On Fri, 26 Nov 1999, Katha Pollitt wrote:
> Well, I'm going away for a couple of days and will shut up for a while.
> But kelley -- I don't think race and gender always work the same way. So
> when you use a race example (sickle cell anemia) to make a gender point,
> I'm not persuaded.
> Sexual dimorphism was a crucial biological development of many billion
> years ago (I'm guessing) with rather profound implications for how not
> just people, but plants and animals, inherit and pass on traits. Race is
> not. Having different races serves no biological function -- just
> cultural and economic ones. (Actually i don't believe in races as
> biologically distinct.) We know races are socially constructed because
> we have the history of that construction (see theodore allen, for
> example, and Noel ignatieff). I don't think the same can be said about
> sex. Without sexual dimorphism --not trimorphism or sixteen-morphism--
> we would not exist.What we make of it is flexible,sure -- I have always
> agreed with this point! HOW flexible we don't know. If women can give
> birth routinely at 55 -- or lose interest in giving birth -- then
> obviously it will be less important than it is today that female
> fertility declines faster and more abruptly than male fertility.
>
> Katha
>
This is an important and often misunderstood point, so I'll flog it again. When social scientists talk about "social construction" of something, they do not typically claim the nurture end of the tired nature/nurture debate. To say that gender or race is socially constructed is not an argument against the idea that the categories are "really" biological. Rather, it is to point out that that the social reality of these categories depends on social interactions in many locations by many people. Without social interactions to "accomplish" the gender distinction, would some people still menstruate and become pregnant? Certainly. But in order for the gender distinction to have importance in our society, we need to make it important. So whether or not gender is "biological" is not the interesting question for me; rather, the crucial and politically important question is, "why do we use gender as a basis for the distribution of economic and political resources?" And this requires a careful analysis of the intersection of capitalism and patriarchy (e.g., household labor as a subsidy to business owners to suppress wages).
Look at it this way. If a sociologist wants to study the importance of religion in a society, he needs to study how people worship, how the religious leaders interact with secular leaders, how people discuss religion. The question "Does their God really exist?" is irrelevant to the analysis. In fact, it gets in the way of social analysis. --And so with gender: the question "Are there really two biological genders?" is the wrong question if we want to understand gender as an important aspect of our social reality and social identities.
Why people confuse the idea of "social constructionism" with the idea that "biology doesn't matter" is itself an interesting question. Again, to stress: the claim that gender is socially constructed (just as any thing is socially constructed) has no bearing on questions about the biological distinctions about men and women. It's just that the social reality of gender depends on ongoing social interactions to make the gender distinctions real to us.
Excuse me. Just sucked down a double cap, need to go to the men's restroom.
Miles