As nature made us

As Nature Made Us? -
Part I22:31 02-03-2010,
noreply@blogger.com (aqueertheory), intersexual, queer, sex, social
construction, social movements, third gender, transgender, transsexual,
BELOW THE BELT
An amended version of this article was originally published in the first edition
of Exposition Magazine.

The Social Construction of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

“Male is to female, as masculine is to feminine, as penis is to vagina.“ These
few words embody the predominant view of sex, gender, and sexuality
in the 20th Century. This period was historically governed by the presumption
that male and female were the only two sexes. Masculinity was viewed
as the natural manifestation of maleness, while femininity was considered to be
the biological outgrowth of femaleness. And heterosexual sex “
defined as the union of penis and vagina “ was perceived as the only normal form
of sexual expression. Anyone who did not fit this supposedly
natural and divinely ordained heterosexist model (such as: feminine males,
masculine females, people who changed their sex, intersexuals and
homosexuals) was liable to discrimination, police persecution, and
pathologization. Gender and sexual nonconformists were frequently branded
“freaks of nature,“ harassed by law enforcement, and placed under the not so
benevolent care of the medical establishment. For example, a common
“treatment“ for gays and lesbians during the 1950s was the so-called “aversion
therapy,“ whereby psychiatrists attempted to rid homosexuals of
their “immoral“ desires by subjecting them to electric shocks. The horrors of
this procedure have been poignantly depicted in the queer-themed
films, Latter Days and But I“m a Cheerleader.

In the latter part of the 20th century, however, the heterosexist model began to
come under consistent critique, questioning and consternation.
The rise of feminist, gay and lesbian, transgender, and intersex social
movements augured the de-pathologization of gender and sexual difference.
Those who deviated from the heterosexist model were increasingly viewed as
individuals deprived of their human rights, rather than sick people in
need of fixing. At the same time, sociologists, historians, philosophers, queer
theorists, and feminists began to question the naturalness of the
heterosexist model. Since it was no longer possible to simply write off the
lives and experiences of gay, transgender and intersex people as
illegitimate and unnatural, this diverse group of scholars began to take them
seriously in their work. Taking their cue from Simone de Beauvoir's
now famous assertion, that “one is not born a woman, but rather becomes one,“
they posed the following puzzles: “if masculinity for men, femininity
for women, and heterosexuality are indeed natural and biologically pre-
determined, then how is it possible that feminine women, masculine men,
and homosexuals even exist? If sex is physically given at birth, then what do we
make of the experience of transsexuals, who“s mental and physical
sexes do not match? And how do we explain the diversity of masculinities and
femininities across time and space?“

Contrary to the heterosexist model, which depends on assertions about biological
given-ness, these scholars developed the idea that the categories
of sex, gender and sexuality are socially constructed: they are created by human
beings and depend on collective agreement for their existence.
A good example of a social construct is money. Little multicolored slips of
paper have no inherent meaning to them, and yet, they are extremely
valuable in society. Their role in economic exchange can only occur because of a
tacit social agreement about what they mean. While the slips of
paper are certainly real, their most important function (as symbols of economic
value) is purely a social construction. Similarly, while bodies,
behaviors, mannerisms, and sexual desires are real, the meanings that we give to
them, the way in which we organize and categorize them, are
created by humans and reliant on social agreement for their existence.

Sex

The argument about the social construction of sex is perhaps the most difficult
to make. Eager skeptics would surely say: “But aren“t there clear
differences between male and female anatomy? And how would we reproduce without
the two sexes?“ Nevertheless, the biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling,
has put forward a convincing argument that sex, at least in its 20th Century
manifestation, is not a natural given.

The heterosexist model assumes that there are only two sexes, that all humans
have either male or female sex characteristics, and that everyone is
necessarily a member of a particular sex from birth. However, the existence of
the intersexed, or people with a mixture of female and male sex
organs, suggests otherwise. Knowledge of this phenomenon may come as a surprise
to most because, until very recently, it was standard practice
for doctors to, in Fausto-Sterling“s words, “catch intersexuals at birth.“
Confronted with “ambiguous“ genitalia, doctors rushed to operate on the
infant in order to surgically craft “appropriate“ male and female reproductive
organs. Intersexuals were, thus, literally erased from existence in
order to enforce the two-sex system.

Those intersexuals who escaped the surgeon“s knife faced an altogether different
kind of erasure: social exclusion and discrimination.
The story of the Spanish hurdler, Maria Patino, whose mixed sex characteristics
were revealed by “femininity tests“ mandated by the International
Olympic Committee, is emblematic. While Patino had only ever known herself to be
a woman, the tests showed that she had Y-chromosomes and
testicles inside her labia, and this resulted in swift disqualification from
competition at the 1985 Kobe World University Games, abandonment
by her boyfriend, and the revocation of all her previous awards. “I was erased
from the map, as if I had never existed,“ she recalled. And while
Patino did manage to return to competition, regaining her status as an athlete
was an uphill struggle of titanic proportions, both financially
and emotionally.

If intersexuality casts doubt on the proposition that there are only two sexes
and that all bodies separate easily into male and female
categories, transsexuality poses another challenge to the central tenets of the
heterosexist model: it questions the assertion that sex is
given from birth and remains constant throughout life. Trans activist and gender
theorist, Julia Serano, has described transsexuality as the
state of experiencing “subconscious sex“ (or the sex one profoundly feels
oneself to be) as fundamentally at odds with birth sex. Many trans
people will take steps to change their physical bodies later in life in order to
remedy this disjunction. This means that sex is not necessarily
a fixed category that one is born into. Instead, it is more useful to
conceptualize it as an “assigned“ classification. Doctors, using socially
agreed-upon definitions of what constitutes a man and a woman, will assign
children a sex at birth and parents, relatives and everyone else will
treat the child accordingly. But this assigned sex may not match the sex that a
person feels himself, herself or hirself to be.

On the whole, the basic flaw that critics have identified in the heterosexist
model is over-simplification: it overlooks the actual variety and
complexity of sexed bodies and experiences. In the words of anthropologist
Clifford Geertz, people who adhere to the heterosexist model tend to
“regard
femaleness and maleness as exhausting the natural categories in which persons
can conceivably come: what falls between is a darkness, an offense
against reason.“

The actual diversity and complexity of sex, viewed outside the framework of
heterosexism, has prompted some to propose a fundamental transformation

of our two-sex system. For example, Fausto-Sterling has argued that we should
add a further three sexes (herms, merms and ferms) to our
classification scheme, in order to come closer to capturing the diversity of
human bodies and lived experiences. And while she has been criticized
for basing her argument solely on genital diversity (as transsexuals have taught
us, sex is not necessarily defined by one“s genitals), the presence
of “Third Sexes“ in some non-Western societies does suggest that a two-sex
classification is not inevitable and can be transformed.

For instance, Serena Nanda has argued that the hijras of India represent “an
institutionalized third gender role, [they are] neither male nor
female.“ This idea is controversial: some have claimed that since hijras are
born male (or intersexual), but adopt feminine behaviors, names,
mannerisms and styles of dress, they are simply trans women living in an Indian
cultural context. But there is also evidence to suggest that
some hijras do identify themselves with the “third sex“ category. Take the
example of Mona Ahmed, a hijra interviewed by prominent photographer
Dayanita Singh. When Singh asked her about whether she would like to have a sex
change operation, Ahmed replied negatively and explained: “You
really do not understand. I am the third sex. Not a man trying to be a woman. It
is your society“s problem that you only recognize two sexes.“

The second part of this article, which deals with the social construction of
gender and sexuality, will be posted in two weeks' time.
Until then, please feel free to start a discussion in the comment box below!

***For More Information***

On the social construction of sex, see Anne Fausto-Sterling“s book, Sexing the
Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality.
To find out more about intersexuality, check out The Intersex Society of North
America. There is a lot of literature on trans issues,
but Julia Serano“s Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the
Scapegoating of Femininity is a useful start. On social construction
in general, see Berger and Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality. For a
more radical view, check out Judith Butler's Bodies That Matter.

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As nature made us

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