Feminist thought : androcentrism, communication, and objectivity/ Shefali Moitra; Kolkata: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers; Centre for Advanced

Study in History, 2002. (6-29 p.)

The Sex / Gender System 7

CHAPTER 1

The Sex/ Gender System

The sex/gender system has been identified by feminists as a social variable present in every society. While sex is a biological category, gender is a cultural category. Sex differences are grouped as male and female; this division is based on the human reproductive function. The differences are identified in terms of their respective chromosome structures, the Y-chromosomes occur only in male cells while X-chromosomes occur both in male and in female cells albeit in differing numbers, the number of X-chromosomes in female cells is twice that in male cells. Sexual reproduction has been explained in terms of division of labour, the female being an individual specialized in reproduction. The primary identification of the male and female species is secured on the basis of their respective sex organs. Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) cetegorized three levels of sex-linked differences: (/) primary differences characterized by differences in sex organs; (it) secondary differences characterized by differences associated with reproductive function, e.g., breast, body hair, etc.; (jit) tertiary differences characterized by differences in behaviour, e.g., aggression, care, assertion, submission. These traits qualify males and females differently, moreover, they are not directly linked to reproduction. Ellis is not the only one to speak of sex-linked differences among men and women. Such differences have been serialized by others including Darwin and Freud. Darwin equated sex-linked differences with evolutionary progress. Ellis used the Darwinian insight to schematize the evolutionary process from ape to child to woman and then to man. This schematization helps to explain the immature status of woman vis-a-vis man. Closer to our times is the work

of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). He enjoys considerable authority among a large group of psychotherapists as well as among a formidable group of feminists, including the French feminist Julia Kristeva. Freud also identified three levels of sex-linked differences, namely, the primary biological level, for example, sperm, egg, followed by the social level characterized by masculine and feminine attributes, autonomy and relatedness - mature men are autonomous and women remain related. The third level referred to by him is the psychological or grammatical - manifested as active and passive traits. It is customary among biologists to refer to primary, secondary and tertiary sex-linked characteristics. Chromosomes mark the primary sex-linked human traits while hormones characterize the secondary sexual characteristics. There is no qualitative difference between the hormones possessed by males and those possessed by females. Yet their body chemistries differ due to the difference in chromosome structures. The hormone secretion of all males are not identical, nor is the hormone secretion of all females the same, that is, the secondary sexual characteristics differ from individual to individual cutting across the primary male/female divide. The tertiary sex-linked characteristics like male/female impulses are greatly moulded by the environment. In the context of feminist literature the genesis of tertiary sexlinked characteristics is a matter of great debate. Tertiary sexual traits overlap with gender. Gender is a cultural construct. Each culture imposes certain norms on the behaviour of men and women. These are prescriptions for appropriate behaviour. Like in most cultures ideally men are expected to be aggressive, assertive and brave among many other things and women are expected to be passive, receptive and caring. Arguably these role-prescriptions were initially formulated for the smooth functioning of society. A sexual division of labour provides the underpinning for a genderdivided culture. Gender divisions are present in all cultures. The line of division, however, varies from culture to culture. Feminists have been systematically pointing out that all human societies till date are not only divided on the lines of gender roles, these roles have always been discriminatory - the attributes associated with

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male-gender roles have been valorized whereas the female-gender roles have been pejoratized. Therefore, gender does not simply symbolize difference, it also symbolizes discrimination. Not only that, the discrimination has always disadvantaged women. Now, since sexual differences are biological, they are often referred to as natural differences, whereas gender differences being constructs are referred to as cultural differences. In order to keep these two sets of differences apart certain linguistic conventions have been formulated - the sex differences have been denoted by the male/ female binaries whereas the gender difference has been referred to by the masculine/feminine binaries. Discrimination begins by placing men and women in different social positions - one is placed in the core and the other in the periphery. The one occupying the periphery, by virtue of the metaphorical space it occupies, is marginalized, silenced and made invisible. This position is either ignored or monitored by the core. There is a widespread myth that during the long history of mankind women have sometimes occupied the core position. The common belief is that in patriarchy woman is pushed to the margins but in matriarchy she takes the central position. In reality matriarchy has always remained a theoretical alternative and has never been practised as a real option. Pure patriarchy has been at times replaced by a hybrid form known as matrilineal society where the lineage is traced through the mother's line but the family administration has always been monitored by the mother's brother, father, or some male member of her family. Not only has matriarchy been a historical myth, it is an option which is unacceptable to feminists. Replacing patriarchy by matriarchy would mean reverse discrimination. The oppressive structure is perpetuated in matriarchy - the actors simply change positions from the margin to the core. Feminists refer to three broad forms of misogyny or womanhatirig.1 The first is sexism. This form of hating, oppression, discrimination, intimidation is easily identifiable because it relates to overt behaviour. Any visible act or speech or attitude or theory which treats women as inferior to men, which disadvantages women to men, and thus subjugates women and when subse-

quently the subjugation is thought to be legitimate, then it is a form of sexism. Umpteen examples of such sexist references are to be found in the texts written by some of the most revered philosophers. Plato, Aristotle, St Augustine, Kant, and Hegel are all guilty of such sins of commission. Sexism is the outward manifestation of an embedded level of discrimination, it is not a contingent, free flowing occurence like an emergent social phenomenon.2 It has its roots in a deeper and more pernicious form of misogyny, namely, patriarchy. Patriarchy is the second form of misogyny. In patriarchy institutions and customs are all conducive to male supremacy. By gaining institutional and social support sexist practices are further entrenched in patriarchy. This presence may not be easily identifiable in a society, since it works like an underlying structure of human behaviour. Patriarchy has specific roles assigned to men and to women. Women are objectified in this social mode. There are different ways of objectifying women. The modes of objectification vary from society to society and from one period of history to another. What is common to all forms of patriarchy is male supremacy. Patriarchy is rooted in men's control of women's productive and reproductive labour. Patriarchy is necessarily related to power. Those who have power have the right to control the destiny of those who are powerless - it works on the principle that 'superiority justifies domination'. Patriarchy necessarily incorporates and sanctions an unequal distribution of power which helps maintain the status quo of oppression. In patriarchy man is born with a male gender privilege. This advantage is not gained by choice. Although one cannot be held responsible for having such a privilege one can be held personally responsible for not doing anything to stall the perpetuation of male gender privilege. 3 An accomplice in patriarchy is thus guilty of a sin of inaction. He is collaborating by ignoring woman's rightful participation m soda] engineering by perpetuating the status quo which ignores the status of women. One could be guilty on either count - by committing sexist acts or by not resisting sexist acts. In philosophy sexist omissions are caused by not including women's lived experience into mainstream philosophy.

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The third type of misogyny referred to by faminists is phallocentrism. This is a form of discrimination against women at the conceptual level. If sexism is discrimination at the level of speech and action, and patriarchy is structural oppression then phallocentrism is a form of conceptual male domination. Phallocentrism is a discursive series of procedures4 - meaning thereby that this form of conceptual practices is established by argument or reasoning as opposed to intuition. It has been argued that there is a sex/gender transcendent human essence - an essence which is sex/gender neutral. By developing and expressing this essence men and women can achieve dignity, freedom and equality. They can also overcome all forms of difference and discrimination. According to this view the liberatory aim should be to collapse the masculine-feminine identity into a human identity. The idea being that sexual oppression is bound to continue unless the body is transcended or displaced as the centre of female identity,5 which means that human essence is bestowed in the realm of consciousness away and apart from the body. It has been argued that if female essence is located beyond her productive and reproductive identity then male control over woman's productive tfld reproductive labour will fail to constrain or inhibit her human excellence which belongs to an entirely separate plane. Feminists identify a male manoeuvre implicit in this tripartite classification of man/ woman and human. Allegedly the category human is just as gender biased as the categories of male and female. To begin with the gender identity of man and woman is characterized by the following binaries: rational/emotional, abstract/concrete, assertive/submissive agentic/indecisive where the first term of each set characterizes man. The binaries are culture specific. What needs to be noted is not the actual content of the binaries but their structure. In each culture the male gender features have greater value than the female gender features. Feminists who are critical of the man, woman, human triparite division identify some form of phallocentrism in such a categorization. The phallocentric charge is that the masculinity which characterizes 'human' goes unrecognized. On closer examination it transpires that human essence is nothing other than the universalization of particular

features of masculinity as if they were genuinely representative of both the sexes.6 \ristotle refers to man as a rational animal. Reason for him is a monolithic category which excludes emotion and context and by implication woman's 'lived' experience. Aristotle refers to woman as 'deformed man'. This is because by definition women, children and slaves are disqualified from the same kind of reason and virtues available to men. Phallocentrism stakes its claim to rationality and truth only by forgetting or constantly repressing its own rhetorical character. In other words phallocentrism's claim of being discursive is a disguise, in actuality it is rooted in rhetoric, which means it is presented in a language designed to impress or persuade with an implication of insincerity and exaggeration. Phallocentrism refuses to acknowledge its relation to power, it pretends that its truth has an absolute validity independent of the metaphoric and power strategies that bring it into being and perpetuate its existence. In a phallocentric conceptual scheme woman is always relegated to a subordinate position. She is required to gain equality by transcending her female identity, that is, by ignoring her lived experience as a woman. For her this is only possible through a neutral existence. The aim of excellence set before her in this conceptual scheme is that of becoming more 'human'. There is a hidden^manoeuvre in this prescription of asking men and womeii to converge in a neutrarhuman ideal sineFtKe concept human js not jiboye jender bias in patriarchy. There is a feminist convention of writing human as huMan. In this way the hidden agenda of brandishing male virtues as human universals is exposed. There are two alternative stances open within a phallocentric scheme: 'feminine' could be defined as the inversion of 'masculine'. This depiction is implicit in the binaries stated above, e.g., aggressive/submissive, abstract/concrete. Alternatively, the same binary positions could lead to an interpretation different from inversion - they could be seen as complementary pairs. Each of these three possibilities, namely, equality (on male terms - being human), inversion and complementarity confirm the primacy of the masculine and the subordination of the feminine. Therefore each one of these alternative conceptualizations is phallocentric. Each takes the male as

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primary and, measures and defines the female only in her relation to the male. In phallocentrism the masculine is granted an autonomous self-defined position while the female or feminine has a secondary position having a dependent definition.7 The relation between patriarchy and phallocentrism is comparable to a conceptual scheme and its presuppositions. The former provides the scheme and the latter offers the foundation or rationale. The phallocentric principle, that there are human essences that are gender neutral, works as a constitutive principle for patriarchy. Propositions expressing these principles have the guise of empirical propositions but they are the presuppositions which provide a framework within which all empirical enquiry and reasoning goes on. The justification of these presuppositions are not built into the very nature of human reason for then it would be irreversible which it is not. At the same time they do constitute the world picture which, to use Wittgenstein's expression, provides 'the scaffolding of all our thought'. A mainstream philosopher who has no exposure to feminist thinking will certainly feel uneasy with the comparison of a phallocentric scaffolding to a Wittgensteinian one. It may be argued that phallocentrism is related to gender-justice while Wittgenstein is speaking of an epistemic scaffolding which forms the foundation of all operations with thought That there is a connection between the two is exactly what the feminist philosopher wants to emphasize. Phallocentrism is not merely a moral and political category, it is also an epistemic one. The point that they are trying to drive home is that the political and the epistemic are interlinked. This has already been hinted at when the discursive genesis of phallocentrism was questioned and a rhetoric powerbase was identified. At this point a pertinent question to ask would be whether all epistemological questions are related to morals and politics or is it that only phallocentric epistemology is vulnerable to such illegitimate intermixtures. Feminists are sharply divided on this issue - this debate will be revisited in chapters three and five. An etymological analysis of the term 'phallocentric' will reveal valuable insights into its workings. This term is a derivative from the Greek word phallus meaning penis. This expression is used

metaphorically to symbolize generative powers. Phallocentric literally means to be centred on male attitudes. It means that the tertiary sex-linked male traits are treated as the regulative principles of phallocentrism, it is. through these lenses that the entire conceptual space is perceived, evaluated, organized and reorganized. In this way a unified form is imposed on our lived experiences. The form varies from culture to culture depending on the variation of the depiction of maleness. All that differs from maleness is treated as the 'other', the subordinate, the periphery, and the background. In this way phallocentrism demarcates a closed conceptual space with a fixed core and fixed periphery. The perspective from the core is the only valid one - this validation in turn attributes authority to this perspective, and authority translates into a form of power too.8 Phallocentrism is by definition hierarchical in nature. It places higher value and status on male-gendered virtues than it does on female-gendered virtues. This scheme also organizes reality into oppositional and exclusive pairs. It places higher value on one member of the pair. In the following cases the first member of the pair is privileged - mind/body, reason/emotion. Any form of centrismjike phallocentrism, gynocentrism, logocentrism is sustained by a logic of domination, that is a structure of argumentation which justifies relations of dominance on the ground that superiority justifies subordination.9 The logic of domination cuts across the exclusive pairs into which reality is divided. As a result reason dominates over emotion, mind over body, white (men and women) over black (men and women), the economically privileged (men and women) over the economically underprivileged (men and women). The above list of domination/subordination shows that the role of domination is not confined to men, nor is the role of subordination confined to women. Rather domination is the reserve of'male-gender virtues', which couftTbe present in biological females just as female-gender virtues could be present in biological males. Phallocentrism endorses a structural form that can victimize both men and women depending on where they are positioned on the entire phallocentric scale. In a gendered division of conceptual space there is a masculinized position and a feminized position regardless of the anatomical sex of the person in that position.10

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This is a controversial issue. The question is 'does gender represent anatomical sex differences or are gender roles independent constructs'. In other words 'is gender wired into biology'. On examination it will be clear that this is not one question but two. First it has to be established that natural kinds exist in nature and that primates are a natural kind. When biologists speak of the three stages of sex-linked identity, beginning with the primary stage of chromosome-based identity, can they really provide an essentialist definition of male and female identity? Secondly, can it be said that 'male' and 'female' are concept words and so they must have common properties? This notion dates back to Plato and Aristotle. For them the only way to define 'male' and 'female' is by providing necessary and sufficient conditions for using the terms. The notion that everything to which a concept word applies must have common properties is naive on three counts.11 (i) It is not compatible with simple ambiguity, e.g., the concept word 'bald'; (it) It seems unnecessary to know the common properties of things in its extension in order to know its meaning; (tit) It is unclear why there must be common properties. Would the concept word otherwise be useless ? One may replace this naive thesis of concept words by a thesis which holds that, what a concept word applies to should have common properties and if they don't then using such concept words is an abuse of language. This explanation is characteristic of the positions taken by Frege and Russell. By holding that the referents of concept words should have common properties certain prescriptions are being made about language which may not be fulfilled in the world. An alternative explanation of concept words is found in the Philosophical Investigatiom where concept terms are explained by family resemblances, as in the example of the concept word 'game'. A game is explained by giving examples and saying these and similar things are called 'games'. The examples are, as they were, centres of variation. The purpose of this apparent detour from a discussion on the biological concept of sex-identity was necessary to make a general philosophical point about natural kinds, be they natural kinds of physics, of chemistry or of biology. Whether natu-

ral kinds constitute a well-defined homogeneous set of entities, or whether they are clusters of varying properties to be explained by family resemblance, poses one cluster of problems, and the other cluster is related to conceptualizing natural kinds. More specifically in the context of the sex/gender system the question to be asked is 'is sex a natural kind and how can sex be conceptualized ?' This leads to a further Kantian quiery - are we inescapably trapped in a situation where we have to admit that things-as-they-are- inthemselves are unknown and unknowable ? Even while trying to grapple with these questions some sense has to be made of the world out there and for this some form of unification has to be projected. Even if we feel that these systems for describing the world tell us nothing about it (the system for interpreting the world could be phallocentric). To use a Tractarian description such a system tells us 'the precise way in which it is possible to describe it [the world] by these means. We are also told something about the world by the fact that it can be described more simply with one system than with another'.12 This would mean that there is some reality constraint faced by every attempt to conceptualize that world. This again is a contentious point how strong is the constraint and what is its impact is an issue to be debated. While discussing the brute fact of biological identity of sex differences between male and female one may insist on remaining confined to scientific explanations based on 'hard' data. All these sophisticated philosophical questions centering on how our conceptual schemes fit the world or all these discussions relating to the concept of'concepts' may seem entirely out of place and misleading. Has it not been established beyond doubt that the male members of the species have Y-chromosomes which the female members lack ? Could this not be taken as the basis of the distinction between males and females ? Starting from this base it could be argued that subsequent secondary and tertiary sex traits are causally linked to this basic chromosome differentia. Many environmental factors add on to the complex sex-traits of the tertiary stage. Notwithstanding these later inputs it could be argued that original causal linkages between chromosomes and later personal-

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ity manifestations are definitely present and can in no way be denied. While constructing gender norms the prescriptions to be effective must be sensitive to die male and female biological nature. It is this nature that provides for the reality constraint for any subsequent cultural construct of gender roles. If gender roles are normative prescriptions for the way men and women should behave in a given culture and if these roles are wired into biology then we must be prepared to accept a naturalistic account of cultural norms. The pairing of sex and gender or, in other words, nature and culture will be somediing like the following: since women are biological mothers their appropriate gender role should be one of caring, on the other hand, men by virtue of having Y-chromosomes are aggressive by nature so they should play the role of physical protectors. A naturalistic account of gender necessarily commits one to a naturalistic account of norms. The argument is diat if gender roles are insensitive to primary and secondary sex-identities then they will impose a pressure on the individual - men and women will be constrained to function against their nature. All sorts of maladjustments will follow as a natural consequence, whereas, if nature determines gender, by implication nature determines culture men die natural status quo can be maintained and an efficient division of labour achieved. So it is argued that there is such a thing as a natural fit between sex and gender, gender is and ought to be wired into sex. To programme gender odierwise would be a violation of nature. Many feminists subscribe to this view. It must be kept in mind that feminist positions are by no means homogeneous. There are many internal debates within feminism, some are serious enough to cause chasms widiin feminism, giving birth to distinctive schools. These schools in turn take up diverse projects for social justice. Among them some are essentialist and conservative in their attitude, and they would like to see a distinct division of labour on the basis of sex - this leads to seeing woman as man's 'other'. Human beings are seen as sexual beings - one is either a man or a woman. One possible consequence of diis position would be to confine men and women to distinct domains - women could

be confined to the domestic sphere and be gendered to look after the household. Men could look after the greater world of politics and culture-construction. A common justification for this division would be to argue diat the seclusion of women has been a blessing in disguise, remaining far from the madding crowd women have succeeded in preserving and developing a basic goodness. They are die privileged possessors of virtues like purity, patience, self-sacrifice, spirituality and maternal instinct of nurturing and caring. Having attributed these virtues to woman, she is labelled as the superior sex whose secluded protection needs to be perpetuated for the sake of value preservation. Alternatively it has been argued that seclusion has prepared her to be a more effective political being who can redeem dirty politics if given a chance. Val Plumwood correcdy observes that what is missing in this analysis is the role of power. Powerlessness has forced women to cultivate patience, tolerance, purity as strategems for survival and in their TiaseThe only way to continue nurturing these virtues is to remain powerless.13 This means purity and seclusion are not sufficient conditions to make women's participation in decision-making procedures fruitful. A powerless alternative voice has little impact. Being labelled as 'essentially good' does not empower women, on die contrary, it excludes diem from the mainstream. An occasional entry into die mainstream while retaining one's individuality as the 'essential odier' holds no emancipatory promise. The view being presendy discussed of wiring gender into biology claims that mere is an eternal female nature. Comparable to die practice in social studies of linking gender to biology is the psychoanalytic practice of linking psychology, personality types and gender to biology. Classical psychoanalysis works with the teleological assumption diat anatomy is destiny. The translation of diis assumption has been worked out in many of die feminist explanations of the sex-gender system. As is evident, the assumption sustains a divide between die male and female sex as well as die masculine and feminine gender. The justification for such a divide is based on a particular explanation of how die primary and secondary sex-linked charateristics are reflected in die psychical developmental history of male and female individuals.

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The gist of the arguments which are forwarded in favour of this position are lucidly presented by Nancy Chodrow in her book The Reproduction of Mothering, especially in chapter twelve, 'The Psycho-dynamics of the Family'. According to psychoanalytic theory the heterosexual erotic orientation of boys and girls are not the same. Initially both boys and girls are bonded to their mother - they identify themselves with her. The mother is the primary love object both for girls and for boys. Boys retain their love object throughout their boyhood. Their development is therefore fairly continuous. The continuity is maintained in the consecutive stages of development as well. A boy resolves his oedipal complex by repressing his attachment to his mother. In adulthood he is ready to strike a relationship with someone who is like his mother. Through such a relation a psychological reactivation takes place. The original mother-son relationship is reenacted in a new adult heterosexual activity. In this way the male child passes through distinct stages of development from infancy which is a stage of'dual-unity'. In this stage the mother as the mother is recognized as the distinct other. In the third and final stage the male adult enters a two-person relationship. From the account of the three stages of development it is clear that the process is continuous and straightforward. In contrast the psychoanalytic account of the psychical development of the erotic orientation of the female child is much more complex - primary relations are neither re-enacted nor continuous nor unidirectional. The female child begins with an initial identity - the umbilical tie between mother and child. A girl's first love object is a woman. In order to attain a heterosexual orientation the girl must transfer her choice to a man. In a family organization the man the girl turns to is her father. This creates an asymmetry in the feminine and masculine oedipus complex. A girl child finds it difficult to resolve the tension thus caused, yet she continues this transfer. The reason for the perpetuation of this situation is that heterosexuality is accepted as an indubitable developmental goal. By contrast lesbianism is considered to be either abnormal or infantile. The complexity of the position of a girl in the development process is compounded by the fact that at the time of her primary-object choice of her father she

retains her attachment to her mother. In this way a girl retains her pre-oedipal attachemts to her mother and builds oedipal attachments to both her mother and her father. A triangular context arises out of this pattern of attachment. A tension develops in the girl because mother and father are not the same kind of parents. This leads among other things to an identity in terms of a relational selfhood. The clear 'dual-unity' of the self and the other experienced by the male child is absent, instead a balancing act between mother and fadier is established by the female child. Whereas men develop into a final two-person relationship, women have a much more complex heterosexual relation. They want to be loved or to be self-sufficient at one level and on another they want to love someone as an extension of their self. According to psychoanalytic theory women love narcissistically while men display complete object-love of the attachment type.14 The claim that 'anatomy is destiny' signifies a structural implication meaning thereby that the male biological anatomy in conjunction with its secondary sex-linked characteristics determine the development of the masculine heterosexual object-choice as well as the feminine heterosexual object-choice. The implied structures of these choices are as follows: In the final stage of development men aim at establishing an exclusive identity which is independent of the other, the mother. The exclusivity thus attained becomes a locus of assertion and confidence, paradoxically it is also the locus of alienation and fear of being emotionally rejected. To maintain a distance from an other so as to establish one's identity men repress dieir emotional needs. Gender training for masculinity involves repression of affective relational needs. Men are better equipped than women to pursue alienating work in the affect-denying world. The gender training for women, on the other hand, prepares them for participating in roles that demand intimacy and they are better equipped for fulfilling primary relationships like mothering. Since the adult woman never really breaks away from the primary identity with the mother or the father in terms of oedipal attachments she strives to achieve a personal identity which is structurally of a relational type - the self and other remain related in a hyphenated bond of self-

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other, a real exclusivity is never realized. Therefore, for girls heterosexual relationships are evolved on the model of non-exclusive secondary relationships whereas for boys the heterosexual relationships are exclusive and primary. Having excluded the other and having established a non-affective attitude towards the other boys cultivate ties of categorical and abstract role expectation. One among many other contentious points in the psychoanalytic exposition is the point relating to the explanation of how womanmother becomes a fundamental organizational feature of the sexgender system. In brief the explanation is as follows: the boy's identification with the father is rewarded by masculine superiority. In a male-dominated society men are more likely to imitate a heterosexual relationship. Even though men have an object-love that is a love for the other as object and women have a non-exclusive love which lacks in heterosexual commitment, a bonding between the two takes place. Interestingly, it is these contradictory approaches to heterosexuality that helps perpetuate families in which die womanmother is an essential organizational feature. Since women do not find heterosexual roles alone to be satisfactory they want to love someone as an extension of their self and this is possible only in relation to their children. Women's less exclusive commitment to heterosexuality and man's lack of affective bonding prepares a space for woman's mothering of her child. Later the child-mother relationship becomes the paradigm for all woman-initiated relationships. A chain of implications are established in this manner. The biological sex leads to a deterministic heterosexual development for girls and boys. This in turn forms the basis of the social explanation of the sexual division of labour. Having established this division a psychology and an ideology of male and female genderconstruction are explained. The explanation tells us why males dominate and females accept the subjugation, why females embrace the role of care and nurture. By playing the role of nurturing and caring women reproduce the sexual and familial division of labour across the board. The question that recurs in the context of psychological determinism as well as in the case of biological determinism is how scientific and dependable are these tests. How definitive is the psy-

choanalytic account of heterosexual object choice ? Is this theory immune to revisability ? The same questions arise in the context of biological explanation of the development of tertiary sex-linked characteristics in relation to primary sex-linked charateristics. With what amount of certainty, for instance, could one establish that the female and male sex-linked tertiary qualities are respectively as follows: The adjectives characterizing the feminine woman includes passive, fragile, dependent, non-competitive, nonaggressive, intuitive, receptive, afraid to take risks, emotionally labile, supportive, meternal, empathic, having low pain-tolerance, unambitious, sensitive to inner feelings and to responses from other people and the adjectives characterizing the masculine male include descriptions like aggressive, assertive, task-oriented, outwardly oriented, innovative, self-disciplined, stoic, active, rational, unsentimental, confident, competent, courageous, analytic and emotionally controlled. On a close examination it will be seen that the two sets of qualities characterizing masculine and feminine stereotypes are oppositional. The question that immediately comes to mind is whether there are identifiable type-differences between male and female members of the human species ? Common sense observation shows that the division of men and women on the basis of tertiary sex-linked characteristics are too variable to be brought under a neat taxonomy. Gender behaviours differ from culture to culture. There are cultures where men express their emotions more readily. It is problematic also as to how accurately we can identify a single person's personality as one being aggressive or nurturant or whatever. We also need to ask whether an individual displays a character trait always under all circumstances regardless of the allurements and/or provocations ? Similar questions also arise in relation to the ratio of oppositional characteristics - can it be said that an individual who is high in nurturing is necessarily low in aggression ? To focus on the critique of 'anatomy is destiny' one may ask are people who are conventional in their sex roles necessarily conventional in personality traits ?15 The pairing of sex roles and actually enacted, not prescribed, gender roles does not seem to provide a one-to-one correspondence. The historical fact that there is a

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prevalant stereotyped sexual division of labour may have its roots in a pre-historic convenience. Whatever may have been the pressures leading to the generation of this division, the division does not necessarily corroborate the thesis that biology and instinct provide a sufficient explanation of how women come to mother. The biological/anatomical explanation would amount to an essentialist account. Hardly any feminist today would admit of being essentialist, primarily because essentialism is too naive a view to be accepted. It may be argued that the sexual division of labour has proved its efficiency and worth over millennia. So even if there is no objective or scientific ground for its acceptance there is a very strong normative and pragmatic ground which provides sustenance to the sex-gender system. This is challenged by feminists, the sanctions that sustain this system are suspects. In practice they identify a very close relation between power, domination and the sex-gender system. The maintenance of a clearly demarcated sexgender divide makes it easier to retain the status quo of power. Feminists have repeatedly pointed out that sexism and essentialism go hand-in-hand. Sexists have attempted to justify all sorts of views about the inferiority of women by appealing to their essential difference. Sexism has a way of denying women the right to speak in an agentic capacity. Being defined as an essential mother she is bracketed with nature, anti alloted the role of caring and preserving. The issue of essentialism is like a many-headed monster, when rejected in one place it appears elsewhere. A causal relation between anatomy and gender roles may be denied but does that justify the claim that the meaning of the human body is changeable ? When sexual desires and sexual mores are constructed does body play a part - does body provide the material conditions by which gender is constructed ? Snitow has rightly pointed out that 'to assert that the body has no enduring, natural language often seems like a rejection of common sense'.16 Feminists are sharply divided on this issue. There are many who feel that gender being a social structure requires an explanation in terms of social structures. But if anatomy plays no definitive role then do we have a woman with a disembodied identity ? If we do then all previous

talk of biological determinism becomes a myth. If the crucial issue in the feminist debate boils down to taking sides with either accepting woman to be an embodied self or accepting woman as a disembodied self then we are faced squarely with the postmodernist charge that the category of 'woman' is a construct. This signifies that the 'self or the 'subject' is as much an issue of debate as is the social institution in which the self is situated.17 Those who question the primacy of body in sex-identification point to the changing medical conventions of sex-identity. They argue that even the biological sciences have shifted from the traditional characterization of sex in terms of external anatomy. The lack of fixity in the biological definition of sex is taken to be a sign of non-essentialism. This assumption, however, is also problematic. The change in definition does not indicate an evolutionary process of knowledge where one definition replaces the other in a linear sequence. Examples are cited to show that even when definitions change traditional practices of sex-identification continue. In the eighteenth century the uterus was considered to be the defining feature of femalemess. In the nineteenth century this convention was replaced by defining femaleness on the basis of sex glands. The convention was changed in the twentieth century when hormones and chromosomes replaced definitions based on organs. Thus the sex-differences are no longer related to reproductive functions. Recent researches have shown that human beings are a species with relatively little sexual diamorphism.18 In spite of these changes in conventions medical practitioners continue to be guided by binaries of external genitalia. Case studies of medical decisions relating to so-called inter-sexed children show that the decision is not guided by the child's chromosomal structure nor by its sex glands. Medical practitioners continue to follow the traditional practices of unambiguous sex-identification in terms of anatomy alone. They try to find out whether the XY child's external genitalia can be constructed into a penis by surgery and hormonal treatment, if so the child is categorized as male. On the other hand if it is seen that the XY individual's genitalia cannot be formed into a normal penis the individual is classified as female. While reporting on these case studies Sara Heinamaa observes

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that despite the radical nature of the surgical operation doctors describe the procedure as 'repairing', 'reconstruction' and completion of sex.19 This suggests that there is a deep-seated belief regarding the natural real dichotomy of sex and that chromosomes and hormonal systems are ambiguous signs of identity. Ambiguity of sex stipulates deviance and wherever possible it shoud be 'corrected' by surgical intervention or by behaviour therapy. This shows how fixed the traditional beliefs of sex are, it also shows how these beliefs are entrenched in a tradition of heterosexuality. The sedimentation of cultural structures is largely responsible for this. Though culture is a product of history not all such structures are dynamically formed - heterosexuality is one such construct, unambiguous male-female categories are such constructs. Interestingly the criterion for identifying the categories of male and female sex have changed as shown above, but the claim to unambiguity has not. The category of trans-sexuality does not figure in this debate of the identity of sex and sexuality in spite of the fact that the 'normal' male-female categories display a considerable amount of trans-sexuality. The whole purpose of discussing the medical professional's account of completion or reconstruction of sex is to show how the conceptualization of sex and sexuality has always involved interpretation and yet how this has systematically been denied. Sex has not only been variously interpreted as a biological category at times sex has also been understood as a product of gender. That means that the meaning of sex and sexuality has been constituted by the way gender has been constructed. It has been argued that there is a close connection between our bodily habits and our culture. If culture determines our understanding of our body then there can be no prediscursive sex. This approach leads to a minimalist account of biology. We have so far discussed three alternative ways of conceiving sex and gender: (i) sex determines gender, (ii) sex and gender are independent and (iii) sex and gender are both constructs of which the latter precedes the former. The third wave of feminism questions all three of the above alternatives. These alternatives together are characterized as the sameness/difference opposition.

Sameness occurs when gender identity is tailored to sex identity and also when both sex and gender are treated as representatives of culture. Difference occurs when sex and gender are seen respectively as biological and cultural categories. In all these cases the notion of binaries persist. New-wave feminists want to avoid binaries for political reasons, primarily because binaries are the breeding ground for discriminatory practice. How this is so will be discussed in chapter three. Attempts to conceptualize sex/gender independently of binaries have been made both from within the analytic tradition and from the phenomenological tradition. Sandra Harding, Lynn Hankinson Nelson and Judith Butler reject the sex gender binaries by characterizing them as mutually interactive. Meaning thereby that there is no absolute divide between nature and culture. They argue that there is a two-way influence between nature and culture - culture conditions nature and nature conditions culture. Man and woman are neither exclusively biological categories nor are they exclusively culture - determined categories. Moreover neither the categories of nature nor the categories of culture are static. The interactive nature of the two are represented by the expression 'sex/gender' replacing the previous characterization of sex and gender. The feminists belonging to the analytic tradition interpret the sex/gender interface in a mutually causal relation between nature and culture. This would imply a turn-by-turn interaction, meaning thereby that nature influences culture, then culture influences nature. Thus the cause-and-effect sequence moves in a backand-forth relation. In each moment there must be a clearly discernible referent - identifiable either as nature or as culture. In this way the nature-culture binaries continue to exist with the only difference that a unidirectional causal chain is now replaced by a mutually interactive causal chain. Though this mutuality leads to some amount of overlap between nature and culture, part of the distinction remains unchanged. The reason being that analytic philosophy treats the body in isolation as an object of knowledge. The body according to them is a bio-mechanism. This approach has far-reaching consequences. First the relation of the body to its environment is seen as an external relation of cause and function

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and not as a constitutive relation of symbiosis. On this view sex is an internal attribute of the body and gender is a socially constructed interpretation imposed on the body. This means that the states of the body and the states of the environment can be verified independently of each other. This implies that the human body does not mediate all knowledge claims. The body only conditions some knowledge claims. This apart there are other knowledge claims which are not mediated by the body. Though the former may be problematic in some instances the latter are thought to be unproblematic. The admission of unproblematic knowledge claims poses a problem for feminism because they later signify authority, superiority and power. By contrast knowledge claims conditioned by the body are less authoritative and more vulnerable. When culture legislates the conceptualization of the body then Simone de Beauvoir's pronouncement that 'one is not born a women one becomes one' reads as 'one is not born a woman one is made one'. Since all forms of social binaries are breeding grounds of discrimination Hainamaa tries to avoid binaries altogether in the context of sex and gender. This she attempts through a phenomenological treatment of the classification. According to her own submission she is working from within the phenomenological treatment developed by Merleau-Ponty. Interestingly, she tries to show how de Beauvoir follows this tradition as well while determining the identity of the 'second sex'. Heinamaa begins by questioning causal thinking itself. This step immediately leads her away from the Anglo-American analytic tradition embraced by many feminists. Heinamaa stresses the role of meaning and value in the construction of sex and gender identity. She points out that no matter how accurately we describe the biological, psychological and social facts relating to sex and gender and state the causal relations that hold between them a proper understanding cannot be arrived at. For this we need to understand the meanings and values attached to these concepts. The living perceiving body is dynamic and its relation to the external world cannot be explained in terms of causality, causality being an external relation holding between two objects. Whereas the relation between the perceiving body and the things it per-

ceives are so inextricably related, they must be understood as internal relations of dependence, that means that the relata cannot be separated without loosing essential parts of them. When the human body is no longer conceived as an object, sexuality and sex also cease to qualify the body as attributes. Sex and gender are not two attributes of the body, they are simply two aspects of the meaning of the same system. Sex and gender are inseparable. Heinamaa is not merely shifting from the stance of treating sex and gender as separate and from accepting a causal relation between the two, more importantly she is talking about intentionality as being situated in the body. This marks a major deviation from the more popular view of associating the intentional with consciousness, that is the mental. She cites Merleau-Ponty and de Beauvoir in her favour to establish the point that intentionality has been situated by them in the body not in consciousness. By situating intentionality in the body meaning and value are also simultaneously associated with the body. Such an identification helps to eliminate the gap between body (nature, sex) and mind (culture, gender). Body and mind are not biological and metaphysical categories - they characterize styles of being. Heinamaa speaks of the body 'as a sedimentation - of values and meanings, created by former bodily acts'.20 In this way the body becomes a system of signification. The structure of signification cannot be changed by an individual act. Since the body is maintained by signification it can only be changed by repeated acts of subversion and deviation. Initially there may seem to be no major difference btweeen the analytic feminist position of accepting a to-and-fro causal relation between sex and gender and Heinamaa's position. Both are in a sense willing to concede that the body is a seat of meaning. Neither group doubts that cultural meanings are vested in the body to change the identity of the body. The two groups differ in the understanding of the ways in which changes take place in the meaning invested in the body. For the analytic tradition meaning is determined and projected by culture on to nature, subsequently cultural meaning mutates nature. Even in cases where a strong causal link is not accepted between nature and culture weaker correlations are acknowledged. Whereas for Heinamaa the deposit of

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meaning in the body is the result of an intentional act. It is the product of the individual's own creation - comparable to a mode or style. Heinamaa makes two important points in relation to mode or style. First there is no underlying unity or substratum of being which holds them together as it is in the case of substance and attribute. Analogous to the web of belief mode or style must also be understood as a web. The connections in this web are like zigzag criss-cross connections. Secondly this web has no fixed structure. The peculiarity of this structure is that it cannot be understood as a whole. This prompts Heinamaa to comment that 'sexuality is a style, we cannot understand womanhood, femaleness or femininity by focussing on specific actions, for example child birth. We have to study the whole of action, and try to find its tones and melodies'.21 By now it should be abundantly clear that there is no one single explanation available for the relation between sex and gender. There is the (bio) scientific understanding which leads to biological determinism. In contrast there is also available the social constructivist position. Radically different from these two positions ,is the phenomenological position which lays emphasis on a person's intentionality, and it tries to highlight the body's constitutive role in subjectivity and knowledge. Clearly this position is diametrically opposed to the classical Anglo-American analytic position which maintains a sharp distinction between the cognitive and the non-congnitive modes of relating to the universe. I say 'classical' because the contemporary scene in Anglo-American feminist thought is much more complicated. The works of Derrida, Foucault and Lacan have been strongly influential. Now Australian feminists like Elizabeth Grosze and Moira Gatens are also upholding positions very close to those of Heinamaa. Grosze locates sense and the emergence of meaning at the level of the corporeal. Similarly Gatens speaks of the masculine and the feminine as different modes of dynamic embodiment. The body gains a new significance in this way. The body not only contributes to the formation of individual identity it becomes a locus of political power and construction. The feminists claim that, 'the personal is the political' gains a new significance - even the body becomes a product.

The major portion of feminist criticism is based on the sexgender division. The conceptual distinction between the two has often been taken for granted. In this chapter I have tried to show that the distinction is not totally unambiguous - large issues are involved in diis debate. So when the sex-gender division is taken as the basis of criticism or as the basis of theory one must state the sense in which the specific conceptualization is being done. In whichever sense sex and gender may be taken, it goes without saying that, their characterizations will have far-reaching implications for feminist thought. Since both the categories of sex and gender are available for public examination it could be expected that investigations into the nature of these categories will be objective and the results of such investigations will be available for public scrutiny. It could further be expected that if the norms of objectivity are properly followed then a consensus of opinion could be arrived at The history of this debate, however, shows that, far from tending towards a convergence, interpretations have been proliferating over the years. This trend further supports the claim that knowledge is mediated by the body and by culture or, in other words, by some form of life or the other.