That gender and sex are discursively co-constituted

Aug 11th, 2020 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Reading the intro part one.

Intense debates over trans issues, feminism, anti-trans ideologies, and the very language employed by various agents in these debates are not just terminological disputes or about how sex and gender should be conceptualised. They are also debates about information, and how people relate to it in a time of information overload; they are debates about truth, and how people relate to truth in a ‘post-truth era’. The trans/feminist conflicts we refer to as the ‘TERF wars’ reflect the current conditions of our time in which public discourse is dominated by political polarisation, deepened by the proliferation of misinformation and distrust in ‘experts’ whose knowledge may not speak to individuals’ cultural common sense. These are contemporary phenomena with deep historical roots, which must be interrogated to make sense of the current landscape.

Analyses of trans-exclusionary rhetoric provide an important contribution to sociology. This is not only because they offer an insight into the production of ideologically ossified, anti-evidential politics (including within academic environments), but also because of what can be learned about power relations. Questions of whose voices are heard, who is found to be convincing, what is considered a ‘reasonable concern’ and by who, and how these discourses impact marginalised groups are key elements of sociological enquiry.

So we can see how this is going to go. We already knew, thanks to the title of the intro for a start, but this makes it all that much clearer. It’s the Bad feminists – the TERFS as they so technically put it – who use rhetoric, which we the Good feminists will analyse from our position of goodness and correctitude. We the Good feminists of course don’t use rhetoric, we use that other stuff, that is not rhetoric. The TERFS are ideologically ossified and anti-evidence, while we are ideologically organic and pro-evidence (like, for instance, what people tell us about their souls). Bad feminists by the way are not marginalised. They have all the power and privilege. Make a note of it.

They say there’s a backlash, and give a quick history of it.

To understand the nature of the backlash, two important points are worth unpacking regarding what, exactly, is being opposed and espoused by groups like WPUK and FPFW. The first concerns how sex and gender are being operationalised: a central concept mobilised by these organisations is ‘women’s sex-based rights’, and this concept is used in ways that emphasise the distinction of sex (as ‘biological’ or material reality) from gender (as social role or ideology).

In other words the physical body as opposed to the thoughts in the head.

There are in fact reasons for not losing sight of the fact that male bodies exist, and are different from female bodies, and have ways of harming female bodies no matter what the thoughts in the head are. A huge man in a dress remains a huge man, and huge men can be dangerous to women. We’re expected to pretend that’s not true if the huge man says he’s a woman, but see above – there are reasons for not pretending in that way.

Organisations opposed to gender self-determination have argued not only that there is a clear distinction between sex and gender, but also that UK laws such as the GRA and the Equality Act 2010 should be interpreted in such a way that trans women are understood as ‘male’, trans men as ‘female’, and non-binary people as implicitly delusional (Fair Play for Women, 2017). That is to say, the view of these organisations is that while ‘gender’ may be subject to change, ‘sex’ is immutable. Notably, this position ignores decades of feminist scholarship which argue that gender and sex are discursively co-constituted…

Ahhhhhhhh discursively co-constituted – well that changes everything, doesn’t it.

Doesn’t it.

No.

That’s the whole point. No. No, it doesn’t.

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