Date: Sat, 27 Nov 1999 04:02:47 -0500 (EST) From: "Raphael C. Allen" <rcda at duke.edu>
Methinks that way too much good thinking is sidestepped by our treating sex, and sexual difference, like they're the ontological real-deal of gender or sexuality. They ain't, as plenty others have already tried to show. Don't get me wrong: I join all y'all in hating it when lefties simplistically run away from biology, sure. So it's to the better that none of the feminist-constructionist arguments onlist have, to my reading, counterposed biology to the social, but instead braided the two together and counterposed those arguments to the stricter bio-determinism of some Skeptical-'Bout-Feminism arguments here and elsewhere.
This ontology of sexual difference--particularly the question of how many sexes there REALLY are--almost completely misses questions of how sex-, gender-, and sexuality-differences work socially, how they're reproduced, and how they interact with other classifications. Doesn't this truncate the ground of politics? As Kessler & McKenna argued (kudoes to Miles for this cite), along with Lacquer, Fausto-Sterling, and a slew of socialist feminists, gender/ sex/ sexuality need to be parsed from each other analytically rather than conflated. And, having tried to distinguish them, these writers all find that sex is not always the determinant base from which a gendered superstructure can be read off--often it's the reverse. .. After all, we don't go around doing genital inspections on one another (most of the time) and then proceed from the givenness of their confirmed sex.
Instead, we're left to impute folks' sex from secondary, physical sex characteristics and from their gender-typed behaviors--just as we also impute folks' sexuality from their gender-behaviors. Maybe, then, we shouldn't assume that we get very far resorting to ontological privilege, re genital/genetic diversity, each time gender/feminism/ queerness comes up. This false distinction between foundationalism and non-foundationalism always claims too much for the former--What Say Ye?
Which reminds me, curiously, of a similar impasse in science-studies debates, esp since Alan Sokal's lame attempt at a hoax. Everytime one of my listservs would come upon a mention of Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, or Emily Martin holding forth on the social construction of scientific practice, somebody would just hafta raise a cutely phrased question about gravity--eg, Would Andrew Ross and his journal Social Text fall if you dropped them from a bldg. And in the resultant scuffle, the more settled and righteous question re how gravity works would end up telling us almost nothing about how scientists go around making themselves matter to each other. In those discussions, like in this one, the questions with easier evidentiary threshholds are mistakenly treated as if they tell us more about everything. But they don't.
raphael
On Fri, 26 Nov 1999, kelley wrote:
> Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1999 22:35:17 -0500
> From: kelley <oudies at flash.net>
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: Only one sex?
>
>
> >When you, as someone who complains about the lack of careful scholarship
> around
> >here, so obviously doesn't bother to read carefully before jumping, I
> start to
> >look for motive. Now I know you never miss a chance to turn the
>conversation
> >toward the socialization of sex. But, within reason, that's Ok; its the
> important
> >part of the debate in this case. Such discourse had nothing to do with my
> post,
> >but, still, this doesn't explain much. Here's my clue. Your
> "misunderstanding"
> >of my post created the space for Carrol to trod down that irrelevant road
> with
> >you, pretending he didn't know what he said either. Aha. Carrol and
> Yoshie have
> >agreed to make you a member of their comedy team, haven't they? Good work,
> >comrade!
>
>
> so you want to import marx economic base model to the study of gender is
> that it? you want to argue that you can locate the laws of motion behind
> gender relations in reproductive sex? go ahead, take a whack at it. i
> would truly love to see how it is that you can explain the way in which men
> and women relate to one another by looking at the laws of motion located in
> our our sex organs.
>
> how do you explain today that there are three genders in many actually
> existing societies? shall i invite jim craven to take a look at the
> things youwill have to say about how the hopi are stupid?
>
> >
> >> furthermore, i would point out to you that a lot of marxists think that
> >
> >> there are only two classes that are in competition despite the objective
> >> reality of what looks like at least three if not more classes in
> >> competition. compeitition between manual and professional,
>between service
> >> labor and manual labor, between owners and employees. and on and on.
> >>
> >> his claim, as you know, is based entirely on theory because the 18th
> >> brumaire is an exploration of the real effects of class divisiveness along
> >> lines that don't separate out into bourg v. prole.
> >
> >Now it's you turn, kelley. Before you again let loose in public such
> half-baked
> >meanderings about Marx, you need to read and learn something about what he
> >actually wrote, starting with what his object was (hint: to uncover the
> laws of
> >motion of capital and capitalism), how he chose to go about it, and what
> were the
> >important elements he identified, as opposed to the peripheral (or what
> could be
> >abstracted from). Then set out to understand how material conditions have
> changed
> >and what that means for the laws of motion now. When you do, you will see
> that
> >what you say here falls into either of two categories: incorrect and
> meaningless
> >
> >RO
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>