How to Study (And Invent) (And Dichotomize) The Human Body; or the Fallibility of Knowledge

Gilmore Girls is Always Relevant

In her book Sexing the Body, biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling discusses the gender binary-turned-spectrum in relation to shifting cultural insight, global perspective, and organization through dualisms. In the first chapter of her book, Fausto-Sterling stresses the counterintuitive fact that scientists and cultures create “truths” about sex, gender, and sexuality. I am going to offer a feminist perspective by analyzing and challenging the ways in which these “truths” and dichotomies have been shaped by a biased androcentric school of thought incumbent upon dualist language.

With a background in biology, Fausto-Sterling explains the ways that scientists and scholars invent sex and gender based on their implicit cultural understandings. Although the general public may think of sex and gender as interchangeable, it is taught by feminists and social science courses that sex refers to the biological characteristics and gender as the social identity. Fausto-Sterling challenges this “knowledge,” by arguing that our idea of sex as a physical characteristic is already bound up in our social and cultural ideas of sex. Fausto-Sterling cites that beyond reproductive function, there are few finite physical differences between the dualism of men and women, citing that there are not significant distinctions between the physical strength of male and female athletes. Fausto-Sterling thus concludes that “labeling someone a man or a woman is a social decision … only our beliefs about gender, not science, can define our sex” (3).If so, why does the belief of sex as a purely physical and unbiased category persist even within the most educated realms of our culture?

 I argue that this belief helps reinforce implicit Western androcentrism. Our entire language is constructed with implicit sexist bias.  Firstly, the dichotomy of sex as male/female reinforces the insufficient yet prevalent gender binary. Even if a spectrum of social gender identity is recognized, the Western compulsion to classify any deviant sexual anatomy as “disorderly” helps reinforce the patriarchal culture.  Why? The sex and gender spectrums are threatening to androcentrism. Erasure of trans* people and the gender spectrum helps to reinforce the aforementioned binary. For androcentrism to prevail, it must operate on a norm of dualisms that extend beyond just male/female. The sex and gender dualisms are bolstered by related cultural ideas which help to perpetuate androcentrism.

In my epistemology class last semester, we discussed context in relation to theories of knowledge (on our ONE DAY of not only feminist epistemology, but our ONE DAY of reading ANY female philosophers AT ALL). Traditionally, epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, seeks to strip down to the bare bones of knowledge, to find what is universal truth. If one philosopher claims to find truth, it is claimed to be truth for all people. And how does epistemology attain universality? Obviously by asking only educated, affluent, straight, white men of Western world on their opinions. On our one rogue day of feminist epistemology, we challenged the idea of a *universal* white, male knower and introduced the idea that the social context and power structure surrounding different knowers influences what is taken to be knowledge. In our class materials of traditional epistemology, this idea of knowledge being not universal was not presented until twenty-first century philosophy readings! Why is context a new thought?

One feminist philosopher we read was Elizabeth Anderson who spoke similarly to Fausto-Sterling of obliterating gender dichotomies. One really important thing Anderson said that stuck with me is that nearly all conceptual dichotomies mirror the male/female and masculine/feminine dichotomies and can be divided into male and female. For example, in the dichotomy of reason/emotion, reason can be seen as “male” and emotion as “female.” In the dichotomy of objective/subjective, objective can be seen as “male” and subjective, “female.” In our culture, it is possible to “gender” non-gendered things based on implicit polarized, internalized misconceptions. The interplay of language and culture is so frustrating in this way!

In an even more ridiculous tangent, why can the silly, trivial false dichotomy of dog/cat can be predictably explained in terms of dog as “male” and cat as “female” when obviously there is no one who thinks that all dogs are males and cats are females. It would be an interesting research project (or comp….hmm) to explore these weird gendered linguistic mental biases and why they persist beyond reason or function. How could it possibly be useful to gender these random false dichotomies? Why has our culture shaped this school of thought? BUT ANYWAY.

Marrying the ideas of Anderson and Fausto-Sterling, the entire concept of dichotomies work in favor of male privilege. If we are able to “disorder” the daunting “third genders” then we can sustain the gender binary. If we live in a dichotomized world, than we sustain the ability to unconsciously force gender onto ungendered beliefs. And typically we do this in favor of males, as we think of strong as “male” and weak as “female,” active as “male” and passive as “female,” etc. Furthermore, the system of dualisms works to systematize and de-individualize experiences.

It is impossible to study culture in isolation. In much of the first chapter of Sexing The Body, Fausto-Sterling discusses anthropologists who go abroad to study (gender in) other cultures bring their own implicit cultural ideas (about gender) to unconsciously shape their own research. I am not sure how to propose a solution to these multifaceted problems of implicit gender bias. Dichotomies are used because they are a useful way to organize and systemize information. There has to be some system of organization for communication to be possible at all. I would just reiterate that an awareness of these biases is the first step in the right direction. Secondly, I would suggest to keep intersectional feminism and identities in mind, and remember the intersection of different identities in different context. Contrary to most of the study of epistemology, I think context is extremely important. I really like talking about linguistic bias so I will probably extrapolate more in the future.

If you want to look up “Feminst Epistemology” or really any of Elizabeth Anderson’s work, be my guest, that can be my first supplementary source.

Secondly, HERE is another (less feminist but still interesting) perspective from TED on how languages are not biased, and how different languages are organized in different ways. I think it helps bolster a global perspective on what is "knowledge" versus "culture."