my Amazon cart for a few days as I debated if I wanted to order it.
B. This review summarizes the novel with great dept..."
Thanks Spenk. Of course some people have more patience for it than I do. There's a great, detailed review on here from LitBug: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Ted wrote: "Wastrel wrote: "But which facts are relevant is determined by society"
Surely one of the distinguishing differences (in mammalian species) is that females bear offspring, and males beget offspring..."
That's one way of defining 'male' and 'female', sure. But it's not the way we actually use. Because many women do not bear children, and many men do not beget children (though historically this has been less salient, as you can never know whether someone has begotten children or not, until you have modern paternity testing).
Some women cannot bear children because they are barren. This may be due to age, illness, some non-obvious condition, or some really obvious condition like not having a womb, or a vagina.
Other women do not bear children because they intentionally abstain from reproductive sex, or because someone forces them to abstain. And other women simply have not yet born children and it is not clear yet whether they will, or why not.
If 'woman' simply meant 'bears children', then barren women would not be women. And indeed in some cultures this is the case - among the Nuer, for instance, barren women are traditionally regarded as men, and can if they choose marry women and beget children with them. [Inheritence from the male is considered spiritual rather than seminal - dead men are also able to marry and beget children; this isn't that uncommon - marriage is primarily a way of allocating children to fathers, and cultures vary in how much they care about matching those allocations to historical transfers of semen]
Strictly speaking, if woman = bears children, women who have not yet born children would not be women either. I'm not aware of societies that do this, though there are many that view virgins as non-women, and many that view non-virgin non-mothers as only semi-women.
But in our society, a woman is a woman regardless of whether she has, will, or even ever possibly can bear children. So this is not really the 'fact' that the male/female distinction is tracking.
Without reading earlier comments...
Bravo. Absolutely excellent piece.
I've always been a little suspicious of those who praise Butler's language, and later realised that everyone I'd heard doing so had pretty much only worked or studied in literary academia or closely related fields. It isn't communication so much as an ingroup jargon.
Butler was one of those who contributed to current thinking on separation of 'sex' and 'gender' as concepts, so, writing at a time when this was still developing, it's she isn't always clear on the distinction in the way we would be now.
shared experiences. Biologically female experiences
It can be surprisingly isolating to experience these in a non standard way; if one is the only girl in a class at school, or among the women among groups at successive workplaces, who experiences something atypically (whether with more *or* less difficulty than the average) it can, for some of us at least, be more comfortable to be around those who don't have the experience as a norm in the first place. I think there's a herd mentality around discussion of these experiences; it reminds me of how men who dislike sports say they are detached from day to day conversations on this common subject and by extension the mainstream group.
The tension around the biological is very interesting. Last year I read some discussion threads among the notorious TERFs and many of them, new to the concept of psycholgical gender and often aged 45+, said they had never felt like they identified with a particular 'inner' gender in that sense whilst pragmatically accepting they had a female body. And that's evidently why many of them came to feel that 'gender' should be abolished. (This is something I can identify with more than any song about how someone 'feels like a woman' - I have no idea what that means as an inner feeling, although I might sometimes be very pleased by the fit of an outfit that is clearly women's clothing, or similar performative or transient aspects.) However, the TERFs, as ironically with an awful lot of people in the identity politics world, weren't able to consider their views as perhaps a product of their own experiences, just as much as they consider any establishment stance as a product of a particular different experience.
Younger people, especially those in their twenties, who feel about their own identity as these TERFs do about theirs often consider themselves queer to one extent or another. (Whilst our generation is transitional.)
And that's an evolution from Butler's ideas. Her writing is awful but she has shaped a lot of current thinking in this area. As with commentary on how the people who would once have been butch lesbians if they'd been of an older generation are now far more frequently identifying as transmen, there is change over time - the pendulum currently swings (fnar) towards biological change - essentialism of a sort too, emphasising that the body is what defines one - and some speculate that too many youngsters are jumping into hormone and surgery programmes too soon. Though there now seems to be a little more subcultural acceptance for those who want to be recognised as a different gender without hacking (in either sense) their bodies. Partly this must be because law and medicine, in some quarters, is *starting* to catch up with the philosophy, and that will mean some of the activist side doesn't need to be quite so radical. However these professions are still to one extent or another gatekeepers to many trans*people's self definition and that's likely to provoke anger. In terms of legal definitions especially, it seems like mere rigidity for its own sake: society is hardly going to collapse if people could choose a wider range of genders on any form the way they can on Facebook. With medicine there's an inevitable question of cost of reassignment procedures and the finite expertise available to perform them, so it would be impossible for those to be completely democratic, although some things are simply paternalism (eg gender-specific screening reminders which individuals should be able to opt out of on the understanding that the matter is now their responsibility) and dinosaurism.
Thanks for that comment, antonomasia, which I agree with and find interesting.
You raise a particular point as well, that I don't think has really been considered here yet: the role of the law and of doctors in reinforcing binary conceptions of sex. One reason why people think of sex in such binary terms is that the law in the west has always assumed that sex IS binary, and as soon as doctors were able to hack flesh safely to conform to that they took up the challenge eagerly: anyone born less than 'perfectly' male or female is liable to be mutilated to conform to one or other body-standard. Studies have shown that doctors will often do this without even consulting the parents or telling them what they've done; and when they do consult, they often present it to parents as the only option, telling parents they're being cruel by not conforming their children. [In reality, as I understand it, while intersex conditions can of course be a source of social and psychological issues, it seems that surgical intervention to assign sex can actually lead to more and more serious issues itself... and that's not considering the loss of sexual function and/or pleasure that often results from genital mutilation]. The situation is improving, with more awareness of the non-intervention perspective, in large part due to activism by intersex adults, but we've still got a long way to go.
And with sex reassignment, the same thing occurs - as I understand it, the law insists on transition from one sex to the other acceptable sex, at least as a direction, even if individuals have some freedom over the degree and the speed. A woman can't say "I'd like a penis but I'll leave everything else the same, please", for example - it's not just unfunded, it's illegal. So although the rhetoric is often about the body, the legal situation is about the sex - the sex can be changed, but the body can only be changed in so far as it represents a change in the sex. This is distinct from people actually having power over their own bodies, to make their bodies be whatever they want them to be.
A really free society would allow people to choose their genders and their bodies, independently of one another, and from more than a list of two acceptable options.
[Of course, the issue of who should pay and how they should pay is a whole different issue]
As always 'Masia you have so many thoughtful things to say that I don't know if I can pick up on them all…
Younger people, especially those in their twenties, who feel about their own identity as these TERFs do about theirs often consider themselves queer to one extent or another. (Whilst our generation is transitional.) – this is a fascinating idea. The implications are still percolating through my brain but it strikes me as very revealing.
I find a lot of what the so-called TERFs say to be unnecessarily abrasive and disrespectful, but at the same time I feel a little sorry that so many people that were so influential are now being dismissed out of hand for opinions that seem to me not indefensible and that contribute to a debate which is still, in some important ways, live.
I don't know. I suppose ultimately there is a part of me that feels instinctively (but not just instinctively) that there is some facticity beyond what is socially constructed to the idea that humans, like other mammals, are gonochoristic. People who articulate that point of view are bound to appeal to my fondness for common sense, even though I realise that there are important ways in which it doesn't work in practice.
Very interesting comments here.
To contribute my meager thoughts, I'm not sure what is gained by wringing our hands about what biological "sex" is: that seems to be the affair of specialists. I fear many people commit the infamous "appeal to nature" in these regards. Even if something is "natural," that doesn't mean we have to embrace it. Roaming about landscapes and hunting wild animals may be the "natural state" for humans, but that doesn't make it right or good.
To pick a related issue, there's much talk (in my country, at least) of whether homosexuals can "chose" to be gay or not. But I see that question as besides the point. Whether homosexuality is innate or not, people should have the freedom to date whomever they wish. If tomorrow we discovered a "gay" gene, and I didn't have it, would it be wrong for me to date someone of my own sex? Of course not: that's my affair. And if we discovered clear indications of sex in brains, would it be wrong for someone with a "male" brain to transition to female? Again, no: that's their affair. So whatever "sex" may be biologically, people should be free to adopt whatever identity they wish: they're not harming anybody.
People's bodies vary widely. Maybe much of this variation can be accounted for with some dichotomous sexual differences; but much of it obviously cannot. It's our choice what to do with our own bodies, regardless of what is "natural."
Maybe I'm just coming from somebody who lives in NYC, but you see so many people of so many descriptions, that you very soon realize that it doesn't matter. You're all just people stuffed into a subway car. What matters is not what they're wearing or how they identify, but whether they hold the door for you. That, to me, is the real difference; and it's our job to be people who hold open the door.
(Well, that's a bit dangerous in the subway...)
Couldn't agree more. However it does seem to matter to some people, and I'm wary of dismissing their opinions completely.
Nice review Warwick. As you say, "debate can be astonishingly acrimonious"... ^^
Wastrel wrote: "Ted wrote: "Wastrel wrote: "But which facts are relevant is determined by society"
Surely one of the distinguishing differences (in mammalian species) is that females bear offspring, and males beg..."
Your reply says a lot that is quite obvious, of course there's no disagreement about that. However, who exactly are you referring to when you say it's not the way "we" actually use? Scientifically, the different chromosomes in men and women define man/woman unambiguously, even though in some very few cases based on only that distinction, there could be question about a certain individual. Not much hangs on it as far as I'm concerned. The "social" definition of a man/woman difference, which is important in many ways today, and for many people, is not a question that I personalty find intriguing. It's answer does not affect me or people I know, so I'm content for others to work it out and argue about it if need be.
For what it's worth, if I remember my biology classes, the most reliable way to differentiate male and female is by looking at the size of the gametes. In sexually dimorphic species, males have smaller and more mobile gametes (sperm, in our case), while females have larger and less mobile gametes (eggs, in our case). This isn't restricted to mammals, or even animals, of course; there are male and female flowers. (There's a great section in The Selfish Gene where Dawkins explains how sexual dimorphism can originate from differential selection of small differences in gamete size.)
Anyways, as I tried to say above, how to scientifically define male and female seems like an irrelevant biological question if we're talking about toleration.
Lotz wrote: "For what it's worth, if I remember my biology classes, the most reliable way to differentiate male and female is by looking at the size of the gametes. In sexually dimorphic species, males have sma..."
No disagreement to your conclusion, Lotz.
Ted wrote: "Wastrel wrote: "Ted wrote: "Wastrel wrote: "But which facts are relevant is determined by society"
Surely one of the distinguishing differences (in mammalian species) is that females bear offsprin..."
Chromosomes do not differentiate unambiguously - if 'there can be a question in some cases' there is by definition ambiguity!
If someone is XY but SRY-negative, or XX but SRY-positive, are they "scientifically" male or female?
Looking at sperm vs eggs is no help, as many people produce neither sperm nor eggs, and some produce both.
[Of course this is all irrelevent to the question of whether people should be tolerant. But I'm sure we can all agree on the answer to that question, so it's not very interesting. The question of whether 'sex' is 'scientifically' 'defined' and a 'biological' 'fact' is relevent to discussions of human ontology, and may also be relevant to conclusions people draw about psychology.]
I'm not sure what empirical definition could possibly reach the standards you seem to demand. Only a priori definitions in logic and mathematics never run into problematic cases. For example, in mathematics, the word "square" is quite unambiguous. But the word is not totally unambiguous when talking about shapes we see in daily life.
I may see a shape and call it "square," and you may think it's a bit too lopsided to call a square. Should we abandon calling shapes square unless they are exactly square, mathematically defined? But every square we see won't be exactly square (as mathematically defined), if measured precisely enough. So should we abandon the word "square" in daily life?
Biologists concentrate on the size of gametes because it has strong implications for the way organisms will go about reproducing. And because the current paradigm in biology is now Darwinian evolution—through which all adaptation and variation is explained by the success or failure of an organism to pass down its genes—biologists sensibly focus on the manner in which organisms reproduce.
It was an easily discoverible fact that many organisms reproduce through the combination of two distinct types of gametes. And this fact has huge, far-reaching implications on the fields of evolutionary theory, of ethology, of anatomy, and of medicine.
Definitions in science are used to reliably guide us to significant qualities (significant in the light of some paradigm); they aren't legislating reality, but trying to make sense of it. You can find ambiguity in almost all definitions of empirical objects if you try hard enough. So the existence of sterile individuals shouldn't be the occasion for doubting the entire paradigm and edifice of biology.
Biologists discussing evolution are talking about species, not about individuals.
And yes, it's true that almost all things people think of as absolute facts are not absolute facts. That's hardly a reason to decide 'hey, these things must be absolute facts!'
If someone says "whether this room is square is a mathematically-defined fact, and opinion has nothing to do with it", then either they are using 'square' in a technical sense that is of little use in reality, or they are just plain wrong. Likewise with 'sex', except that in this case I don't think there even is a technical sense.
And dear lord man, 'doubting the entire paradigm and edifice of biology'? Sorry, but that's so ridiculous a strawman the only viable response is 'bollocks'.
No, "the entire paradigm and edifice of biology" is NOT about saying that each individual is, as a matter of fact, strictly one sex or another sex. That is not only not central to biology, it's neither required by biology (which can and does perfectly well use generalisations) nor supported by biology (because it is not in fact true, and biology attempts to say things that are true, rather than making political and ideological statements).
The observation "among mammals, males usually have more motile gametes" is neither the way we in practice define men and women, nor a viable way for biologists to distinguish men from women, nor something that says anything at all about the ontological status of the male/female dichotomy, nor something that I challenge, nor something that is in any way relevant.
I'm disappointed you feel it necessary to stoop to constructing such extreme strawmen to defend your position.
I'd also note that it's quite reprehensible to assume that you can ignore huge swathes of people just because they don't reflect the situation of the majority - obviously for the majority of people, whether they are men or women is obvious to themselves and to others, but for a minority of people it is not, and for those people the imposition of a 'dualism-normative' (for want of a better word) set of definitions is not neutral, but can do great harm.
Biologists may indeed be trying to describe nature; but politicians and ideologists legislate (social) nature. It is disingenuous to assume we can just adopt the (purported) definitions of biologists into a political discussion as though this were neutral, and did not have practical consequences.
The terms that are most useful in discussing evolution are therefore irrelevent (or not inherently relevent) both to ontology and to sociology.
[In addition, while biology describes nature, it describes the nature of large groups and generalities. Biology does not set out to describe the variation of every individual, which is what is at question here]
Wastrel wrote: "I'm disappointed you feel it necessary to stoop to constructing such extreme strawmen to defend your position."
I do sincerely apologize for constructing a straw man. It was my mistake. I was under the impression that you were doubting whether female and male were valid categories at all. (Considering that we're all the product of the combination of a sperm and an egg cell, I'd regard such a position as absurd.)
If you are talking about individuals, then I do full heartedly agree with you. I think it's possible to hold that male and female are valid categories for individuals without holding that they are the only valid categories for individuals. (Just as we can regard the twelve notes of the chromatic scale as valid categories for sounds without regarding such a scheme as exhaustive.)
As I said, I'd like the discourse in biology to be separate to that in social issues. I will never be willing to let biologists dictate what categories social scientists use.
So, again, my apologies for straw manning your position. In fact, I think I'm just as impatient as you are with people saying things like "well, this person say they're such and such, but they're really a this." Perhaps such questions might be relevant in some contexts, like when a given individual is visiting their doctor. But it's silly when people become instant biologists in order to uphold some social prejudice. Ironically enough, in the United States, the people who are the keenest to prove male and female are exhaustive categories are also the keenest to deny Darwinian evolution.
For your enjoyment of impenetrable PoMo theoretical jargonese may I recommend Homi K. Bhabha? Butler is a worse stylist, but nowhere near as opaque.
That's incredible. What a fantastic article, and how wonderful to get some real scientific data behind the philosophising. Clearly biological sex is much more of a spectrum than I had realised.
Whew, that was a great article. Thanks!
Bookmarked _here_ (section H, natch) and the other place. Most interesting review, Warwick, plus a fine lot of comments inspired.
I always feel just a little uneasy about your dismissal of the opaque language syndrome. In at least some cases, I would think it's mostly a result of a book really being aimed at the tribal practitioners of the author's discipline, "outsiders" only invited to read at their own risk, so to speak. But having said that, I would certainly agree that if an author hopes to influence the "public" towards agreement with their theories, they have an obligation to write in the manner that would pass the Warwick-tests of ascertainable meaning to "highly educated, intelligent and well-read adults". No argument there.
Thanks Ted. I certainly think that clarity is the most basic requirement for a nonfiction writer. The reason I'm suspicious of it is that unclear writing allows you to conceal unclear thought or understanding, although I don't think that's the case here – she seems to have lots of good ideas, she's just a poor writer.
Being a poor writer certainly removes one from at least consideration as a source of reading material for the general public - and I would think that even academics would be hesitant, but if they can catch the meaning somehow, then perhaps not.
I thought that you were objecting to the mere use of words which have little or no meaning to the average person.
lovely review and very refreshing and balanced perspective. pleasure to read! :)
And here I spent all this time writing a super long review to find that you've taken more or less the same position with better explanation and more evidence. I concede good sir.
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Thank you. And you're right on all counts! Slashes a-go-go.Lacan and Freud are very important (though not accepted totally uncritically), as are a lot of continental feminists that I haven't read, like Irigaray and Kristeva. There is a lot of stuff here about the inherently gendered nature of language that I suspect makes a lot more sense in French than English, which doesn't have grammatical gender.
Brilliant review. You probably know Butler has received the Bad Writing Award. "Professor Butler’s first-prize sentence appears in “Further Reflections on the Conversations of Our Time,” an article in the scholarly journal Diacritics (1997):
The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."
Am I weird for getting that? Maybe it's cuz I've read so much worse. Compared to some queer film theory, that Butler quote seems like Parade Magazine.
Very interesting to read this today, Warwick, having just finished Orlando in which Woolf argued nearly one hundred years ago for the existence of different gender identities within the same person, and emphasised that the perception of the chosen gender by others influenced how the person was then treated which led in turn to the decision on which gender to finally adopt.Anyway, just to say that I found your writing very clear. You make a lot of sense and you make it well.
I didn't know that, Howl! That's a nice example, though like Greg I feel I've seen worse. You have to wonder if even she understood what she was trying to say.Fio, Orlando is a really interesting example, because like this book it seems to blur physiological sex as well as gender. It's been years since I read it, I should probably revisit. Thanks!
Excellent, Warwick."However, more recent waves of feminism have instead chosen to see sex as a matter of felt identity – one's ‘brain sex’, as some call it – which might eventually be found to have some neurological basis or might just be a matter of profound feeling. On this view, transwomen are not men who have cut off their genitals to ‘become’ women: they are women, in some essential sense, who happen to be lumbered at birth with a male physiology."
This is the position I defend, and I have a good deal of personal experience with transsexuals, both pre- and post-op. And biological essentialism is already questionable because of the existence of true hermaphrodites and those with somewhat less severe mixtures of biological male and female characteristics such as Klinefelter Syndrom.
Gregsamsa wrote: "Am I weird for getting that? Maybe it's cuz I've read so much worse. Compared to some queer film theory, that Butler quote seems like Parade Magazine."I have to agree that some of the worst prose I have ever read is to be found in texts of queer theory...
Steve wrote: "Excellent, Warwick."However, more recent waves of feminism have instead chosen to see sex as a matter of felt identity – one's ‘brain sex’, as some call it – which might eventually be found to ha..."
I agree with all the above - excellent review Warwick - and the work I have done with transpeople places me firmly in Steve's camp re: brain sex etc.
As to her prose...well...I was talking to my wife about this the other day - she did her PHD on gender/sexuality issues, and this sort of language was all over it - the issue is that there are a vast number of terms which have very specific meanings and link back to very specific items of theory, so that it is simply impossible to write without filling your sentences up with it all and endlessly adding clauses and sub-clauses which seek to show you are very aware of all the possible arguments etc etc
It is simply impossible to use Lacan, Heidegger (and now Butler) etc without bringing in all that lingo....In a sense it is a vicious circle.
We use words like "heteronormative" so much in my household that I forget people will give me funny looks when I use them in ordinary conversation...
Thanks both. That is the position I prefer, too, if only because it seems to come with more respect built in. Nevertheless – and with the proviso that I have much less personal experience than you two do – the debate seems not clear cut to me, and I learn a lot every time I see it discussed. Which is partly why I dislike the attempts to shut it down (so typical of modern discussions on anything to do with identity politics)…
"As to her prose...well...I was talking to my wife about this the other day - she did her PHD on gender/sexuality issues, and this sort of language was all over it - the issue is that there are a vast number of terms which have very specific meanings and link back to very specific items of theory, so that it is simply impossible to write without filling your sentences up with it all and endlessly adding clauses and sub-clauses which seek to show you are very aware of all the possible arguments etc etc "I understand your point here, Jonathan, but it is possible within the constraints imposed by technical terminology and career-normative considerations to write more clearly. I assure you that there are mathematics and physics texts (where technical terminology and professional expectations play a huge role) that are much better written than others. The same is true of philosophical texts. To write clearly is not a trivial or easy matter, and I wish it were more explicitly recognized and rewarded in professional circles.
Steve wrote: ""As to her prose...well...I was talking to my wife about this the other day - she did her PHD on gender/sexuality issues, and this sort of language was all over it - the issue is that there are a v..."You are entirely correct, apologies if I implied otherwise with my ramblings. It is, as the old saying goes, much harder to make complex things simple than the other way round...And people do have a tendency to assume that incomprehensible prose is indicative of genius...
What a cool thread this is becoming.I would love it if you thoughtful people would respond to a question that's been nagging me on this very issue.
While the trappings of gender (hair length and style, pink/blue, dresses/suits, etc.) are so clearly socially constructed, how is the body then the source of the need to adopt the trappings of the gender opposite to one's biological sex? If we were to evolve societally such that these gender signs no longer existed, what would it mean to be trans-? Would it be "merely" biological, in the most reductive clinical sense?
OK sorry that was 3 questions.
It does not surprise me one bit that so many of these writers of theory are sceptical about language's communicative ability, and question whether language can really communicate anything meaningful at all. If I wrote as poorly as they do, I'd have similar concerns.heh, heh :)
Warwick: have to take issue with you on one point. Sex is not a biological fact, but a matter of social convention. There are, of course, a variety of biological facts that that convention is founded on: hairiness, curvyness, shape of genitals (not a binary choice in practice!), testes vs ovaries (or both, or ovotestes!), testosterone levels, oestrogen levels, XX vs XY chromosomes (vs XXY, X, etc), presence or absence of the particular 'sex-encoding' gene on the Y chromosome, and so on. But which facts are relevant is determined by society - sexual orientation and certain behavioural patterns, for instance, used to be considered part of how sex was defined, and so you had the concept of 'sexual inversion' (gay men and househusbands were women in pseudo-male bodies and vice versa for lesbians and spinster businesswomen) before "orientation" and "gender" were invented as perpendicular categories. And even given the above array of biological facts, we still have problems, because in practice any combination of those facts can occur with any other combination. Therefore neither any one fact nor any one combination of facts actually amounts to being 'male' or 'female'. In confusing cases, it largely comes down to what the individual wants to claim to be (and that has a lot to do with what their parents and doctors told them they were). In some cases, it's not even necessarily true that people have only one sex - some people might be female, say, for all ordinary purposes (and be curvy and have a vagina) and yet be considered a male for the purposes of sporting regulations (who have long wrestled with sex, but who I think now mostly define it purely through testosterone levels (which means, interestingly, that there is no difference between a 'woman' who is doping in certain ways and a 'man')).And that's all just bearing in mind natural human variation, before we even start to consider people who intentionally 'change' their 'sex'.
So I think that 'sex' is 'a biological fact' in the same sense that tasting sour or being green are physical facts - the core data is factual and objective, but the classification is entirely cultural, and will vary from culture to culture.
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The idea of 'brain sex', however, also has a problem, which is that there's little or no evidence that it is in any way true that there is any discernable difference between male and female brains. [Coincidentally, another goodreads friend has just read a book on this topic that thoroughly debunks this notion. One fact I particularly liked: even one of the leading theorists who believes in male and female brains admits that not all women have female brains. Specifically, only 40% of women have female brains. It doesn't take a philosophy student to observe that that renders the label 'female brain' somewhat tendentious...!]
I think transsexuals are a big problem for 'progressive' views for two reasons. First, and more specifically, because they do undermine the edifice of 'gender' as a perpendicular category from 'sex'. If the 'brain sex' idea is correct, then many of the core elements of gender are in fact not social at all, but physical (i.e. gender is only just sex after all). On the other hand, if 'brain sex' does not exist, then transsexuals are indeed reinforcing negative gender stereotypes.
The second, deeper problem, though, is the problem of false consciousness in practice. There are two pretty fundamental principles of certain brands of progressivism:
a) commonly held beliefs about the way the world is are often the result of social pressures and exploitation - even those beliefs held by the exploited may exist only to further that exploitation;
b) everyone has a right to determine their own identity, and must be spoken of respectfully and without being patronising.
But these principles, while each individually appealling, are contradictory!
And transsexuals are a glaring example of this. Because on the one hand, those who believe in purely social gender roles must patronising pity transexuals as labouring under (and perpetuating) false consciousness. But on the other hand, they can't very well back down from that position purely because it's offensive to transsexuals, because doing so would mean denying that false consciousness could exist (if false consciousness can exist then 'the people I'm describing refute my description and find it offensive' is only to be expected, not a counterargument at all).
And i think a lot of people haven't really come to terms with not being able to have it both ways.
Cynically, one might suggest that this is because a lot of feminist, socialist, anticolonial and otherwise socially progressive, social-democratic theory was written by people in positions of power. It was OK to talk about those foolish proletarians, deluded housewives, hoodwinked natives, confused gays and misled transsexuals, defending them while patronising them, because none of those people were part of the academic discourse. They applauded your efforts to support them while not really knowing what you were saying behind their backs about them. But now there's a lot more publicity. People know what academics say, and academics have to confront what people say more often too. In a way, it's the core problem of studying people: it's very hard, perhaps impossible, to treat people as fully-independent individuals AND to treat them as statistical or conceptual objects of study at the same time...
Anyway, if it's not obvious, and despite reservations, I'm on the false consciousness side with transsexuals. I absolutely don't doubt the strength of their feelings - but I also know that other people believe equally strongly that they are really dragons (/wolves/werewolves/vampires/fairies/etc) trapped in the 'wrong' body (or indeed just a bodybuilder or ultrathin supermodel trapped in the body of an ordinary teenager), and feeling something strongly doesn't make it true. It makes it meaningful - but the meaning isn't always what is apparent. I don't see a great evidential or conceptual difference that leads us to regard sexual dysmorphia (but only when it conforms to existing sex/gender roles, not when it's the belief that one is a third sex or hermaphrodite!) as one thing and all the other dysmorphias as something completely different.
I completely support people who want to live as the other sex, with or without surgery - but that doesn't mean I have to accept their philosophical theories as well.
And, to be fair, some of the transsexuals I've known in person (albeit online) have actually been much less dogmatic than their defenders about the theory. They mostly haven't felt a need to stick specifically to the tendentious 'I'm really a woman' rather than the more neutral 'I'd be more comfortable as a woman' or 'I'd like to be a woman' or 'I'd like to be recognised as a woman', or 'I feel womanhood is more appropriate for me' or 'I identify as a woman' or any of the other things that don't make ontological claims. [Then again, I have known one transsexual who was very firm on the ontological nature of her identity; and I've hardly known enough in total to know how representative those I've known have been]
Anyway, I'm off on a tangent now I guess, or at least a ramble.
[Real tangent: I wonder whether the rise of a homosexual identity has lead to the rise in transsexual identities. Many ways in which men could act 'like women' have been subsumed into the popular image of the gay man, which may make those behaviours less available for men who do not consider themselves gay (or who at least don't consider themselves 'gay men', which is an identity that even many men who are attracted to men seem to be ambivalent about, let alone men who aren't attracted to men). Possibly going the whole way and identifying as a woman is made a more attractive option when it licenses behaviours that would otherwise lead to labelling as a gay man? But I'm musing here, and have no feelings nor evidence one way or the other]
Oh, less controversially hopefully, I've got to take issue with something Warwick says Butler said. It may have been on Warwick's reviews that I've pointed this out before, but: language is not a male creation. Not only is language a joint creation between men and women, but women actually have much more power than men over language. Young men are the primary innovators linguistically, but it is young-to-middle-age women (mothers and mothers-in-law) who are the linguistic gatekeepers of innovation: the changes that succeed are the ones that are approved of and adopted by women. [This is certainly related to women being the usual primary language-tutors for children. It may also be due to the role of language use as a form of sexual display among young men to (indirectly) impress girls. Language that the girls don't like is therefore selected against.]
gender is only just sex after allWell this is exactly the suggestion that sometimes seems to lie at the far end of Butler's arguments, and those of many others that I've read on the subject, but which everyone seems too nervous to spell out. I think what you say about the arguments having it both ways is quite right, that's what makes the debate so charged and so interesting to watch.
My question to you is, if "feeling something strongly doesn't make it true", then what *does* make it true, given the points you raise in your first paragraph?
Wastrel wrote: "My goodness what a lot of straw men you knocked down in that post Wastrel!
I wish I had the time to really debate it all with you, as have great respect for the intelligence you repeatedly demonstrate on this site, but sadly I am snowed under with work and typing this as a brief break.
Nevertheless, my disagreement could probably be summed up by the fact that you are dealing in such massive generalities about the experiences of trans people and about current theories regarding gender/sex/sexuality etc.
It is, for example, entirely possible to be a trans woman who performs her gender in a completely queer fashion - to give a silly example, there are butch trans women who love other women.
i would suggest you read Stone Butch Blues, if you have not already, as it gives a really great idea of some of the nuances within the particular community.
One can say "I am really a woman" and mean, by that term, something entirely non-heteronormative.
This means that your contradiction simply does not hold up. Not least because, by definition really, being a trans woman puts you at odds with the oppressive patriarchal norm.
To quote Feinburg - ""Are you a guy or a girl?" I've heard the question all my life. The answer is not so simple, since there are no pronouns in the English language as complex as I am, and I do not want to simplify myself in order to neatly fit one or the other. "
There are also very few 5 year olds who feel themselves to be dragons trapped in a human body to the extent that it makes them dangerously unhappy. There are, however, many such children who feel that way about their designated gender, long before society has set out clearly what that gender is. It is pretty offensive to imply an equality between a young teen dealing with gender dysphoria and someone who thinks they are a wolf (particularly with the horrific levels of suicide prevalent amongst such people).
I also disagree with what you say about language - men remained (though perhaps less so today) the gatekeepers of language and the only ones with the power to designate what is"correct" - Keeping with your example (which is problematic but I dont have time to go into it) a mother will encourage her child to use "correct" language in order to give it the best chance in life to succeed - the language it needs to use it that of authority and of power. It is not women who historically selected what this was, but men.
Males of our species also use language as a means of establishing status with other males. It is not simply a sexual display.
well Wastrel, the meanings that words have in political debate and legal discourse and medical discussion have until quite recently all been calibrated by men. Often that doesn't really matter but sometimes it matters a lot. Now I am more sceptical than most people about the extent to which this affects modern language use, but I don't think the historical principle is seriously doubted. And while young women do seem to be trend-setters when it comes to slang vocab and pronunciation changes, I've not yet seen a study that suggests language that women dislike is "selected against". At the least I think you probably put it too strongly.
Jonathan wrote: "Wastrel wrote: "My goodness what a lot of straw men you knocked down in that post Wastrel!
I wish I had the time to really debate it all with you, as have great respect for the intelligence you..."
With respect, I can't argue against you because I don't understand what you're arguing against, or its relation to me. What is 'my contradiction', and what does it have to do with the existence of lesbian transsexuals (something I would obviously never deny)?
On language: ideology aside, the primacy of female control of language change has been well demonstrated crosslinguistically and crossculturally through statistical, longitudinal studies. In general language that is, of course - warwick is quite right to point out that the jargons of traditionally male-dominated occupations, like law and medicine, will indeed historically have been more shaped by women.
Warwick: "then what does make it true?" - !!! Isn't the question "so, what is truth, really?" a bit of a heavy one to get into? It also assumes that truth is a reducible concept at all - I think there's an appeal to a Davidsonian deflationary account of truth, personally.
Short version: I'm not sure right now what 'truth' is. Or even if truth is always one thing. I think it's probably reasonable to think that if something is a fact, that probably must make it true, but whether there might be things that aren't facts yet are true nonetheless is a more difficult question. And then what is a fact (beyond 'something that's true')? Maybe we could pragmatically say something like "a society that is aware of a fact is, ceteris paribus, possessed of greater capabilities for succesful intentional action than one that is not", but that doesn't adequately weed out sociopolitical constraints from physical ones. The aphorist in me would probably like to say something like "a fact is a limit that eliminates limits" - the idea being that by limiting our language and behaviour in a way prescribed by the fact (people can't fly - so we limit ourselves by not trying to fly, and not telling people we can fly) we end up giving ourselves more freedom overall (by not falling to our deaths, we can do other things with our lives). But whether that's true, I don't know, and if it is I can't demonstrate it at the moment.
The contradiction is that of your a) and b) - the "womanhood" you are being or performing as a trans woman is incredibly varied and also, by definition, not the societal norm. Even those trans women who adopt the traditional gender stereotypes (pink dresses etc) are always already queering this performance. And what about trans men and trans people who consider themselves a "third gender" etc?
My point is simply that the second wave feminist arguments against trans women, which mirror some of your points, only even remotely hold water if you deal in massive, and inaccurate, generalities.
Jonathan wrote: "The contradiction is that of your a) and b) - the "womanhood" you are being or performing as a trans woman is incredibly varied and also, by definition, not the societal norm. Even those trans wome..."OK, I get that I said there was a contradiction between two ideological statements. [Although if i'd been being more moderate, I should probably have said that there was 'an irreconcilable tension' between them, or something like that, rather than flat-out 'contradiction']
But I don't see what that has to do with the rest of what you say. "the "womanhood" you are being or performing as a trans woman is incredibly varied and also, by definition, not the societal norm. Even those trans women who adopt the traditional gender stereotypes (pink dresses etc) are always already queering this performance. - I don't tend to use phrases like 'queering their performance', but that aside I agree with all that. Where did I say otherwise?
And what about trans men and trans people who consider themselves a "third gender" etc?
Well... what about them?
The only thing I said that was related to that was to point out that dysmorphias not associated with conventional gender roles (including nonconventional gender roles, which obviously will vary with culture) aren't typically treated the same way as dysmorphias involving switching between the two gender/sex roles offered.
And I guess with an open-ending 'what about' question, I'd also say that I'm not sure most third genders can really be considered 'trans', both because they inherently are open to biologically 'male' and 'female' people (I'm not aware of any cultures with genders solely for 'intersex' people that can't also be shared with others) and because 'trans' specifically means crossing over, rather than taking a detour. I think the issues with traditional third gender options, and the issues with self-created gender identities, are probably quite different in some ways from the issues around a person whose public identity crosses from one category to another in a way that is not traditionally sanctioned by that culture the way that third genders have been.
But that's all just pedantry and nuance, and I'm not sure what it has to do with anything else you or I have said.
I'm particularly puzzled by why you raise 'trans men' as an issue for me, since I didn't limit what I was saying to women in the first place. [Except that parenthetical rumination at the end about the relationship between gay identity and transsexual identity, which had nothing to do with anything else and which I said I had no real opinion on. Obviously, if that rumination were accurate, the converse could equally be true about lesbians and transsexual men - although my understanding was that transsexual women were far more common today? Do correct me on that if it's not true, though it's not relevent to anything else I said, I don't think]
incidentally, on your earlier comments on dysmorphias: whether something is offensive or not does not determine whether or not it is true. In any case, I think the converse is also very offense to people suffering from other dysmorphias, ranging from the 'ordinary' (body image issues) to the 'bizarre' (dragons, anthros, otherkin etc). Who ALSO, incidentally, suffer from very high suicide rates, and I don't know whether it's been known to occur as young as 5 specifically but it does often begin in early puberty, for what it's worth. [For what it's worth, I'm afraid i have a bit of a kneejerk reaction to soi dissant progressives who use "urgh, how offensive, don't you DARE compare us to those weirdos, we're totally different and completely normal really, not like them" as an argument. I'd much rather we develop ways of respecting everybody and their differences, and that's part of why i'm skeptical of mores (like 'we must accept the ontological theories held by activists from this minority because otherwise it's offensive') that cannot be practically applied to everybody (because no amount of activism will persuade people to accept the theories of draconics or anthros).]
As for '5 years old, before they're really aware of gender roles' - as uncle to a 5-year-old girl, boy is that naive! My niece and her friends have very firm ideas about what boys and girls should wear, what colours they should like, what toys they should like, who they should congregate with (my niece is a nice girl so is friendly with one or two boys, but her friends apparently insist on girls-only) and so on. And that's despite having parents who are strongly against gender roles. Seriously, we get to them young. And in many respects younger and more forcefully than our generation, I think.
Wow, excellent review. I'm glad to see this for many reasons:A. It's been in my Amazon cart for a few days as I debated if I wanted to order it.
B. This review summarizes the novel with great depth and insight while pointing out its opacity and I feel I no longer should order it.
C. Makes me realize I should just read in-depth all the thinkers she discusses before ever trying to read this.
Wonderfully argued, and now I need to look up this Vancouver incident. Real shame about the bad writing too.
Wastrel wrote: "But which facts are relevant is determined by society"Surely one of the distinguishing differences (in mammalian species) is that females bear offspring, and males beget offspring. In the case of human societies, I doubt that one has ever existed that that did not hold this distinction to be relevant. Indeed for even an individual to claim it was not relevant (much less an entire culture) is difficult for me to envision.
In cultures which at one time did not comprehend the true nature of the male role in producing offspring, some rather strange questions can arise I suppose. But to me, such a lack of understanding of the "basic facts" makes such a society simply a special case; a special case that might be useful for studying some questions, but not for others.
s.penkevich wrote: "Wow, excellent review. I'm glad to see this for many reasons:A. It's been in my Amazon cart for a few days as I debated if I wanted to order it.
B. This review summarizes the novel with great dept..."
Thanks Spenk. Of course some people have more patience for it than I do. There's a great, detailed review on here from LitBug: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Ted wrote: "Wastrel wrote: "But which facts are relevant is determined by society"Surely one of the distinguishing differences (in mammalian species) is that females bear offspring, and males beget offspring..."
That's one way of defining 'male' and 'female', sure. But it's not the way we actually use. Because many women do not bear children, and many men do not beget children (though historically this has been less salient, as you can never know whether someone has begotten children or not, until you have modern paternity testing).
Some women cannot bear children because they are barren. This may be due to age, illness, some non-obvious condition, or some really obvious condition like not having a womb, or a vagina.
Other women do not bear children because they intentionally abstain from reproductive sex, or because someone forces them to abstain. And other women simply have not yet born children and it is not clear yet whether they will, or why not.
If 'woman' simply meant 'bears children', then barren women would not be women. And indeed in some cultures this is the case - among the Nuer, for instance, barren women are traditionally regarded as men, and can if they choose marry women and beget children with them. [Inheritence from the male is considered spiritual rather than seminal - dead men are also able to marry and beget children; this isn't that uncommon - marriage is primarily a way of allocating children to fathers, and cultures vary in how much they care about matching those allocations to historical transfers of semen]
Strictly speaking, if woman = bears children, women who have not yet born children would not be women either. I'm not aware of societies that do this, though there are many that view virgins as non-women, and many that view non-virgin non-mothers as only semi-women.
But in our society, a woman is a woman regardless of whether she has, will, or even ever possibly can bear children. So this is not really the 'fact' that the male/female distinction is tracking.
Without reading earlier comments...Bravo. Absolutely excellent piece.
I've always been a little suspicious of those who praise Butler's language, and later realised that everyone I'd heard doing so had pretty much only worked or studied in literary academia or closely related fields. It isn't communication so much as an ingroup jargon.
Butler was one of those who contributed to current thinking on separation of 'sex' and 'gender' as concepts, so, writing at a time when this was still developing, it's she isn't always clear on the distinction in the way we would be now.
shared experiences. Biologically female experiences
It can be surprisingly isolating to experience these in a non standard way; if one is the only girl in a class at school, or among the women among groups at successive workplaces, who experiences something atypically (whether with more *or* less difficulty than the average) it can, for some of us at least, be more comfortable to be around those who don't have the experience as a norm in the first place. I think there's a herd mentality around discussion of these experiences; it reminds me of how men who dislike sports say they are detached from day to day conversations on this common subject and by extension the mainstream group.
The tension around the biological is very interesting. Last year I read some discussion threads among the notorious TERFs and many of them, new to the concept of psycholgical gender and often aged 45+, said they had never felt like they identified with a particular 'inner' gender in that sense whilst pragmatically accepting they had a female body. And that's evidently why many of them came to feel that 'gender' should be abolished. (This is something I can identify with more than any song about how someone 'feels like a woman' - I have no idea what that means as an inner feeling, although I might sometimes be very pleased by the fit of an outfit that is clearly women's clothing, or similar performative or transient aspects.) However, the TERFs, as ironically with an awful lot of people in the identity politics world, weren't able to consider their views as perhaps a product of their own experiences, just as much as they consider any establishment stance as a product of a particular different experience.
Younger people, especially those in their twenties, who feel about their own identity as these TERFs do about theirs often consider themselves queer to one extent or another. (Whilst our generation is transitional.)
And that's an evolution from Butler's ideas. Her writing is awful but she has shaped a lot of current thinking in this area. As with commentary on how the people who would once have been butch lesbians if they'd been of an older generation are now far more frequently identifying as transmen, there is change over time - the pendulum currently swings (fnar) towards biological change - essentialism of a sort too, emphasising that the body is what defines one - and some speculate that too many youngsters are jumping into hormone and surgery programmes too soon. Though there now seems to be a little more subcultural acceptance for those who want to be recognised as a different gender without hacking (in either sense) their bodies. Partly this must be because law and medicine, in some quarters, is *starting* to catch up with the philosophy, and that will mean some of the activist side doesn't need to be quite so radical. However these professions are still to one extent or another gatekeepers to many trans*people's self definition and that's likely to provoke anger. In terms of legal definitions especially, it seems like mere rigidity for its own sake: society is hardly going to collapse if people could choose a wider range of genders on any form the way they can on Facebook. With medicine there's an inevitable question of cost of reassignment procedures and the finite expertise available to perform them, so it would be impossible for those to be completely democratic, although some things are simply paternalism (eg gender-specific screening reminders which individuals should be able to opt out of on the understanding that the matter is now their responsibility) and dinosaurism.
Thanks for that comment, antonomasia, which I agree with and find interesting.You raise a particular point as well, that I don't think has really been considered here yet: the role of the law and of doctors in reinforcing binary conceptions of sex. One reason why people think of sex in such binary terms is that the law in the west has always assumed that sex IS binary, and as soon as doctors were able to hack flesh safely to conform to that they took up the challenge eagerly: anyone born less than 'perfectly' male or female is liable to be mutilated to conform to one or other body-standard. Studies have shown that doctors will often do this without even consulting the parents or telling them what they've done; and when they do consult, they often present it to parents as the only option, telling parents they're being cruel by not conforming their children. [In reality, as I understand it, while intersex conditions can of course be a source of social and psychological issues, it seems that surgical intervention to assign sex can actually lead to more and more serious issues itself... and that's not considering the loss of sexual function and/or pleasure that often results from genital mutilation]. The situation is improving, with more awareness of the non-intervention perspective, in large part due to activism by intersex adults, but we've still got a long way to go.
And with sex reassignment, the same thing occurs - as I understand it, the law insists on transition from one sex to the other acceptable sex, at least as a direction, even if individuals have some freedom over the degree and the speed. A woman can't say "I'd like a penis but I'll leave everything else the same, please", for example - it's not just unfunded, it's illegal. So although the rhetoric is often about the body, the legal situation is about the sex - the sex can be changed, but the body can only be changed in so far as it represents a change in the sex. This is distinct from people actually having power over their own bodies, to make their bodies be whatever they want them to be.
A really free society would allow people to choose their genders and their bodies, independently of one another, and from more than a list of two acceptable options.
[Of course, the issue of who should pay and how they should pay is a whole different issue]
As always 'Masia you have so many thoughtful things to say that I don't know if I can pick up on them all…Younger people, especially those in their twenties, who feel about their own identity as these TERFs do about theirs often consider themselves queer to one extent or another. (Whilst our generation is transitional.) – this is a fascinating idea. The implications are still percolating through my brain but it strikes me as very revealing.
I find a lot of what the so-called TERFs say to be unnecessarily abrasive and disrespectful, but at the same time I feel a little sorry that so many people that were so influential are now being dismissed out of hand for opinions that seem to me not indefensible and that contribute to a debate which is still, in some important ways, live.
I don't know. I suppose ultimately there is a part of me that feels instinctively (but not just instinctively) that there is some facticity beyond what is socially constructed to the idea that humans, like other mammals, are gonochoristic. People who articulate that point of view are bound to appeal to my fondness for common sense, even though I realise that there are important ways in which it doesn't work in practice.
Very interesting comments here.To contribute my meager thoughts, I'm not sure what is gained by wringing our hands about what biological "sex" is: that seems to be the affair of specialists. I fear many people commit the infamous "appeal to nature" in these regards. Even if something is "natural," that doesn't mean we have to embrace it. Roaming about landscapes and hunting wild animals may be the "natural state" for humans, but that doesn't make it right or good.
To pick a related issue, there's much talk (in my country, at least) of whether homosexuals can "chose" to be gay or not. But I see that question as besides the point. Whether homosexuality is innate or not, people should have the freedom to date whomever they wish. If tomorrow we discovered a "gay" gene, and I didn't have it, would it be wrong for me to date someone of my own sex? Of course not: that's my affair. And if we discovered clear indications of sex in brains, would it be wrong for someone with a "male" brain to transition to female? Again, no: that's their affair. So whatever "sex" may be biologically, people should be free to adopt whatever identity they wish: they're not harming anybody.
People's bodies vary widely. Maybe much of this variation can be accounted for with some dichotomous sexual differences; but much of it obviously cannot. It's our choice what to do with our own bodies, regardless of what is "natural."
Maybe I'm just coming from somebody who lives in NYC, but you see so many people of so many descriptions, that you very soon realize that it doesn't matter. You're all just people stuffed into a subway car. What matters is not what they're wearing or how they identify, but whether they hold the door for you. That, to me, is the real difference; and it's our job to be people who hold open the door.
(Well, that's a bit dangerous in the subway...)
Couldn't agree more. However it does seem to matter to some people, and I'm wary of dismissing their opinions completely.
Nice review Warwick. As you say, "debate can be astonishingly acrimonious"... ^^
Wastrel wrote: "Ted wrote: "Wastrel wrote: "But which facts are relevant is determined by society"Surely one of the distinguishing differences (in mammalian species) is that females bear offspring, and males beg..."
Your reply says a lot that is quite obvious, of course there's no disagreement about that. However, who exactly are you referring to when you say it's not the way "we" actually use? Scientifically, the different chromosomes in men and women define man/woman unambiguously, even though in some very few cases based on only that distinction, there could be question about a certain individual. Not much hangs on it as far as I'm concerned. The "social" definition of a man/woman difference, which is important in many ways today, and for many people, is not a question that I personalty find intriguing. It's answer does not affect me or people I know, so I'm content for others to work it out and argue about it if need be.
For what it's worth, if I remember my biology classes, the most reliable way to differentiate male and female is by looking at the size of the gametes. In sexually dimorphic species, males have smaller and more mobile gametes (sperm, in our case), while females have larger and less mobile gametes (eggs, in our case). This isn't restricted to mammals, or even animals, of course; there are male and female flowers. (There's a great section in The Selfish Gene where Dawkins explains how sexual dimorphism can originate from differential selection of small differences in gamete size.)Anyways, as I tried to say above, how to scientifically define male and female seems like an irrelevant biological question if we're talking about toleration.
Lotz wrote: "For what it's worth, if I remember my biology classes, the most reliable way to differentiate male and female is by looking at the size of the gametes. In sexually dimorphic species, males have sma..."No disagreement to your conclusion, Lotz.
Ted wrote: "Wastrel wrote: "Ted wrote: "Wastrel wrote: "But which facts are relevant is determined by society"Surely one of the distinguishing differences (in mammalian species) is that females bear offsprin..."
Chromosomes do not differentiate unambiguously - if 'there can be a question in some cases' there is by definition ambiguity!
If someone is XY but SRY-negative, or XX but SRY-positive, are they "scientifically" male or female?
Looking at sperm vs eggs is no help, as many people produce neither sperm nor eggs, and some produce both.
[Of course this is all irrelevent to the question of whether people should be tolerant. But I'm sure we can all agree on the answer to that question, so it's not very interesting. The question of whether 'sex' is 'scientifically' 'defined' and a 'biological' 'fact' is relevent to discussions of human ontology, and may also be relevant to conclusions people draw about psychology.]
I'm not sure what empirical definition could possibly reach the standards you seem to demand. Only a priori definitions in logic and mathematics never run into problematic cases. For example, in mathematics, the word "square" is quite unambiguous. But the word is not totally unambiguous when talking about shapes we see in daily life.I may see a shape and call it "square," and you may think it's a bit too lopsided to call a square. Should we abandon calling shapes square unless they are exactly square, mathematically defined? But every square we see won't be exactly square (as mathematically defined), if measured precisely enough. So should we abandon the word "square" in daily life?
Biologists concentrate on the size of gametes because it has strong implications for the way organisms will go about reproducing. And because the current paradigm in biology is now Darwinian evolution—through which all adaptation and variation is explained by the success or failure of an organism to pass down its genes—biologists sensibly focus on the manner in which organisms reproduce.
It was an easily discoverible fact that many organisms reproduce through the combination of two distinct types of gametes. And this fact has huge, far-reaching implications on the fields of evolutionary theory, of ethology, of anatomy, and of medicine.
Definitions in science are used to reliably guide us to significant qualities (significant in the light of some paradigm); they aren't legislating reality, but trying to make sense of it. You can find ambiguity in almost all definitions of empirical objects if you try hard enough. So the existence of sterile individuals shouldn't be the occasion for doubting the entire paradigm and edifice of biology.
Biologists discussing evolution are talking about species, not about individuals. And yes, it's true that almost all things people think of as absolute facts are not absolute facts. That's hardly a reason to decide 'hey, these things must be absolute facts!'
If someone says "whether this room is square is a mathematically-defined fact, and opinion has nothing to do with it", then either they are using 'square' in a technical sense that is of little use in reality, or they are just plain wrong. Likewise with 'sex', except that in this case I don't think there even is a technical sense.
And dear lord man, 'doubting the entire paradigm and edifice of biology'? Sorry, but that's so ridiculous a strawman the only viable response is 'bollocks'.
No, "the entire paradigm and edifice of biology" is NOT about saying that each individual is, as a matter of fact, strictly one sex or another sex. That is not only not central to biology, it's neither required by biology (which can and does perfectly well use generalisations) nor supported by biology (because it is not in fact true, and biology attempts to say things that are true, rather than making political and ideological statements).
The observation "among mammals, males usually have more motile gametes" is neither the way we in practice define men and women, nor a viable way for biologists to distinguish men from women, nor something that says anything at all about the ontological status of the male/female dichotomy, nor something that I challenge, nor something that is in any way relevant.
I'm disappointed you feel it necessary to stoop to constructing such extreme strawmen to defend your position.
I'd also note that it's quite reprehensible to assume that you can ignore huge swathes of people just because they don't reflect the situation of the majority - obviously for the majority of people, whether they are men or women is obvious to themselves and to others, but for a minority of people it is not, and for those people the imposition of a 'dualism-normative' (for want of a better word) set of definitions is not neutral, but can do great harm.
Biologists may indeed be trying to describe nature; but politicians and ideologists legislate (social) nature. It is disingenuous to assume we can just adopt the (purported) definitions of biologists into a political discussion as though this were neutral, and did not have practical consequences.
The terms that are most useful in discussing evolution are therefore irrelevent (or not inherently relevent) both to ontology and to sociology.
[In addition, while biology describes nature, it describes the nature of large groups and generalities. Biology does not set out to describe the variation of every individual, which is what is at question here]
Wastrel wrote: "I'm disappointed you feel it necessary to stoop to constructing such extreme strawmen to defend your position."I do sincerely apologize for constructing a straw man. It was my mistake. I was under the impression that you were doubting whether female and male were valid categories at all. (Considering that we're all the product of the combination of a sperm and an egg cell, I'd regard such a position as absurd.)
If you are talking about individuals, then I do full heartedly agree with you. I think it's possible to hold that male and female are valid categories for individuals without holding that they are the only valid categories for individuals. (Just as we can regard the twelve notes of the chromatic scale as valid categories for sounds without regarding such a scheme as exhaustive.)
As I said, I'd like the discourse in biology to be separate to that in social issues. I will never be willing to let biologists dictate what categories social scientists use.
So, again, my apologies for straw manning your position. In fact, I think I'm just as impatient as you are with people saying things like "well, this person say they're such and such, but they're really a this." Perhaps such questions might be relevant in some contexts, like when a given individual is visiting their doctor. But it's silly when people become instant biologists in order to uphold some social prejudice. Ironically enough, in the United States, the people who are the keenest to prove male and female are exhaustive categories are also the keenest to deny Darwinian evolution.
For your enjoyment of impenetrable PoMo theoretical jargonese may I recommend Homi K. Bhabha? Butler is a worse stylist, but nowhere near as opaque.
That's incredible. What a fantastic article, and how wonderful to get some real scientific data behind the philosophising. Clearly biological sex is much more of a spectrum than I had realised.
Whew, that was a great article. Thanks!
Bookmarked _here_ (section H, natch) and the other place. Most interesting review, Warwick, plus a fine lot of comments inspired.I always feel just a little uneasy about your dismissal of the opaque language syndrome. In at least some cases, I would think it's mostly a result of a book really being aimed at the tribal practitioners of the author's discipline, "outsiders" only invited to read at their own risk, so to speak. But having said that, I would certainly agree that if an author hopes to influence the "public" towards agreement with their theories, they have an obligation to write in the manner that would pass the Warwick-tests of ascertainable meaning to "highly educated, intelligent and well-read adults". No argument there.
Thanks Ted. I certainly think that clarity is the most basic requirement for a nonfiction writer. The reason I'm suspicious of it is that unclear writing allows you to conceal unclear thought or understanding, although I don't think that's the case here – she seems to have lots of good ideas, she's just a poor writer.
Being a poor writer certainly removes one from at least consideration as a source of reading material for the general public - and I would think that even academics would be hesitant, but if they can catch the meaning somehow, then perhaps not.I thought that you were objecting to the mere use of words which have little or no meaning to the average person.
lovely review and very refreshing and balanced perspective. pleasure to read! :)
And here I spent all this time writing a super long review to find that you've taken more or less the same position with better explanation and more evidence. I concede good sir.
"she is the masculine sex encore (and en corps)."
Awww, aren't those 90's PoMo puns cute? Did it also have those "clever" slashes and parentheticals, like trans/formation or psycho(anal)ytic?