Abstract
That gender is indispensable to feminist theorizing—both as an object of analysis and an analytical tool—seems so self-evident that it surely goes without saying. Yet it is precisely because gender has achieved that status that its historical legacy is worth examining. It bears repeating that gender’s history as an ontological category is very specific and relatively recent in English, and it is intricately linked to technological developments and political projects. In this chapter I continue the conceptual history of gender by exploring the various ways that feminist scholars engaged with the work of Money and of Stoller over the course of the 1970s. At its heart this chapter considers second-wave feminism’s engagement with the intersexed via gender.’ That has determined my selection of material in the following pages. From the moment that feminists turned to sexology for evidence and for concepts with which to refute the sexism so inherent in the social theory of the day, that engagement has had particular effects for feminist theorizing and for the material reality of the intersexed.
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Notes
For examples, see Mary Crawford, “A Reappraisal of Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach,” Feminism and Psychology 10, no. 1 (2000): 7–10
Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987)
Mary Hawkesworth, “Confounding Gender,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 22, no. 3 (1997): 649–685
Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York and London: Routledge, 1991)
Linda Nicholson, “Interpreting Gender,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 20 (1994):79–105.
David Haig, “The Inexorable Rise of Gender and the Decline of Sex: Social Change in Academic Titles 1945–2001,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 33, no. 2 (2004): 94. Take for example Mary Hawkesworth’s claim that “although originally a linguistic category
An exception was the analysis offered by Marilyn Strathern, “An Anthropological Perspective,” in Exploring Sex Differences, ed. Barbara B. Lloyd and John Archer (London and New York: Academic Press, 1976), 49–70.
Ann Curthoys, ed., Gender in the Social Sciences in Australia (Canberra: Australian Publishing Service, 1998), 180
Curthoys, “Gender Studies in Australia: A History,” Australian Feminist Studies 15, no. 31 (2000): 21.
Moira Gatens, “A Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinction,” in Beyond Marxism? Interventions after Marx, ed. Paul Patton and Judith Allen (Leichhardt, NSW: Intervention, 1983), 143–160.
In his first published monograph Money offered a strong critique of the Cartesian dualism of body and mind and of nature and culture. Yet ironically his work relied upon binary concepts on many other levels. I would argue that this is indicative of the tension in his work between what is and what ought to be. See John Money, The Psychologic Study of Man (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1957).
See for example, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, “Equal Opportunity, Free from Gender-Based Discrimination,” in Sex Eguality, ed. Jane English (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977), 188–195.
Sandra Bem, “The Theory and Measurement of Androgyny,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 (1971): 1047–1054
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (London: Gollancz, 1963)
Sherry Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature to Culture?” in Woman, Culture, and Society, ed. Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1974), 67–87
Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (Toronto and New York: Bantam Books, 1977).
See for example, Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: Morrow, 1970)
Bernice Hausman, Changing Sex: Transsexualism, Technology and the Idea of Gender (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995).
Money and Anke Ehrhardt, Man and Woman, Boy and Girl: The Differentiation and Dimorphism of Gender Identity from Conception to Maturity. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), 310.
Greer had won a Commonwealth Scholarship for her MA thesis ( USyd), which she used to fund doctoral studies at Newnham College, Cambridge University. Graduating in 1968 with a PhD in English literature on Shakespeare’s early comedies, Greer went on to teach at Warwick University (1967–1973). The publication of The Female Eunuch in 1970 made Greer a public figurehead for the women’s liberation movement in Britain (Christine Wallace, Greer, Untamed Shrew [Sydney: Macmillan Pan, 1997]) .Greer was also, during that period, the founding European editor of the anarchist sex magazine Suck (John Heidenry, What Wild Ecstasy: The Rise and Fall of the Sexual Revolution [Kew: William Heinemann, 1997]).
Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1970), 14, emphasis in original.
Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (London: Granada, 1971).
See Helen Hughes, The Status of Women in Sociology 1968–1972: Report to the American Sociological Association of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession (Washington, DC: American Sociological Association, 1973).
Ann Curthoys, Gender in the Social Sciences; Arlene Kaplan Daniels, “Feminist Perspectives in Sociological Research,” in Another Voice, ed. Marcia Millman and Rosabeth Moss Kanter (New York: Anchor Press, 1975), 340–380
Meredith Gould and Rochelle Kern-Daniels, “Towards a Sociological Theory of Gender and Sex,” The American Sociologist 12 (1977): 182–189
Barbara Laslett and Barrie Thorne, ed., Feminist Sociology: Life Histories of a Movement (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997).
Betty Roszak and Theodore Roszak, ed. Masculine/Feminine: Readings in Sexual Mythology and the Liberation of Women (New York: Harper and Row, 1969)
Ella Lasky, ed. Humanness: An Exploration into the Mythologies About Women and Men (New York: MSS Information Corp., 1975).
Harriet Holter, Sex Roles and Social Structure (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1970), 52.
Jessie Bernard, Women and the Public Interest: An Essay on Policy and Protest (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1971). At the time of publication, Bernard was Research Scholar, Honoris Causa, at the Pennsylvania State University. Bernard received her doctorate in sociology from Washington University in 1935.
For examples, see Jane English, ed., Sex Equality (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977)
Gould and Kern-Daniels, “Towards a Sociological Theory”; Ruth Hubbard, Mary Sue Henifin, and Barbara Fried, ed., Women Look at Biology Looking at Women: A Collection of Feminist Critiques (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979)
Millman and Moss Kanter, ed. Another Voice; Rayna Reiter, ed. Toward an Anthropology of Women (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975).
Ann Oakley, Sex, Gender and Society (New York: Harper Colophon, 1972).
Nancy Chodorow, “Family Structure and Feminine Personality,” in Woman, Culture, and Society, ed. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo, Louise Lamphere, and Joan Bamberger (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1974) 43–66
Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978)
Dorothy Dinnerstein, The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise (New York: Harper & Row, 1976)
Dorothy Ullian, “The Development of Conceptions of Masculinity and Femininity: Development of Gender Concepts,” in Exploring Sex Differences, ed. Barbara B. Lloyd and John Archer (London and New York: Academic Press, 1976), 25–47
Rhoda Unger, Female and Male: Psychological Perspectives (New York: Harper & Row, 1979)
Unger, “Toward a Redefinition of Sex and Gender,” American Psychologist 34 (1979): 1085–1094.
I say earliest because there is evidence of a shift in Money’s perspective over the course of the 1970s. Cf. Money and Ehrhardt, Man and Woman; Money and Patricia Tucker, Sexual Signatures: On Being a Man or a Woman. (London: Sphere Books, 1977).
Chodorow, “Feminism and Difference: Gender, Relation, and Difference in Psychoanalytic Perspective,” in The Gender and Psychology Reader, ed. Blyth McVicker Clinchy and Julie Norem (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 390.
Cited in Jeffrey Weeks, Sexuality (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 61.
Margaret Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (New York: Morrow, 1935/1963)
Mead, Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962).
At the time she wrote “The Traffic in Women,” Rubin was working toward a doctorate in anthropology at the University of Michigan and teaching in the Women’s Studies program there. “The Traffic” was at one level a response to the limits of Marxist analyses of the oppression of women. Rubin cites a course taught by Marshall Sahlins at the Univerity of Michigan on tribal economics as the “immediate precipitating factor” for the paper (Gayle Rubin and Judith Butler, “Sexual Traffic,” in Coming Out of Feminism? ed. Mandy Merk, Naomi Segal, and Elizabeth Wright [Oxford: Blackwell, 1998]: 38).
Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex,”r in Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. Rayna R. Reiter (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), 158.
For a similar analysis, see the earlier discussion of Erving Goffman’s “The Arrangement Between the Sexes,” Theory and Society 4 (1977): 301–331.
Mary Chafetz, Masculine/Feminine or Human? An Overview of the Sociology of Sex Roles, 1st ed. (Itasca, IL: F. E. Peacock, 1974), 3.
Mary Chafetz, Masculine/Feminine or Human? An Overview of the Sociology of Sex Roles, 2nd ed. (Itasca, IL: F. E. Peacock, 1978), 3.
Helena Lopata and Barrie Thorne, “Letters/Comments. On the Term ‘Sex Roles,’ ” Signs 3 (1978): 719.
Ibid.; Helena Lopata, “Review Essay: Sociology,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2, no. 1 (1976): 172.
Linda Nicholson, “Interpreting Gender,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 20 (1994): 80.
Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna, Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach (New York: John Wiley, 1978). Kessler and McKenna began writing this book while both were graduate students in the Social-Personality doctoral program at the City University of New York. They received their earliest training in social psychology under the guidance of Stanley Milgram, whom they credit with teaching them to study phenomenon for its own sake rather than wedding themselves to particular theories (Wendy McKenna and Suzanne Kessler, “Afterword: Retropective Response,” Feminism and Psychology 10, no. 1 [2000], 66). When Gender was published in 1978, McKenna was teaching at Sarah Lawrence College (and promptly lost her job because of it), while Kessler was a faculty member at the more progressive Purchase College, State University of New York (Ibid., 66–67).
Janice Raymond, “Transsexualism: An Issue of Sex-Role Stereotyping,” in Pitfalls in Research on Sex and Gender, ed. Ruth Hubbard and Marian Lowe (New York: Gordian Press, 1979), 132. Raymond is best known for her excoriating attack on transsexualism and transsexuals in The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male (New York: Teachers College Press, 1994).
Kay Deaux, “Psychological Constructions of Masculinity and Femininity,” in Masculinity/Femininity: Basic Perspectives, ed. June Reinisch, Leonard Rosenblum, and Stephanie Sanders (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 301.
Barbara Fried, “Boys Will Be Boys Will Be Boys: The Language of Sex and Gender,” in Women Look at Biology Looking at Women: A Collection of Feminist Critiques, ed. Ruth Hubbard, Mary Sue Henifin, and Barbara Fried (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979), 37–59. Fried was a doctoral candidate in English literature at Harvard when she wrote this piece. Active in the women’s movement, she was also an established freelance editor, writer, and organizer of various feminist “cultural events.” (Fried, “Boys Will Be Boys,” 59).
Fried, “Boys Will Be Boys,” 55. Philosopher Alison Jaggar offered a similar analysis of how we know the body and how we know nature. Arguing for a radical restructuring of language by adopting gender neutral pronouns and proper nouns, Jaggar adopted a form of generic pronoun derived from plural forms: namely, tey, tern, and ter(s) (Alison Jaggar, “On Sexual Equality,” in Sex Equality, ed. Jane English [Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977], 95).
June Singer, Androgyny: Toward a New Theory of Sexuality (New York: Anchor, 1976), 29. This would become a familiar refrain with the radical/cultural feminist turn.
The “female as default” theory came from embryological research (on rabbits), and was first proposed by Alfred Jost. Jost went on to become a collaborator of Lawson Wilkins, who as readers may recall was an early patron of John Money. For an astute critique of this particular received wisdom, see Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 197–205.
Millett, Sexual Politics, 30. See also Mary Jane Sherfey, The Nature and Evolution of Female Sexuality (New York: Random House, 1972).
Money, “The Conceptual Neutering of Gender and the Criminalisation of Sex,” Archives of Sexual Behaviour 14, no. 3 (1985): 287.
Money, Gendermaps: Social Constructionism, Feminism and Sexosophical History. (New York: Continuum, 1995), 74–75.
Walter Bockting, “Ken from Mars, Barbie from Venus: What on Earth Has Happened with Sex?” Journal of Sex Research 34, no. 4 (1997): 413.
Henrietta Moore, A Passion for Difference: Essays in Anthropology and Gender (Cambridge: Polity, 1994)
For a range of critiques on the politics of race see, Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York and London: Routledge, 2001)
Angela Davis, Women, Race, & Class, 1st ed. (New York: Random House, 1981)
Bell Hooks, Feminist The ory from Margin to Center (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1984)
Hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1989).
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990)
Moira Gatens, “A Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinction,” in Beyond Marxism? Interventions after Marx, ed. Paul Patton and Judith Allen (Leichhardt, NSW: Intervention, 1983), 143–160
Gatens, Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality (London: Routledge, 1996)
Linda Nicholson, “Interpreting Gender,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 20 (1994): 79–105
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Gender Criticism,” in Redrawing the Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies, ed. S. Greenblatt and G. Gunn (New York: MLA, 1991), 271–302. Gaten’s early critique was exceptional in that it represents a precursor to the later analyses.
Biddy Martin, “Extraordinary Homosexuals and the Fear of Being Ordinary,” Differences 6, no. 2 (1994): 104.
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© 2009 Jennifer Germon
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Germon, J. (2009). Feminist Encounters With Gender. In: Gender. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101814_4
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