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’

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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

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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?

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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?

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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