Читать книгу Gender Theory in Troubled Times - Rachel Alsop - Страница 23

Much late twentieth-century work in the philosophy of science (Haraway 1991; Martin 1987; Harding 1992, 1993, 1998; Laqueur 1990) has drawn our attention to the ways in which our scientific theories, models and metaphors are influenced by the cultural framework in which we are placed. It is recognized that there is no unmediated access to the world. The concepts and frameworks of interpretations in terms of which we organize our observations mediate all our encounters. There are no raw facts, as it is often said. They all come to us cooked in some way. Consequently, what scientists see in the results of their experiments is influenced by the framework of interpretation which they bring to them. And this reflection has been borne out by research into the history of sex difference research. The biological theories which give an account of sex differences are the products of particular historical and culturally specific moments of production. Such a recognition has allowed biological accounts of sex differences to be revisited with an eye as to where cultural assumptions have influenced them. Of key importance in this regard has been the assumption that there are simply two sexes, male and female, a model which has come increasingly under challenge in recent work.

For thousands of years male and female bodies were considered to be fundamentally similar (Martin 1987). Women were thought to have the same genitals as men, only hidden inside the body. In the eighteenth century, however, there was increasing emphasis on bodily differences between the sexes. The concentration on genital sexual difference and secondary sex characteristics such as breasts and facial hair became expanded so that more and more parts of the body were seen as sexualized. By the late nineteenth century male and female bodies were viewed as opposites, and the female body became a central focus of medical attention. First the uterus and then the ovaries were regarded as the seat of femininity. Early in the twentieth century the essence of femaleness and maleness came to be located not in bodily parts but in chemical substances: sex hormones. Nelly Oudshoorn (1994) excavated the history of the theory whereby the essence of sex differences was seen as being fixed by hormones. As work progressed, the original assumption that each sex was governed by its own hormones gave way to the recognition that ‘male’ and ‘female’ hormones are present in both sexes. Here was a possibility for dualistic notions of male and female to be abandoned and a variety of sexed positionalities to be introduced. Given the cultural context, however, traditional classifications prevailed, yielding a theoretical framework within which the hormones work in distinct ways to produce two discrete categories. Where it is not possible to assign a body to one of these categories, then something is seen to have gone wrong and as requiring medical intervention to rectify.

Hormones are, of course, only one way of marking sexed difference. Alice Stone suggests:

A human being is biologically male if they have XY chromosomes, testes, ‘male’ internal and external genitalia, relatively high proportions of androgens, and ‘male’ secondary sex characteristics. A human being is biologically female if they have XX chromosomes, ovaries, ‘female’ internal and external genitalia, relatively high proportions of oestrogen and progesterone, and ‘female’ secondary sex characteristics .… ‘male’ and ‘female’ here … being used as a shorthand … and could be replaced by a list of the relevant genital parts … and characteristics. (2007: 34)

Linda Alcoff suggests that ‘women and men are differentiated by virtue of their different relationship of possibility to biological reproduction, with biological reproduction referring to conceiving, giving birth, and breast-feeding, involving one’s body’ (Alcoff 2012).

What has become clear, however, is that the several distinct biological markers of maleness and femaleness – visible morphology, hormones and chromosomes – are not always found together. The biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling (2000) has drawn attention to the fact that bodies which possess the usual male (XY) or female (XX) chromosomal make-up can have a variety of external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. Her work identifies at least five possible classificatory types suggested by different patterns of biological clustering.² Were we interested in classifying in relation to fitness for reproduction, this wider range of categories would seem to serve this purpose more accurately. Some clusterings facilitate reproduction and some do not. There will be bodies fit for reproduction who contribute to the process in one way and bodies who are fit for reproduction and contribute to it in another way. Then there will be bodies that are not fit for reproduction and do not fit into either of these categories. There will, moreover, be added complications. The contributions to reproduction, which Alcoff associates with the female body, can come apart. The body that can gestate might not be able to suckle. The body that produces eggs might not gestate. Moreover, with developing technology, there will be a shift in which bodies can make contributions of differing kinds to reproduction. What does seem clear is that a classification in terms of possession of properties causally relevant to reproduction does not map neatly onto our everyday binary classification into male and female. Of course, many male and female bodies can make no contribution to reproduction.

Fausto-Sterling (1993) points out that the existence of bodies we now classify as intersex, because their visible morphology involves what are classified as both male and female characteristics, has always been known: hermaphrodites often featured in stories of human origins. She draws attention to the range of bodies which are included within this category. Bodies which possess the usual male (XY) or female (XX) chromosomal make-up can have a variety of external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics: ‘the varieties are so diverse … that no classificatory scheme could do more than suggest the variety of sexual anatomy encountered in clinical practice’ (1993: 22). Nor is the phenomenon as rare as we might suppose. Some have suggested that it may constitute as many as 4 per cent of all births. Many of these ‘unruly’ bodies are now treated by surgical intervention and by hormones at birth, or sometimes at puberty, and assigned to one of our prevailing sexual categories. Marianne Van den Wijngaard scrutinized the basis of the decisions made concerning which category the children were to be assigned to:

genetic sex appears to be an important criterion. For women it is decisive. Doctors usually ‘make’ a little girl when a child has two X chromosomes. When the child is a boy in genetic respects …, however, the size of the penis is decisive. If the penis is of a certain minimal size [to enable a normal sexual life in the male role], the team decides to help the child become a boy. If not a vagina is created and the child is ‘made’ into a girl. (1997: 86–7)

In the making of the girl, the creation of a penetrable vagina is considered central, and the ‘deviant clitoris’ looking like a penis can be either removed or shortened, often with scant respect for its consequences for the sexual pleasure of the ‘being made’ girl. Such practices are now being robustly challenged by activist groups of those whose bodies have been regarded as unruly in this way. There are campaigns to prevent surgical/hormonal intervention at an early age and a request that children are allowed to develop and have a view on whether they are happy with their bodies as they are or wish for medical intervention to bring them closer to one side of the biological binary norm.³ Such activism is suggesting ways in which we might raise children in a culture that recognizes interwoven sexed/gendered variation (Fausto-Sterling 2000: 4).

What is indicated by the treatment of children classified as having intersexed bodies is not that the biological classification into two sexes is that which nature dictates. It reflects instead a cultural need to reinforce and defend a clear classification into male and female and a modification of bodies which appear to cross the divide.