ignore this, it's about women and sexism ...]]]

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Jim F. wrote:
>As I understand it, mainstream feminist thought has tended
>to draw a rather sharp distinction between sex and gender.
>The former was taken as a given biological reality whereas
>the latter was taken to be socially constructed.  Many feminists
>from de Beauvoir on argued that patriarchical ideology fell
>into the error of confusing the two.  Now we are seeing people
>argue that sex as well as gender is socially constructed.
>No doubt much of our thinking concerning the nature of
>the sexes as a biological reality is itself distorted by patrirarchical
>ideology but it doesn't necessarily follow that sex is not
>a biological fact.  And I think that Katha is correct in arguing
>that most of the arguments presented so far in defense of
>the thesis that sex is socially constructed only demonstrate
>that gender is.  Furthermore, the connection between
>the defense of thesis that sex is socially constructed and
>the espousal of pomo seems self-evident to me.  For many
>pomos science itself is basically just a social construct
>and hence another form of ideology.  Katha is right in
>perceiving a link between the defense of realism and
>the rejection of the thesis that sex is just a social construct IMO.

This is where we might or might not differ.  It doesn't take postmodernism
to argue that "sex" (a political interpretation of biological facts) is
historically constituted.  In fact, postmodernism obscures the causes &
means of historical constitution of "sex."  One might employ Bhaskar to
argue that intrahuman biological differences (the intransitive dimension)
are prior to & independent of "sex" (the transitive dimension) and the
former does not automatically determine the latter.  Facts do not speak for
themselves.  Except for positivists, this argument can't be too difficult
to assimilate.  There should be no problem upholding ontological realism,
epistemological relativism, and judgmental rationalism at the same time, if
we accept Bhaskar's analytic distinctions.  Marxists and neoclassical
economists look at the same ontological reality (ontological realism) but
have different interpretations of it (epistemological relativism), and we
have a rational ground to think of the former as good science and the
latter as bunk (judgmental rationalism).  Likewise, feminist and sexist
scientists look at the same human biology and intrahuman biological
differences (ontological realism) but have different interpretations of
them (epistemological relativism), and we have a rational ground to think
of the former as good science and the latter as bunk.

Yoshie