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Sex versus Gender – Challenges Posed (?)
The recent controversy on Indian athlete, Pinki Pramanik had once again raised the long
held debate of sex versus gender. Who and how is a person’s sex and gender determined?
Can sex be attributed to biology and gender to culture? Or does one follow Judith Butler
and say that sex is as much a construct as gender?
The sex-gender debate has long been the focus of debate within feminist philosophy and
the social sciences. This article will examine the sex-gender debate, its changing
conceptions and how feminists, anthropologists and ethnographers have challenged ‘sex’
as a category.
“Boys don’t cry” and “Girls don’t fight”
“In Western discourse, it is not just that we need to have a body in order to have a sex,
but that we need a sex so as to have a body” (Moore, 1994). Up until recently, gender
was considered to be as static and unvarying as sex. It had been assumed that gender is
basically social differences or social constructions based on a person’s sex. According to
the discourses in the Western society, “men are men and women are women – a division
that is perceived to be natural and rooted in biology” (Pp. 128, West and Zimmerman,
1987). Hence, according to such a theory it seemed correct to assume that boys don’t cry
or boys are not gentle because of the fact that they are born as boys and girls don’t
engage in fights and violence because of the fact that they are born as girls. Butler (1990)
writes that the presumption that there is a binary gender system ultimately retains the
belief of a binary sex system and the relation of gender and sex ‘whereby gender mirrors
sex or is otherwise restricted by it’.
Thus until the 1960s and 70s two major assumptions were being held in the Western
discourses: firstly, that one’s ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’, rather one’s gender is the
‘natural’ and automatic result of biological sex differentiation (Stanley, 1984) and
secondly, that the sex division, and consequently gender division is binary. Moreover,
Western discourses also obscure the cross-cultural analysis of sex, gender and sexual
difference (Moore, 1994).
The “Anthropological” Beginning
The field of anthropology has played a vital role in an attempt to provide a social and not
a biological account of the position that women have in society and what actually are the
origins of the gender differences. The first argument put forth is the ‘nature-culture’
argument wherein it’s stated that women by virtue of their reproductive functions are
closer to nature while men who lack these functions are closer to culture. Another
argument put forth was the ‘private sphere and public sphere’ argument, according to
which women involved in reproduction and child rearing belong to the private sphere
while men were associated with the social life of the public sphere. But such arguments
were not historically or culturally variable and thus did not sustain for too long.
According to anthropologists Yanagisako and Collier (In Moore, 1994) categories of
sexual difference are culturally variable, like categories of gender. Feminists from
different backgrounds, feminists of color, lesbian feminists etc criticized such arguments
for assuming that ‘women’ formed a universal category and women all across the world
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were facing similar problems and were in similar situations (Moore, 1994). The
anthropologist earlier had the “blind to sex” approach and did not take into consideration
the stratification that existed in societies. Also, earlier anthropological work assumed that
there was a hierarchization between men and women’s activities and the men’s activities
are valued more and women’s inequality was overlooked (Stanley, 1984).
But there has also been Margaret Mead’s study of the three primitive societies, the
Arapesh, the Mundugumor and the Tchambuli, which was probably one of the earliest
and most influential studies, which taking into cross-cultural variation showed that
gender was a result of social and cultural fabrications. Her study demonstrated that there
was no basis for regarding the so-called “universal” aspects of “masculine” and
“feminine” behavior as being based on sex. The evidence gathered from the primitive
societies was in favor of social conditioning (Mead, 1935). Her study recognized cultural
variation, unlike a lot of other anthropological studies that did not take into account
cross-cultural variation and assumed ‘sex’ forms a universal categorization in all societies
and every culture to have the same social fabric. Mead (1935) writes that while other
anthropological studies also assumed that if one sex was dominating in personality, the
other sex must be ipso facto submissive, her study defied this limiting concept. Moreover,
Mead attributed these cultural differences between men and women to the different
temperaments. For Mead every culture is a “mosaic of combined temperaments and a
culture arbitrarily selects few out of that wide gamut, either for one sex or the entire
community” (Mead, 1935). The primitive societies that Mead examines sharply
differentiate the behavior between the two sexes based on the difference in
temperaments, thus explaining the “masculine” woman of the Mundugumor society and
the “feminine” man of the Arapesh society.
Apart from Mead’s classic study, other ethnographic works like those of Margery Wolf in
Taiwan, Robert-Murphy and Yolanda in Mundurucu show how the category of ‘gender’
is a lot more complex and complicated than it first appeared in the Western discourses.
The ethnographic studies in different cultural contexts demanded that attention be paid to
the fact that gender, as believed to be until then, was not simply based on biology, or
‘sex’, and gender was something that was variously, culturally constructed.
“Ethnographic material suggests that the differences between women and men which
people in other cultures naturalize and locate in the human body and in features of the
physical and cosmological environment are not necessarily those which correspond to the
constellation of features on which western discourse bases its categorization”, writes
Moore (Pp. 13, 1994). Thus 1975 onwards, the sex-gender debate became a very
important aspect to be examined in the field of feminist philosophy and the social
sciences. A lot of confusion arose and ambiguities developed as to what constituted the
category of ‘sex’ and what constituted the category of ‘gender’? Was then ‘gender’
supposed to have been ‘achieved’ rather than being an ‘ascription’ at birth itself? Is a
person born with a vagina necessarily a woman and consequently feminine? Or is a
person born with a penis necessarily a man and consequently masculine? And how this
‘gender’ was produced was also, and still is, a matter of great conjecture among the
feminists.
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The ‘Accomplishment’ of Gender?
West and Zimmerman (1987) use the terminology “doing gender”, or the
accomplishment and the achievement of gender. And this “doing gender” according to
them is unavoidable; as a society where the differences between man and woman is based
on sex and sex categorization, in such a society accountability becomes an important part
of social relationships. Any individual for his or her activity as a man or a woman can be
held accountable, and has to keep up with the societal normative standards. Moreover,
“doing of gender” is not an individual activity; it’s interactional and a feature of social
institutions. “Gender is conceived of as an emergent feature of social institutions: both as
an outcome and a rationale for various social arrangements and as a means of
legitimating one of the most fundamental divisions of society” (Pp. 126, West and
Zimmerman, 1987). And the social settings around us provide us with “resources for
doing gender” i.e. the physical features of the social environment around us reiterate and
reinforce the differences between men and women, girls and boys; differences that are
not necessarily “natural” or biological. It seems as if these social settings respond to the
“essential” differences between the two sexes, but it is actually a façade of what seems
like settings made for the ‘natural’ order. For example, separate public restrooms for
ladies and gentlemen, or obligatory heterosexual mating practices (West and
Zimmerman, 1987). Kessler and McKenna (in West and Zimmerman, 1987) write that
even though the genitalia of people are hidden from public view, we assume that the
world around us constitutes groups of two normally ‘sexed’ persons; there is a certain
‘moral certainty’ that we operate with.
West and Zimmerman (1987) argue that even though an individual may have many
identities, be that of a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister and so on, that individual will
first and foremost be a woman, unless she shifts to another sex category. “What this
means is that our identificatory displays will provide an ever-available resource for doing
gender under an infinitely diverse set of circumstances” (Pp. 139, West and Zimmerman,
1987).
De Beauvoir and Butler on the ‘sex-gender’ debate and ‘The Body’
Although there are other noted feminists like Henrietta Moore and Rosa Braidotti who
examine the female body, this article focuses on the arguments made by Simone de
Beauvoir and Judith Butler. While on the one hand, de Beauvoir taking from Sartreian
existentialism privileges gender and suppresses the body, on the other hand, Butler
drawing from Foucault’s body of work does the reverse and gives prime importance to
the body.
“One is not born a woman but rather becomes a woman”….”it is civilization as a whole
that produces this creature indeterminate between male and eunuch which is described as
feminine”, writes de Beauvoir (Pp. 48, Hughes and Witz, 1997). By this statement from
de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949), she argues that the “becoming of a woman” is a
social process and that the notion of ‘biology-is-destiny’ does not encompass the
becoming of the woman i.e. biology alone cannot explain the totality of a woman’s
situation. She thus moves the biological body aside and “privileges the social over the
anatomical”(Hughes and Witz, 1997). For de Beauvoir “the woman exists in ways that
men have shaped her and is not determined by her hormones or by her mysterious
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instincts” (Pp. 49, Hughes and Witz, 1997). On one hand, de Beauvoir talks
optimistically about how the female body mutable; and on the other hand, she
pessimistically talks about the “female body in trouble” – “the visceral, menstruating,
reproducing, lactating body” (Pp. 50, Hughes and Witz, 1997)
Hughes and Witz (1997) write that de Beauvoir wanted to “understand/envision” the
female subject in becoming i.e. she wanted to the woman to be free from the body that
imprisoned her. As under patriarchy, the woman has been reduced simply to her body and
has been fixed by and within it, unlike the man whose life doesn’t not revolve around his
body. “The definition of the possibilities of womanhood above and beyond the female
body is the core of the de Beauvoirian project in The Second Sex”, write Hughes and
Witz (Pp. 50, 1997).
Unlike de Beauvoir, for Butler the body is essential to understanding gender. Gender for
butler is an ‘enactment’, something which is ‘corporeal’ nature. Borrowing from
Foucault, Butler writes that the ‘gendered’ bodies are “fabrications, manufactured and
sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means (Pp. 53, Hughes and Witz,
1997). The body for Butler is that which gender works through and constitutes; she looks
at the gendered body as a result of “bodily significations” (Hughes and Witz, 1997).
She moves beyond the notion of the ‘sexed body’; sex for Butler is as much a cultural
construct as is gender. Butler questions this dual categorization of sex; she questions what
exactly is sex – is it something natural or hormonal or chromosomal? Infact for Butler,
there is no such category as that of sex; it has always been just gender and sex is nothing
but a gendered category itself. Thus for Butler, “gender is not to culture as sex is to
nature.” (Butler, 1990). According to Foucault ‘sex’ is not something that is given, rather
it as an effect; the construction of fixed binary sexes and consequently fixed
‘essentialized’ differences between the sexes, for Foucault is the product or the effect of a
specific discourse (Foucault in Moore, 1994). And Butler’s ideas on sex not being
something ‘natural’ are a follow up from Foucault’s idea.
Like for Foucault the discourse on sexuality is confined to the normative heterosexual
institution of marriage (Foucault, 1976), Butler drawing from Foucault writes about the
“normative dictates of the hegemonic, heterosexual imperative” (Pp. 54, Hughes and
Witz, 1997) and makes this the key focus of her analysis. For her this heterosexual
imperative marks a division between bodies that matter and bodies that don’t; it allowed
for certain heterosexual sexed identities to survive, while rejecting the other identities
which don’t live up to the norms of this imperative (Hughes and Witz, 1997).
Hughes and Witz criticize Butler by saying that she doesn’t give much importance to the
fact that for women there might be “gendered modes of bodily materiality”, for instance
modes relating to menstruation, conception and contraception. (Hughes and Witz, 1997).
On a concluding note: ‘Sex-gender’ debate revisited?
If we assumed that ‘biology-is-destiny’ is a fixed formulation, then obviously nothing can
be done about it. But the work of ethnographers, anthropologists but most importantly
feminists have shown that the case is not so. Unlike till the 60s and 70s where there was
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no difference between sex and gender and all was decided on the basis of sex, since then
there have been changing conceptions regarding the sex-gender dichotomy.
The popular conception that sex was the major category used for the separation between
male and female for the purpose of division of labor and organization is being challenged
by the work of feminists and other scholars (Stanley, 1984). Most feminists (if not all)
have the opinion that the division in society on the basis of sex leads to inequality
between the sexes and exploitation of women; “a system of stratification is involved
which persists over time, is systematic and involves a hierarchy between females and
males” (Pp. 2, Stanley, 1984). Discrimination, exploitation and oppression are the three
kinds of (not mutually exclusive) unequal treatments that Stanley (1984) mentions and
inequalities that have amassed a lot of evidence by the work of feminists all across the
world. There are some who believe that such inequalities are ‘natural’ because that’s how
it is meant to be due to ‘biological’ reasons – “men are aggressive/violent/dominant
because they are born as men and women are gentle/milder by virtue of the fact that they
are born as women”. The notion that ‘sex’ is natural includes the notion that it is “fixed,
determined and non-volitional, and is thus not socially constructed, changing and
volitional” (Pp. 14, Stanley, 1984). And not just that, Stanley (1984) mentions that this
‘naturalness of sex’ assumes sex as innately heterosexual and which results in
heterosexual behaviors as well.
But rather than taking this ‘sex as the natural order’ for granted, feminists have attempted
to establish the true root causes of such inequalities and each one of them is concerned
with ‘gender’ as “each challenges the ‘biology-is-destiny’ argument” (Pp. 16, Stanley,
1984).
It can possibly be said that the current view seems to be that while ‘sex’ is important and
biology or anatomy cant be discarded away completely, it is still not as important as
social and cultural factors. So the fact that gender is not ‘created’ can come to rest, but
how exactly is gender ‘constructed’ (except for a few studies like those of West and
Zimmerman, 1987) is a field that still needs to be examined a great deal. So for now, let
Pinki Pramanik decide if she wants to be a man or a woman – the rest of us don’t need to
worry about her.
References
1. Butler, Judith. 1990. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire. In Gender Trouble:
Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
2. Foucault, Michel. 1976. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1. Penguin Books.
3. Hughes, Alex and Witz Anne. 1997. Feminism and the Matter of Bodies: From de
Beauvoir to Butler. In Body and Society. 3(1): 47-60. London, Thousand Oaks
and New Delhi: Sage Publications.
4. Mead, Margaret. 1935. Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. New
York: William Morrow and Company.
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5. Moore, Henrietta. 1994. The Divisions Within. In A Passion for Difference:
Essays in Anthropology and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.
6. Stanley, Liz. 1984. Should ‘Sex’ Really Be ‘Gender’ or ‘Gender’ Really be
‘Sex’? In Anderson, R. and Sharrock W (eds.) Applied Sociology. London: Allen
and Unwin.
7. West, Candace and Zimmerman, Don. 1987. “Doing Gender”. In Gender and
Society. 1(2): 125-151.
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