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Sex and Gender. Feminism Lecture 6. 21/2/14. 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.
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Sex and Gender • Feminism Lecture 6 21/2/14
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
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? • For a week last summer, James was a woman • For a week last summer, James was a US senator • After seeing John’s body, I realised that John is a woman • After seeing John’s body, I realised that John is a US senator
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’
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
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?
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?
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