FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Thu Apr 20, 2023 3:04 amIf you can only talk about sexes in these terms then you have no place discussing genders whatsoever. The conversation is meaningless to you because you cannot participate at the relelvant conceptual level.
It depends on what you mean by "gender" and "the relevant conceptual level". I've been talking about
sex in purely biological terms, but I didn't say that there is no meaningful, non-synonymous concept of
gender defined in non-biological (psychological or sociological) terms. For example, what Ann Oakley writes makes sense to me. However, I insist on the importance and indispensability of the biological concept of sex in the
gender vs. sex debate.
"Gender is a term that has psychological and cultural rather than biological connotations. If the proper terms for sex are 'male' and 'female', the corresponding terms for gender are 'masculine' and 'feminine'; these latter may be quite independent of (biological) sex. Gender is the amount of masculinity or femininity found in a person, and, obviously, while there are mixtures of both in many humans, the normal male has a preponderance of masculinity and the normal female a preponderance of femininity."
(Oakley, Ann. Sex, Gender and Society. 1972. Reissue, Abingdon: Routledge, 2016. p. 116)
Another example, Holly Lawford-Smith's conception of gender makes sense to me too:
"Gender as social norms and expectations. There is a sex/gender distinction, and sex is indispensable to it. There are two sexes, male and female, and intersex conditions do not undermine this. Gender is a set of social norms and expectations imposed on the basis of sex. There is no understanding gender without sex. Women are subject to the expectation that they be feminine, men that they be masculine. Men are valued more highly than women. Understanding gender as norms imposed on the basis of sex allows us to make predictions, for example about who will be subject to social sanctions (masculine and other gender norm non-conforming women, feminine and other gender norm non-conforming men). And it allows us to think about the social construction of femininity, the ways that women have been ‘made’ to be feminine, both throughout history, and within an individual woman’s lifetime. This understanding allows us to critique a range of social practices, for example the standards of beauty by which women are assessed. These may require women to spend more time and money, and accept more pain and discomfort, than men (for example, to purchase skincare regimens, makeup, hair products, clothing and shoes; to take the extra time needed to apply makeup and style hair; to have body hair plucked, waxed, or lasered; to undergo cosmetic surgeries like breast implants, nose jobs, or labiaplasties). It is the social construction of womanhood that causes some women to disidentify with womanhood and in some cases attempt to disaffiliate from womanhood (‘I am not like that, so I must not be a woman’). And conversely, it is the social construction of womanhood that attracts some people who are not female to identify with womanhood and in some cases affiliate with womanhood (‘I am like that, so I must be a woman’)."
(Lawford-Smith, Holly. Gender-Critical Feminism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. pp. x-xi)
By the way, Kathleen Stock distinguishes between four conceptions of gender:
"I will disambiguate four senses of ‘gender’ now. Readers should return to this section if they later come across a use that confuses them. Just as the English word ‘bank’ can refer to the land beside the river, or the institution that looks after your money, the following are four different meanings of the English word ‘gender’ – etymologically related, no doubt, and overlapping in terms of people they apply to, but standing for different things. Here they are.
GENDER1: A polite-sounding word for the division between men and women, understood as a traditional alternative word for biological sex/the division between biological males and females. This word is thought to have the benefit of an absence of
embarrassing connotations of sexiness in the copulatory sense. When a passport application, say, asks for ‘gender’, it’s intended in this sense. In Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, a character refers to the ‘masculine gender’, meaning males/men.
GENDER2: A word for social stereotypes, expectations and norms of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’, originally directed towards biological males and females respectively. These can and do differ from culture to culture, though there are many overlaps too.
GENDER3: A word for the division between men and women, understood, by definition, as a division between two sets of people: those who have the social role of masculinity projected on to them, and those who have the social role of femininity projected on to them. …In the late twentieth century [this view] was enthusiastically endorsed by some feminists as a putative shield against accusations of ‘biological determinism’: the idea that female anatomy is domestic destiny.
GENDER4: A shortened version of the term ‘gender identity’. …[A] common idea is that it is the ‘private experience of gender role’ – roughly, whether you relate to yourself psychologically as a boy or man, girl or woman, or neither, in a way that has nothing directly to do with your sex.
Keeping these different senses in mind is crucial when trying to decipher various claims made by feminists and trans activists."
(Stock, Kathleen. Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism. London: Fleet, 2021.)
