On Wed, 24 Nov 1999, Brad De Long wrote:
> >I gotta jump in here. Do really believe that giving birth or menstruating
> >are necessary preconditions for being a woman in our society? C'mon,
> >think about this for two minutes. In Kessler & McKenna's book
> >Gender: An ethnomethodological approach, they point out that no one
> >characteristic is an infallible indicator of whether you're
> >male/female. The only way that we are able to identify people as
> >male or female is through social interactions. In practice,
> >the male/female distinction is a social one, just like race.
> >
> >Miles
> >cqmv at odin.cc.pdx.edu
>
> Then why did D. McCloskey have to go through a *long* and *painful*
> series of operations and hormone treatments to try to change her
> gender? Is it just that she's dumb?
>
>
> Brad DeLong
>
S/he had to undergo this procedure because we socially define the male/female distinction as a physical one. It's not that s/he is dumb; it is that s/he is trying to live up to the definition of gender as a physical attribute, like hair color. And note: to live up to this socially created definition, s/he has to engage in particular social relations with particular individuals. Like everyone else, this person's gender is socially constructed, and not biologically given.
Miles