Date: Sun, 28 May 1995 17:17:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: Doris Rita Alfonso <pap-AT-gladstone.uoregon.edu>
Subject: sex/gender map



Hello all. I am probably not the best person to kick off the discussion 
but it seems that we are all waiting for the other to begin. So here goes 
it: 

"In suggesting that the discourse of feminism has developed in a way that 
has prejudiced a number of activists against the work of Irigaray, I want 
to explore the contested site of the body within feminist discourse.
... My point is that while at the practical level discourses on the body 
from multiple points of view have proliferated, at the theoretical level 
feminist have left little room for bodies." 
(Chanter, p.23.)

The progress of feminisms has been aided by the drawing of a 
distinction between sex and gender. This
distinction arose from a need to distance feminism from an essentialist 
view of the female (maternal) body which limited women's capacity to 
their biological functions, and thus their social role to their 
biological capacity. The distinction allowed feminists to concentrate  
their efforts to bring about change in their social roles, by asserting 
the need for equality between the sexes in the public, social/political, 
spheres; and, thus, facilitated political action.

For example, women were denied access to education on the grounds that 
women's biological functions (menstruation, child bearing) and nature 
(physical and emotional frailty) did not allow for the vigor necessary 
for mental activity -- the blood gone to the brain in mental activity 
interfered with her menstruation, and therefore with her ability to 
bear children. An educated woman was less feminine, less capable of 
fufilling her true nature of procreation. Thus her essential biology 
limited her, and this limit needed to be overcome. Feminist 'overcame' 
this essentialism by denying, in theory, the female body as limiting. 
They argued, successfully, that women's social role, that of raising and 
educating men's sons, required that they themselves become educated. It 
was in the best interest of (upper class society) to educate women, in 
order to prepare them for their social responsability. This shift in 
emphasis from what women's biology disallowed, what was their essential 
nature, to what their social role required -- equality -- allowed women 
to pursue emancipation in the public sphere. (But also, it abandoned 
women's emancipation in the private sphere.) 

A demand for equality depends on playing down, overcoming, the 
difference between the sexes. This traditional, liberal feminism sounds 
conservative, and is inadequate to the current needs of feminism: 
".. there is the demand to have women's special needs recognized, and the 
implicit acknowledgement of the uniquely female character of these 
needs. Those aspects of women's embodiment that differentiate them from 
men, and to which feminists appeal in arguing for pro-choice or for the 
right to be in control of their bodies -- namely, their reproductive  
capacities and their female sexuality -- are not easily accomodated by 
the traditional priority feminist theory accords to gender rather than sex." 
(Chanter, p.23)    

There is a tension between traditional feminist theory and the needs of 
feminist (activists). What is needed is a theory which can account for 
her needs as woman, as (radically) different from men.	
Feminism is at an impass because while it seeks to assert difference it 
cannot seem to do so from the site of gender alone (which is constituted 
against sex, as different from sex.) At the same time, it is 
afraid of returning to essentialism with discussions of women as sexed, 
as maternal, as different from men. It has equality to loose. In a sense, 
feminist theory is gynophobic?, in so far as it is afraid to embrace its 
female embodiment, that which provides its material substinance. And  
perhaps for this reason it has been unable to hear discourses based on 
sexual difference, assuming the essentialism it fears. If this is 
correct, feminisms has a need to re-evaluate its history, the division 
upon which it rests, the disctinction between sex and gender -- to reveal 
the relation between these, and to embrace their own differences. This is 
not to abandon itself, but rather to transform itself from need, to 
resist the rigor mortis seting in. Either feminisms have the potential 
for transformation (from these tensions) or indeed feminisms 
is in danger of  becoming a hindrance, as some young 'feminists' 
have been declaring of late. (But what is this either/or?)

So let us contrive for an 'equality' based on difference, that we no 
longer desire to be men, but to be recognized as women -- if indeed we 
ever desired to be men, or needed to become like men in order to realize 
the harmful absurdity in this.

What do y'all think about all this? 
  




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