Conceptions of Sex

Alex Byrne’s article, “Are Women Adult Human Females?”, asks a question that Byrne treats as nearly rhetorical. Byrne’s answer is, ‘clearly, yes’. Moreover, Byrne claims, 'woman' is a biological category that does not admit of any interpretation as (also) a social category. It is important to respond to Byrne’s argument, but mostly because it is paradigmatic of a wider phenomenon. The slogan “women are adult human females” is a political slogan championed by anti-trans activists, appearing on billboards, pamphlets, and anti-trans (...) online forums. In this paper, I respond to Byrne’s argument, revealing significant problems with its background assumptions, content, and methodology. (shrink)

"The Necessity of Differences," a paper delivered as the Linda Singer Memorial Lecture at Miami University of Ohio, February 1994, and in a revised version, at the meeting of the Society for Women in Philosophy, Midwestern Division, Minneapolis, April 1994. A talk from this paper on a panel on "Feminist Community," sponsored by the Committee on the Status of Women at the May 1994 meetings of the American Philosophical Association, Central Division. A version of this material was delivered as the (...) Austin-Hempel Lecture at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, March 1996. (shrink)

The sexual domain is unified only by the phenomenal quality of the occurrence of the desires, activities, and pleasures it includes. There is no conceptual restriction on the range of intentional objects those desires, activities, and pleasures can take. Neither is there good conceptual reason to privilege any class of them as paradigmatic. Since the quality unifying the sexual is not morally significant, the morality of sexuality is no different from morality in general. The view that participant consent is morally (...) sufficient in the sexual domain therefore requires the more controversial view that it is morally sufficient in general. (shrink)

One of the most fundamental premises of feminist philosophy is the assumption of an invidious asymmetry between the genders that has to be overcome. Parallel to this negative account of asymmetry we also find a positive account, developed in particular within the context of so-called feminist philosophies of difference. I explore both notions of gender asymmetry. The goal is a clarification of the notion of asymmetry as it can presently be found in feminist philosophy. Drawing upon phenomenology as well as (...) feminist difference theory, I argue that a gender asymmetry does exist that cannot-as in the first assumption-be transformed into symmetry. (shrink)

The paper argues that the philosophical starting point of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex is the phenomenological understanding of the living body, developed by Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It shows that Beauvoir's notion of philosophy stems from the phenomenological interpretation of Cartesianism which emphasizes the role of evidence, self-criticism, and dialogue.

I argue that Irigaray's recent work develops a theoretically cogent and politically radical form of realist essentialism. I suggest that she identifies sexual difference with a fundamental difference between the rhythms of percipient fluids constituting women's and men's bodies, supporting this with a philosophy of nature that she justifies phenomenologically and ethically. I explore the politics Irigaray derives from this philosophy, which affirms the sexes' rights to realize the possibilities of their rhythmically diverse bodies.

I challenge the age-old binary opposition between human and animal, not as philosophers sometimes do by claiming that humans are also animals, or that animals are capable of suffering or intelligence, but rather by questioning the very category of “the animal” itself. This category groups a nearly infinite variety of living beings into one concept measured in terms of humans—animals are those creatures that are not human. In addition, I argue that the binary opposition between human and animal is intimately (...) linked to the binary opposition between man and woman. Furthermore, I suggest that thinking through animal differences or differences among various living creatures opens up the possibility of thinking beyond the dualist notion of sexual difference and enables thinking toward a multiplicity of sexual differences. (shrink)

This paper addresses the appropriation of theories of evolution by nineteenth-century feminists, focusing on the critical response to Darwin's The Descent of Man by Eliza Burt Gamble and Antoinette Brown Blackwell and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's social evolutionism. For Gilman, evolutionism was a revolutionary resource for feminism, one of its greatest hopes. Gamble and Blackwell revisit Darwin's data with the aim of locating, amidst his ostensive conclusions to the contrary, his implicit "defense" of either the equality or the superiority of women. (...) This article identifies the reasons for, and limitations of, this enthusiasm. To some extent, the basis of this feminism is provided by its keen perception of disparities between what a text does, and what it says it is doing. But these feminists did not think through the implications for their own rhetoric about race hierarchy. Darwin's trope of the "savage" would return in the work of some of these feminists, occasionally displaced or rejected, but usually reiterated, and sometimes integral to the feminism in question. (shrink)

This essay examines Irigaray's analysis of politics and the political implications of her critique of sacrificial orders that repress difference/matter. I suggest that her descriptions of a fluid “feminine” can be read as an alternative symbolic not dependent on repression. This idea is politically promising in opening a possibility for justice and a nonantagonistic intersubjectivity. I conclude by assessing Irigaray's concrete proposals for sexuate rights and a civil identity for women.

The paper argues that the philosophical starting point of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex is the phenomenological understanding of the living body, developed by Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It shows that Beauvoir's notion of philosophy stems from the phenomenological interpretation of Cartesianism which emphasizes the role of evidence, self-criticism, and dialogue.

Early scientific investigation of the reproductive process was neither a cause nor a direct result of changing social attitudes toward sex. It was instead part of the continuing search, initiated in the 1890s, to discover internal secretions that might be isolated and prove useful in therapy. Laboratory scientists, nonetheless, were among the many groups altering understanding of human sexual physiology in the first quarter of this century. The new data they generated regarding the dependence of human sexuality and fertility on (...) chemical substances elaborated by the ovaries and testes became part of the evidence which hastened that quite tortuous transformation called the sexual revolution.Increasingly, as social reformers demanded more information about human reproduction, scientists were asked to provide it, and scientific concerns were shaped in the process. In the 1920s, especially in the United States, studies of the physiology of reproduction began to receive financial backing from social reformers. This was because for many, contraception had become a fact of life. Expression rather than repression of sexuality was accepted as being necessary to the stability of the fundamental social unit, the family. Theoretical and practical incentives for continued study of the reproductive process could thus be joined in common effort. This convergence of goals occurred just as the gonadal hormones were being isolated. The 1920s, therefore, mark an important juncture in the congruence of interests represented by theoretical science on the one hand and expressed social needs on the other.As a result of this convergence of interests and goals, physiologists gained a new realm of influence, claiming authoritative knowledge over a subject which once had been allocated to the priest and then, by the mid-nineteenth century, transferred to the physician. Since that formative period other research scientists, such as Alfred Kinsey and, more recently, William Masters and Virginia Johnson, have explored that niche and applied the scientific method to study of behavioral and physiological aspects of the human sexual response. They have been beset by many of the same tactical issues that confronted the earliest investigators of reproductive physiology. The definition, specification, and measurement of phenomena relating to sexual and reproductive activity have been as inherently difficult as they have been taboo.79Traditional resistance to scientific study of the reproductive process was overcome in the early twentieth century by the expectation that this particular line of inquiry would lead to understanding and therefore medical control of the complex of disorders—physiological, psychological, and social — associated with the generative glands. Early investigators, particularly in Britain, did not wish to be social reformers. Especially in the 1910s such a stance would have threatened their credibility in a field determined to establish itself as a theoretical science. Once scientific progress was assured, as it was from about 1920, new problems opened for investigation and began to be motivated by social needs as well as by the concerns of a rapidly developing science. Especially in the United States new resources encouraged this work, allowing development of the specialized focus on gonadal hormones represented by the emerging field of reproductive endocrinology. (shrink)

For many years feminists have asserted an "intersection" between sex and race. This paper, drawing heavily on the work of Michel Foucault, offers a genealogical account of the two concepts showing how they developed together and in relation to similar political forces in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thus it attempts to give a concrete meaning to the claim that sex and race are intersecting phenomena.

This article examines shifts in the legal, medical, and common-sense logics governing the designation of sex on birth certificates issued by the City of New York between 1965 and 2006. In the initial iteration, the stabilization of legal sex categories was organized around the notion of “fraud”; in the most recent iteration, “permanence” became the measure of authenticity. We frame these legal constructions of sex with theories about the “natural attitude” toward gender.

Using the notion of a transfiguration of sexed bodies, this text deals with the stratifications of the gender-specific imaginary. Starting from the figurative-thus creative-force of the psyche-soma, its interaction with the configurations of a collective body will be developed from the perspectives of social philosophy and philosophy of history. At the center of my discussion is the interdependence between the individual psyche-soma, the socialized individual, and a collective bodily imaginary, on the one hand, and the strata of a gender imaginary (...) on the other. The ontological metaphor as well as the dimension of political action will be highlighted as playing a crucial role for these processes. (shrink)

This book examines sociobiology’s validity and significance, using the sociobiological theory of the evolution of mating and parenting as an example. It identifies and discusses the array of factors that determine sociobiology’s effort to become a science, providing a rare, balanced account—more critical than that of its advocates and more constructive than that of its critics. It sees a role for sociobiology in changing the way we understand the goals of evolutionary biology, the proper way to evaluate emerging sciences, and (...) the deep structure of scientific theories. The book’s premise is that evolutionary biology would not be complete if it did not explain evolutionarily significant social facts about nonhumans and humans. It proposes that explanations should be evaluated in terms of their basis in underlying theories, research programs, and conceptual frameworks. (shrink)

At the turn of the twentieth century, biologists such as Oscar Riddle, Thomas Hunt Morgan, Frank Lillie, and Richard Goldschmidt all puzzled over the question of sexual difference, the distinction between male and female. They all offered competing explanations for the biological cause of this difference, and engaged in a fierce debate over the primacy of their respective theories. Riddle propounded a metabolic theory of sex dating from the late-nineteenth century suggesting that metabolism lay at the heart of sexual difference. (...) Thomas Hunt Morgan insisted on the priority of chromosomes, Frank Lillie emphasized the importance of hormones, while Richard Goldschmidt supported a mixed model involving both chromosomes and hormones. In this paper, I will illustrate how the older metabolic theory of sex was displaced when those who argued for the relatively newer theories of chromosomes and hormones gradually formed an alliance that accommodated each other and excluded the metabolic theory of sex. By doing so, proponents of chromosomes and hormones established their authority over the question of sexual difference as they laid the foundations for the new disciplines of genetics and endocrinology. Their debate raised urgent questions about what constituted sexual difference, and how scientists envisioned the plasticity and controllability of this difference. These theories also had immediate political and cultural consequences at the turn of the twentieth century, especially for the eugenic and feminist movements, both of which were heavily invested in knowledge of sex and its determination, ascertainment, and command. (shrink)

Using the notion of a transfiguration of sexed bodies, this text deals with the stratifications of the gender-specific imaginary. Starting from the figurative-thus creative-force of the psyche-soma, its interaction with the configurations of a collective body will be developed from the perspectives of social philosophy and philosophy of history. At the center of my discussion is the interdependence between the individual psyche-soma, the socialized individual, and a collective bodily imaginary, on the one hand, and the strata of a gender imaginary (...) on the other. The ontological metaphor (meaning the metaphor that brings about social modes of being) as well as the dimension of political action will be highlighted as playing a crucial role for these processes. (shrink)

Through a re-reading of Antigone, I offer a critique of Hegel's use of the story to illustrate the unity which emerges from the representation of sexual difference in ethical life. Using Hegel's own account of habits, as the mechanism by which the body becomes a sign of the self, I argue that the pretense of social unity assumes the proper construction and representation of one body only. This critique is brought to bear upon contemporary moves towards a post-Hegelian ethics of (...) difference. (shrink)

I argue that the existence of sexual dimorphism poses a profound challenge to those philosophers who wish to deny the moral significance of the idea of ‘normal human capacities’ in debates about the ethics of human enhancement. The biological sex of a child will make a much greater difference to their life prospects than many of the genetic variations that the philosophical and bioethical literature has previously been concerned with. It seems, then, that bioethicists should have something to say about (...) the choice between a male and a female embryo. Either, 1) parents have reason to choose boys over girls; (2) parents have reason to choose girls over boys; or, (3) parents have neither reason to choose girls over boys nor reason to choose boys over girls. Embracing either of the first two alternatives has strongly counterintuitive – and arguably morally repugnant – consequences. To motivate the third option we must either make reference to the idea of ‘normal human capacities’ or argue that parents should consider the interests of society when thinking about what sort of children they should bring into the world – an implication that should be extremely controversial in debates about the ‘new eugenics’. I conclude, then, that the idea of ‘normal human capacities’ is properly crucial to reasoning about the ethics of shaping future persons. (shrink)

The influence of pervasive cultural norms on people’s actions constitutes a longstanding problem for autonomy theory. On the one hand, such norms often seem to elude the kind of reflection that autonomous agency requires. On the other hand, they are hardly entirely beyond the pale of autonomy: people do sometimes reflect critically on them and resist them. This paper draws on phenomenological accounts of embodiment in order to reconcile these observations. We suggest that pervasive cultural norms exert a strong and (...) elusive, but occasionally resistible, influence because they are incorporated – they operate on the largely pre-reflective bodily level of human existence. As an illustration we discuss parental decisions about surgery for children born with unclear sex, decisions permeated by deeply entrenched norms about sexual difference and genital appearance. (shrink)

Aside from constructing a compelling case for how rereading evolution from a neomaterialist and radical empiricist perspective undermines an enduring binary of sexual difference, Luciana Parisi underscores a tension in the work of Elizabeth Grosz, known both for her novel, feminist, neomaterialist study of Darwinian evolution and her staunch support of sexual difference. Parisi contends, and I suspect Grosz herself is keenly aware, that there is a paradox in holding these views simultaneously. Thus, this paper will not only expand upon (...) Parisi's argument for preaccelerated, unbounded, creative, inhuman, neomaterialist, and radical empirical accounts of matter and sex but also propose a reading of Grosz's work that could potentially wrest her from the perceived paradox. I call this the “theory sex” reading, which can be characterized as a metatheoretical difference materially embodied in the unbridgeable gap between Grosz's two theoretical stances. Theory sex is not an ontology but a concept in line with a Deleuzo–Guattarian understanding of the philosopher's mode of living with chaos. Theory sex produces vibrations and dissonance, which reproduce or chart lines of flight toward theories like Parisi's. These vibrations compose the requiem both honoring and retaining the virtual legacy of sexual difference into the future. (shrink)

Sex is not the answer to everything, though young men think it is, but it may be the answer to the intractable debate over the ethics of human embryonic stem cell research. In this paper, I advance one ethical principle that, as yet, has not received the attention its platitudinous character would seem to merit. If found acceptable, this principle would permit the beneficial use of any embryonic or fetal tissue that would, by default, be lost or destroyed. More important, (...) I make two appeals to consistency, or to parity of reasoning, that I believe show that no one who either has used or intends to use sexual reproduction as their means of procreation, nor indeed anyone who has unprotected heterosexual intercourse, nor anyone who finds in vitro fertilization acceptable, nor anyone who believes that abortion is ever permissible can consistently object on principle to human embryo research nor to the use of embryonic stem cells for research or therapy. (shrink)

Since the 19th century, and despite tremendous progress in science, the topic of 'brain and sex' remains a matter of misleading interpretations, far beyond the field of science. The media are not solely responsible for this situation. Some scientific circles still actively promote the ideology of biological determinism in their attempt to explain differences in behaviour and cognitive abilities between men and women. Experimental data from brain imaging studies, cognitive tests or the discovery of new genes are often distorted to (...) serve deterministic ideas. As biotechnologies and genetic engeneering represent today a new economic and lucrative challenge, the question of what is innate and what is acquired is becoming more and more significant, requiring vigilant scrutiny from us all. (shrink)

Anyone who might be surprised to find an issue on the figures of myth and gender appearing under the aegis of the poet of Pierres or Récurrences dérobées can only be referred to his mineral 'mythology', where all possible permutations of the sexes have a place, as in a Mendeleyev table. But Roger Caillois' interest in myths and the notion of gender, which is found in early texts from his youth, crops up unchanged in those from his maturity, such as (...) Le Fleuve Alphée, and the precious, rare fictions, like 'Récit du délogé'. To sum up in a word his intellectual journey, in the beginning there was stone, at the end stone remained. Within that parenthesis the space of sex and its myths unfolded. (shrink)

Discussions in neuroethics to date have ignored an ever-increasing neuroscientific lilterature on sex differences in brains. If, indeed, there are significant differences in the brains of men versus women and in the brains of boys versus girls, the ethical and social implications loom very large. I argue that recent neuroscientific findings on sex-based brain differences have significant implications for theories of morality and for our understandings of the neuroscience of moral cognition and behavior.

Since the first sex reassignment operations were performed, individual sex has come to be, to some extent at least, a technological artifact. The existence of sperm sorting technology, and of prenatal determination of fetal sex via ultrasound along with the option of termination, means that we now have the power to choose the sex of our children. An influential contemporary line of thought about medical ethics suggests that we should use technology to serve the welfare of individuals and to remove (...) limitations on the opportunities available to them. I argue that, if these are our goals, we may do well to move towards a “post sex” humanity. Until we have the technology to produce genuine hermaphrodites, the most efficient way to do this is to use sex selection technology to ensure that only girl children are born. There are significant restrictions on the opportunities available to men, around gestation, childbirth, and breast-feeding, which will be extremely difficult to overcome via social or technological mechanisms for the foreseeable future. Women also have longer life expectancies than men. Girl babies therefore have a significantly more “open” future than boy babies. Resisting the conclusion that we should ensure that all children are born the same sex will require insisting that sexual difference is natural to human beings and that we should not use technology to reshape humanity beyond certain natural limits. The real concern of my paper, then, is the moral significance of the idea of a normal human body in modern medicine. (shrink)

The normative significance of the distinction between therapy and enhancement has come under sustained philosophical attack in recent discussions of the ethics of shaping future persons by means of preimplantation genetic diagnosis and other advanced genetic technologies. In this paper, I argue that giving up the idea that the answer to the question as to whether a condition is “normal” should play a crucial role in assessing the ethics of genetic interventions has unrecognized and strongly counterintuitive implications when it comes (...) to selecting what sort of children should be brought into the world. According to standard philosophical accounts of the factors one should take into account when making such .. (shrink)