Sex and Gender and Logic. Part 1

Hi,

Sex, Gender and logic walk into a bar:

Sex says, "gimme some of that biological looking stuff, I like that,"
Gender says: I'll have whatever I like the look of, I never read the labels on the bottles any way.
Logic says: oh you Guys... you're both concepts of categorical thinking you can't walk into pubs let alone order stuff...

Todays subject is Sex, Gender and Logic. The relationship between these is continually revisited time and again in respect to the trans or non binary arguments, their respective cause and thus validity.

Here's a comment I found on a youtube in reply to a video by Dr Corivino:

If you are for gay rights, then you accept the concept of sexual orientation. But sexual orientation presupposes a genital basis to manhood and womanhood. This directly contradicts the central premise of gender identity. Therefore, the very concept of sexual orientation is transphobic.

f you support trans rights, then you accept the concept of gender identity. That concept locates the basis for manhood and womanhood (and whatever) in the mind, making the body irrelevant to one's identity as a man or a woman (or whatever). This just makes complete nonsense out of the concept of sexual orientation and thereby erases the identities of Gays and Lesbians. Thus, support for the transgender community entails homophobia.

I'll link the actually video at the bottom of this article since its worth a listen in its own right.

But, having read this comment I realised that if I was going to talk and write about trans issues, gender and the arguments around the societal acceptance of those phenomenon, I perhaps needed to explore the validity of this core contradiction

Firstly, as I usually do, I want to quickly take a journey back to ancient greek times... a pre socratic thinker called Anaxagoras. He watched how the food that we and other animals eat becomes part of our bodies. He watched how children and young animals grow as a result. He therefore theorised that the food must already have tiny bits of bone, muscle, hair etc in it, on an infinitesimally small scale. These he called "Seeds".

Today we know these as "molecules" or "atoms", the building blocks of "matter". Anaxagoras was correct, but limited by the technology and language of his time. There are perhaps some parallels here with the sex and gender argument(s) when one poses the question "what is"?

"What is sex?"

"What is gender"

Let take the first question:

"What is sex?"

Well the term "Sex" can mean many things. It is both a noun and verb for example. In this case lets leave the "doing" use of the term sex to one side and focus on the use of the word as a noun, ala a descriptor of something ...

It fair to say a widely accepted view of the word is that Sex is a term that can be used to categorise things that are alike, similar or dissimilar.  A descriptor if you will. So if we accept this premise, what is the term "Sex" used to describe? What physical observations do we need to make in order to decide if a thing belongs in the category of "sex" or not? And what do we mean by someone having "A sex"?

Physically speaking, there's anatomy. The presence or absence of a Penis, vagina, uterus, fallopian tubes, breast tissue,  testes, ovaries, vas deferens, prostate etc. Some of these structures were described in ancient times, they're relatively easy to explore scientifically and can be seen with the naked eye, so they are long established and known objects.

Then theres the more modern cellular arguments, only recently possible in human history, Things like DNA, chromosomal structure, etc. To put our physical understanding of these later categorical factors into a sort of timeline and perspective, consider that humans have been around on the earth for about 200,00 years. Civilisation 6,000. Industrialisation, 200yrs. 

Chromosomes were first observed in plant cells by Swiss botanist Karl Wilhelm von Nägeli in 1842. In 1905 the first chromosomal work was done on the XX/XY theory of sexual development, continuing up until around 1923 with the emergence of the "sex chromosomal pairing". Watson and Crick discovered the double helix of DNA in 1953, just 64 years ago. Chromosomal pairs (23) were identified in Lund in Sweden in 1955, for the previous 30years it had been thought to be 24, 48. 

So in percentage terms, if we take human civilisation and thus history as 6,000 years old, we have really been exploring the minute detail of our existence for approximately 2% of our known time here. Or to put it another way, if the 6,000 yrs were one 24 hour period, the entire scientific knowledge described above would take just short of the last 29 minutes before midnight.

Food for thought eh? But what of the subdivisions of sex? And the mechanisms by which someone is said to have "a sex"? They have been around along time...where did they come from ?

Sex as a word is derived from the latin term, sexus, historically encompassing two other categories "male" and  "female" So where did these sub categories arise from?  

Female comes from Latin femella (compare feminine) and is not related to male which comes from Latin masculus (whence masculine, macho). The terms being derived from latin dates them pretty emphatically long before the newer scientific stuff. So, the concept of male and female based on broad anatomical observations possible with the naked eye was very much accepted long before the discovery of chromosomal pairs in 1905 and was reinforced by early scientific works on anatomical structure etc. 

So then, "Sex" in this sense can be defined as a categorical term, which encompasses two major subdivisions, "male" and "female". This being based on our understanding of ancient observations of the gross anatomical structure of humans coupled with more recent ones regarding the composition and drivers of our cellular physiology.

(If you're thinking at this point hang on, thats very binary and old school bear with me... all will be well...)

So much for sex, now what about the other question? gender?

"What is gender"

In a similar way to the discussion regarding sex, gender is a categorical grouping used to describe beings that are similar or different. However it refers in this instance to observational differences in a societal and cultural sense. It's a term that is in some sense very new, since it was first coined in relation to gender roles by John Money in 1955, around the same time Watson and Crick were doing their double helix thing. However the word itself has been around since long before this point and is derived from the latin meaning birth, family or nation. Thus one can suggest it's original meaning probably owes more to similarities rather than differences.

Usually the starting point for the development of these similarities/differences arises from the observed individual "belonging" to one of the categories of the "sex" groupings that we have already discussed. 

So what sort of things are included in the descriptive category of gender? Here's a few, I'm sure you can perhaps think of more:

Attire, mannerisms, conduct, profession, expectations, height, attractiveness, use of make up, prestige, social grouping, physicality and sex. 

Much like "Sex" it has been subdivided into two categories that are known as "man" and "woman" Interestingly "man" in the historical context was a neutral term simply meaning "human" up until the early 20th century where it came be used to define the male of the specifies. Woman similarly has it's roots in older language and has at times been synonomous with "wife" a fact I'm sure a few feminists would raise an eye brow at today. 

So, The two categories "Sex", and "Gender" are different, but also arguably quite closely linked  since it is fair to suggest that the one is at least in part the cause of inclusion in the other. It would seem to be true that before we begin to assign a person a place in the category of gender, the convention has been to first determine an individuals place in the category of sex. 

This leads us rather neatly into a discussion of "why" and "how" we place certain individuals in each group and something of a cause and effect argument. 

Since this blog is now getting incredibly long I'm going to split it into two parts, The cause and effect argument as to why people are assigned to either category being part 2 

Heres the video I promised...(sorry no t shirts) 

Sarah 

;-)