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21/2/14
Sex and GenderFeminism Lecture 6
Introduction
The Sex/Gender Distinction
Traditional Feminist Accounts of Womanness
Objections to Traditional Accounts of Womanness
Objections to the Sex/Gender Distinction
Contemporary accounts of Womanness & Gender
The Sex/Gender Distinction
People used to hold Biological Determinism: sex determines gender
19th Century: women as sluggish, passive, and conservative because they conserve energy
70s: women should not pilots due to hormonally instability
90s: much research supposedly showed that differences between men & women were due to the particular thickness of the tissue connecting womens’ brain hemispheres
In response: feminists argued that gender is a social/cultural phenomenon
Traditional Views of Womanness
Gender and Womanness is socially constructed
Traditional Views of Womanness
Chodorow: feminine personalities develop in early infancy in response to parenting practices
Mackinnon: Gender as sexuality: femininity as being treated as an object for the satisfying of men’s desires.
(Gender Realism) There is a single feature or set of features that women have in common that makes them women
Objections to Traditional Accounts of Womanness (in virtue of gender realism)
Spelman Against Gender Realism
1. White Solipsism
But the problems with narrow understanding of womanness does not undermine gender realism
Spelman Against Gender Realism
2. Inseparability of womanness from race and class
A: If gender were separable from race and class, then women would experience their womanness in the same way
B: If gender were separable from race and class, then we would have no trouble imagining that a white woman would have just the same understanding of herself as a woman if she had been black
If gender is so inseparable from race and class, then there is no one property of being a women that all women share
But RE A: (i) It is compatible with B that women all share the same feature but experience it differently (merely epistemic); (ii) womanness might not be the kind of thing that can be experienced like this; (iii) Worry that this objection proves too much
Spelman Against Gender Realism
2. Inseparability of womanness from race and class
A: If gender were separable from race and class, then women would experience their womanness in the same way
B: If gender were separable from race and class, then we would have no trouble imagining that a white woman would have just the same understanding of herself as a woman if she had been black
If gender is so inseparable from race and class, then there is no one property of being a women that all women share
But RE A: (i) It is compatible with B that women all share the same feature but experience it differently (merely epistemic); (ii) womanness might not be the kind of thing that can be experienced like this; (iii) Worry that this objection proves too much
Spelman Against Gender Realism
2. Inseparability of womanness from race and class
A: If gender were separable from race and class, then women would experience their womanness in the same way
B: If gender were separable from race and class, then we would have no trouble imagining that a white woman would have just the same understanding of herself as a woman if she had been black
If gender is so inseparable from race and class, then there is no one property of being a women that all women share
But RE A: (i) It is compatible with B that women all share the same feature but experience it differently (merely epistemic); (ii) womanness might not be the kind of thing that can be experienced like this; (iii) Worry that this objection proves too much
But RE B: (i) other reasons why we might not be able to imagine these things: lack of ability to imagine being of a different race or class (ii) this is only an epistemic issue not a metaphysical one
Spelman Against Gender Realism
3. The social construction of gender undermines gender realism
But equivocation on Realism
But essential features need not be intrinsic features
Being the President of the US, Being a wife in our culture, Being a friend,
Spelman Against Gender Realism
Are Gender Realists and Spelman talking past one another?
The debate as about how gender, race, and class intersect: Do they add up [building blocks] or are they simply not independent things?
It seems that they are not (at least wholly) independent things
Butler against Gender Realism
In proposing a uniform account of womanness feminist gender realists imply that there is a correct way to be gendered a woman
It is not possible to use the term ‘woman’ purely descriptively.
Making claims about what it is to be some thing is always exclusionary
But: Substantive Vs Formal Accounts
Objections to the sex/gender distinction
Is sex classification purely biological?
Uniformity in shape, size, and strength within sex categories depend on exercise opportunities.
Some people’s chromosomes do not match their genitalia
But this only shows that the XX/XY + genitalia way of making the biological distinction doesn’t work
Butler against the sex/gender distinction
Sex and gender are the same thing as they are both socially constructed
However this does not establish that sex and gender are the same thing
The counter-intuitive consequences of the distinction Could we take someone’s gender away from them
and leave them the same person?
1. For a week last summer, James was a woman
2. For a week last summer, James was a US senator
3. After seeing John’s body, I realised that John is a woman
4. After seeing John’s body, I realised that John is a US senator
Contemporary Accounts of Gender and Womanness
The Representation Problem
(Gender Realism) There is a single feature or set of features that women have in common that makes them women
If gender realism is false, then there is nothing that women have in common
But if there is no real group ‘women’, it is incoherent to make claims on their behalf
Desiderata for an account of womanness
Must take account and reflect the particularity of women and the intersection between gender, class, and race
Mustn’t be exclusionary or at least over-exclusionary
Should not make ‘woman’ as convention dependent as ‘US senator’ or ‘judge’
0011
Haslanger’s View S is a woman iff S is systematically
subordinated along some dimension (economic, political, legal, social, etc.) and S is “marked” as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of a female’s biological role in reproduction
Problems:
Is this too dependent on convention?
Follows that we should abolish woman
Is the queen a woman?
Women not in bodies marked female
0011
Haslanger’s View Distinguishes 3 types of project:
conceptual, descriptive, and analytical
Worry: analytical projects give us answers to questions we were not asking
The analytical project with gender hopes to explain persistent inequalities between male an females in a framework sensitive to differences between males and female
That it follows that the queen might not be a woman and that we should abolish women is not a problem for this type of account
Bach’s View: Gender Kinds are Historical Kinds
Some kinds are historical kinds
Bach’s View: Gender Kinds are Historical Kinds
Some kinds are historical kinds
To be of a certain gender is to have features that associates one with what has historically been deemed a particular gender
(Binary) Gender systems have a certain interdependent set of components
Can take account of the particularity of women and their experiences: can particularise historical gender kinds
Not too convention dependent
Is it too exclusionary?
0011
Butler’s Account of Gender
Gender is not something that one is it is something that one does (Gender Performativity)
If it is a performance, then must there not be a performer behind the gender performance?
Don’t some of our expressions of our gender reflect who we are?
Is Butler engaging in the same task as gender realists?
Is gender entirely subjective on Butler’s view?
0011
Butler’s Account of Gender
Butler’s view is not exclusionary and takes account of particularity
But radically departs from our concepts of ‘woman’ & ‘man’
Butler + Haslanger?
Summary
Spelman and Butler’s objections to the metaphysical essentialism of traditional accounts of womanness do not undermine this metaphysical essentialism
Problems and Prospects for contemporary accounts of Womanness and Gender