It
might be argued that it is the developing girl, not the grown up woman,
who is the most receptive to new experience, but yet is also the most
vulnerable. Therefore we need to address the analysis of the tyranny of
gender before the point at where it's already too late. I prefer to use
the term ‘female’ instead of ‘woman’ so to include girls, when
appropriate in this discussion. I also prefer not to define women in
relation to men, i.e. in line with the word 'universal' in the Human
Rights Declaration. In short, I propose 'gender blindness' equally as,
for example, 'color blindness'. And keep in mind, this has nothing to do
with biological differences.
According to Connell
(2003:184), it is an old and disreputable habit to define women mainly
on the basis of their relation to men. Moreover, this approach may also
constitute a possible cause of confusion when compared to a definition
of ‘gender’ which emphasizes social relations on the basis of
‘reproductive differences’.
To really grasp the
absurdity of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's and others habit of confusing
'gender' with 'sex' one may consider that “normal” girls/women live in
the same gender trap tyranny as do transsexuals.
The definition of ‘acquired gender’ is described in a guidance for/about transsexuals as:
Transsexual
people have the deep conviction that the gender to which they were
assigned at birth on the basis of their physical anatomy (referred to as
their “birth gender”) is incorrect. That conviction will often lead
them to take steps to present themselves to the world in the opposite
gender. Often, transsexual people will undergo hormonal or surgical
treatment to bring their physical identity into line with their
preferred gender identity.
This evokes the extinction
of the feminine or women as directly dependent on the existence of the
masculine or men. Whereas the feminine cannot be defined without the
masculine, the same applies to women who cannot be defined - only
described - without men.
Female footballers, for
example - as opposed to feminine footballers, both male and female -
are, just like the target group of feminism, by definition distinguished
by sex. Although this classification is a physical segregation – most
often based on a delivery room assessment made official and not at all
taking into account physical size, strength, skills etc. - other aspects
of sex difference, now usually called ‘gender’, seem to be layered on
top of this dichotomy. This review departs from the understanding that
there are two main categories that distinguish females, i.e. the
physical sex belonging, for example, that only biological women may
participate in a certain competition, and the cultural sex
determination, for example that some sports or sporters are less
‘feminine’ than others.
‘Gender’ is synonymous with
sex segregation, given that the example of participation on the ground
of one’s biological sex is simply a rule for a certain agreed activity
and hence not sex segregation in the form of stipulated or assumed
separatism. Such sex segregation is still common even in societies which
have prescribed to notions of general human freedom regardless of sex
and in accordance with Human Rights. This is because of a common
consensus that sex segregation is ‘good’ although, as it is seen here,
its effects are bad in the long run.
In Durkheim’s
(1984: 142) view ‘organized despotism’ is where the individual and the
collective consciousness are almost the same. Then sui generis, a new
life may be added on to that of the main body. As a consequence, this
freer and more independent state progresses and consolidates itself
(Durkheim 1984: 284).
However, consensus may also rest
on an imbalance that is upheld and may even strengthen precisely as an
effect of the initial imbalance. In such a case ‘organized despotism’
becomes the means for conservation. As a consequence, the only
alternative would be to ease restrictions, which is something
fundamentally different from proposing how people should live their
lives. ‘Organized despotism’ in this meaning may apply to gender and to
sex segregation as well.
According to Connell (2003)
whose confused view may be closer to that of Justice Ginsburg, gender is
neither biology, nor a fixed dichotomy, but it has a special relation
to the human body mirrored in a ‘general perception’. Cultural patterns
do not only mirror bodily differences. Gender is ‘a structure’ of social
relations/practices concentrated to ‘the reproductive arena’, and a
series of due practices in social processes. That is, gender describes
how society relates to the human body, and has due consequences for our
private life and for the future of wo/mankind (Connell 2003:21-22).
However, the main problem here involves how to talk without gender.
Sex
should properly refer to the biological aspects of male and female
existence. Sex differences should therefore only be used to refer to
physiology, anatomy, genetics, hormones and so forth. Gender should
properly be used to refer to all the non‑biological aspects of
differences between males and females ‑ clothes, interests, attitudes,
behaviors and aptitudes, for example ‑ which separate 'masculine' from
'feminine' life styles (Delamont 1980: 5 in Hargreaves 1994:146).
It
seems that 'masculine' and 'feminine’ in this definition of gender is
confusingly close to the ‘mystique about their being predetermined by
biology’ when compared to the ‘reproductive arena’ and ‘reproductive
differences’ in Connell’s definition of gender. However, although
gender, according to Connell (2003: 96), may also be ‘removed’ the
crucial issue is whether those who are segregated really want to de-sex
segregate? As long as the benefits of a breakout are not clearly
assessable, the possible negative effects may undermine such
efforts.Hesitating to run out through an opened door to the unknown
doesn't necessarily mean that you don't want to. Nor does it mean that
you have to.
According to Connell (2003:20) the very
key to the understanding of gender is not to focus on differences, but,
instead, to focus on relations. In fact, this distinction is crucial
here because relations, contrary to differences, are mutually dependent.
Whatever difference existing between the sexes is meaningless unless it
is connected via a relation. On the one hand, big male muscles can
hardly be of relational use other than in cases of domestic violence,
and on the other hand, wage gaps cannot be identified without a
comparative relation to the other sex.
Biological
determinism is influential in the general discourse of sports academia
(Hargreaves 1994:8). However, what remains to analyze is whether
‘gender’ is really a successful concept for dealing with biological
determinism?
‘To explain the cultural at the level of
the biological encourages the exaggeration and approval of analyses
based on distinctions between men and women, and masks the complex
relationship between the biological and the cultural’ (Hargreaves
1994:8).
With another example: to explain the cultural
(driver) at the level of the technical (type of car) encourages the
exaggeration and approval of analyses based on distinctions between
cars, and masks the complex relationship between the car and the driver.
However, also the contrary seems to hold true;. that the cultural
(driver/gender) gets tied to the technical/biological. The ‘complex
relationship’ between the car and the driver is easily avoided by using
similar1 cars, hence making the driver more visible. In a sex/gender
setting the ‘complex relationship’ between sex and gender is easily
avoided by distinguishing between sex and culture2, hence making culture
more visible. The term ‘culture’, unlike the term ‘gender’ clearly
tries to avoid the ‘complex relationship’ between biology and gender.
The ‘complex relationship’ makes it, in fact, impossible to distinguish
between them. On top of this comes the ‘gender relation’ confusion,
which determines people to have ‘gender relations’, i.e. to be opposite
or separate.
This kind of gender view is popular,
perhaps because it may serve as a convenient way out from directly
confronting the biology/culture distinction, and seems to be the
prevalent trend, to the extent that ‘gender’ has conceptually replaced
‘sex’, leading to the consequence that the latter has become more or
less self-evident and thus almost beyond scrutiny. In other words, by
using ‘gender’ as a sign for ‘the complex relationship between the
biological and the cultural’, biological determinism becomes more
difficult to access analytically.
The distinction
between sex and gender implied in these quotations, however, does not
seem to resolve the issue, precisely because it fails to offer a tool
for discriminating biological aspects of differences from non-biological
ones, i.e. those that are cultural. This is also reflected in everyday
life. ‘Folk’ categories of sex and gender often appear to be used as if
they were the same thing. Although 'masculine' and 'feminine' are social
realities, there is a mystique about their being predetermined by
biology. Furthermore the very relational meaning of ‘gender’ seems to
constitute a too obvious hiding place for a brand of essentialism based
on sex. Apart from being ‘structure’, as noted above, gender is,
according to Connell (2003:20), all about relations. However, if there
are none - or if the relations are excluding - the concept of sex
segregation may be even more useful.
In Connell’s
analysis, gender may be removed (Connell 2003:96). In this respect and
as a consequence, gender equals sex segregation. In fact it seems that
the 'masculine' and 'feminine’, in the definition of gender above, are
confusingly close to the ‘mystique about their being predetermined by
biology’ when compared to the ‘reproductive arena’ and ‘reproductive
differences’ in Connell’s (2003:21) definition of gender. The
elusiveness of gender seems to reveal a point of focus rather than a
thorough-going conceptualization. So, for example, in traditional
Engels/Marx thinking the family’s mediating formation between class and
state excludes the politics of gender (Haraway 1991: 131).
What's a Woman?
In What is a Woman? Moi (1999)
attacks the concept of gender while still emphasizing the importance of
the concept of the feminine and a strong self-conscious (female) subject
that combines the personal and the theoretical within it. Moi (1999:
76), hence, seems to propose a loose sex/gender axis resting on a rigid
womanhood based on women’s context bound, lived experience outside the
realm of men’s experience.
Although I share Moi’s
suggestion for abandoning the category of gender, her analysis seems to
contribute to a certain confusion and to an almost incalculable
theoretical abstraction in the sex/gender distinction because it keeps
maintaining sex segregation without offering a convincing defence for
it. Although gender, for example, is seen as a nature-culture
distinction, something that essentializes non-essential differences
between women and men, the same may be said about Moi’s approach if we
understand her ‘woman’ as, mainly, the mainstream biological one usually
classified (prematurely) in the delivery room. If the sexes live in
separate spheres, as Moi’s analysis seems to imply, the lived,
contextual experience of women appears as less suitable for pioneering
on men’s territory.
This raises the question about
whether the opening up of new frontiers for females may demand the
lessening or even the absence of femininity (and masculinity). In fact,
it is believed here that the ‘liminal state’ where social progression
might best occur, is precisely that. Gender as an educated ‘facticity’
then, from this point of view, will inevitably enter into a state of
world view that adds itself onto the ‘lived body’ as a constraint.
It
is assumed here that we commonly conflate constructs of sex, gender,
and sexuality. When sex is defined as the ‘biological’ aspects of male
and female, then this conceptualization is here understood as purely
descriptive. When gender is said to include social practices organized
in relation to biological sex (Connell 1987), and when gender refers to
context/time-specific and changeable socially constructed relationships
of social attributes and opportunities learned through socialization
processes, between women and men, this is also here understood as
descriptive. However, when description of gender transforms into active
construction of gender, e.g. through secrets about its analytical gain,
it subsequently transforms into a compulsory necessity. Gendering hence
may blindfold gender-blind opportunities.
In
conclusion, if gender is here understood as a social construct, then it
is not coupled to sex but to context, and dependent on time. Also it is
here understood that every person may possess not only one but a variety
of genders. Even if we consider gender to be locked together with the
life history of a single individual the above conceptualization makes a
single, personal gender impossible, longitudinally as well as
contemporaneously. Whereas gender is constructive and deterministic, sex
is descriptive and non-deterministic. In this sense, gender as an
analytical tool leaves little room for the Tomboy.
The Tomboy - a threat to "femininity"
Noncompliance
with what is assumed ‘feminine’ threatens established or presumed sex
segregation. What is perceived as ‘masculinity’ or ‘maleness’ in women,
as a consequence, may only in second place, target homosexuality. In
accordance with this line of thought, the Tomboy embodies both the
threat and the possibilities for gendered respectively gender-blind
opportunity structures.
The Tomboy is the loophole out
of gender relations. Desires revealed through sport may have been with
females under the guise of a different identity, such as that of the
Tomboy (Kotarba & Held 2007: 163). Girls throw balls ‘like girls’
and do not tackle like boys because of a female perception of their
bodies as objects of action (Young 2000:150 cited in Kotarba & Held
2007: 155).
However, when women lacking experience of
how to act in an effective manner in sport are taught about how to do,
they have no problem performing, quite contrary to explaining
shortcomings as due to innate causes (Kotarba & Held 2007: 157).
This is also opposite to the experiences of male-to-female transsexuals
who through thorough exercise learn how to feminize their movements
(Schrock & Boyd 2006:53-55). Although, according to Hargreaves
(1994), most separatist sports philosophies have been a reaction to
dominant ideas about the biological and psychological predispositions of
men and women, supposedly rendering men 'naturally suited to sports,
and women, by comparison, essentially less suited (Hargreaves
1994:29-30), the opposite may also hold true. Separatism per definition
needs to separate and this separation is often based on biological
differences, be it skin colour, sex or something else.
From
this perspective, the Tomboy would constitute a theoretical anomaly in a
feminine separatist setting. Although her physical body would possibly
qualify as feminine, what makes her a Tomboy would not.
The
observation that in mixed playgrounds, and in other areas of the school
environment, boys monopolize the physical space (Hargreaves 1994:151)
may lack the additional notion that certain boys dominate and certain
boys do not. Sports feminists have 'politicized' these kinds of
experience by drawing connections between ideas and practice (Hargreaves
1994:3) but because of a separatist approach may exclude similar
experience among parts of the boys. Moreover, a separatist approach is
never waterproof and may hence leak Tomboy girls without a notion.
Femininity and feminism
Feminism and psychoanalysis as oppressors
According
to Collier and Yanagisako (1987), Henrietta Moore (1994) and other
feminist anthropologists, patriarchal dominance is an inseparable
socially inherited part of the conventional family system. This implicit
suggestion of radical surgery does not, however, count on unwanted
secondary effects neither on the problem with segregated or
non-segregated sex-worlds. If, in other words, oppression is related to
gender segregation rather than patriarchy, or perhaps that patriarchy is
a product of sex segregation, then there seems to be a serious problem
of intellectual survival facing feminists themselves (Klevius in
Angels of Antichrist 1996).
If feminism1 is to be understood as an approach and/or analytical tool
for separatism2, those feminists and others who propose not only
analytical segregation but also practical segregation, face the problem
of possible oppression inherent in this very segregation (Klevius 1994,
1996). In this sense oppression is related to sex segregation in two
ways:
1. As a means for naming it (feminism) for an analytical purpose.
2.
As a social consequence or political strategy (e.g. negative bias
against, for example, female football or a separatist strategy for
female football).
It is notable that the
psychoanalytic movement has not only been contemporary with feminism,
but it has also followed (or led) the same pattern of concern and
proposed warnings and corrections that has marked the history of
‘feminism’ in the 20th century. According to S. Freud, the essence of
the analytic profession is feminine and the psychoanalyst ‘a woman in
love’ (L. Appignanesi & J. Forrester 1992:189). But
psychoanalytically speaking, formalized sex and sex segregation also
seem to have been troublesome components in the lives of female
psychoanalysts struggling under a variety of assumed, but irreconcilable
femininities and professional expectations.
In
studying the history of feminism one inevitable encounters what is
called ‘the women’s movement’. While there is a variety of different
feminisms, and because the borders between them, as well as to what is
interpreted as the women’s rights movement, some historians, incl.
Klevius, question the distinction and/or methods in use for this
distinction.
However, it could also be argued that
whereas the women’s rights movement may be distinguished by its lack of
active separatism within the proposed objectives of the movement,
feminism ought to be distinguished as a multifaceted separatist movement
based on what is considered feminine values, i.e. what is implied by
the very word ‘feminism’3. From this perspective the use of the term
‘feminism’ before the last decades of the 19th century has to be
re-evaluated, as has every such usage that does not take into account
the separatist nature underpinning all feminisms worth carrying the
name. Here it is understood that the concept ‘feminism’, and its
derivatives, in every usage implies a distinction based on separating
the sexes - e.g. addressing inequality or inequity - between male and
female (see discussion above). So although ’feminism’ and ‘feminisms’
would be meaningless without such a separation, the ‘women’s rights
movement’, seen as based on a distinct aim for equality with men in
certain legal respects, e.g. the right to vote, could be described as
the opposite, i.e. de-sex segregation, ‘gender blindness’ etc.
As
a consequence the use of the word feminism in a context where it seems
inappropriate is here excepted when the authors referred to have decided
to do so. The feminist movement went back to Mary Wollstonecraft and to
some French revolutionaries of the end of the eighteenth century, but
it had developed slowly. In the period 1880 to 1900, however, the
struggle was taken up again with renewed vigour, even though most
contemporaries viewed it as idealistic and hopeless. Nevertheless, it
resulted in ideological discussions about the natural equality or
non-equality of the sexes, and the psychology of women. (Ellenberger
1970: 291-292).
Not only feminist gynocentrists, but
also anti-feminist misogynists contributed with their own pronouncements
on the woman issue. In 1901, for example, the German psychiatrist
Moebius published a treatise, On the Physiological Imbecility of Woman,
according to which, woman is physically and mentally intermediate
between the child and man (see Ellenberger 1970:292). However, according
to the underlying presumption of this thesis, i.e. that the borders
between gynocentrism and misogyny are not well understood, these two
approaches are seen as more or less synonymous. Such a view also
confirms with a multitude of points in common between psychoanalysis and
feminism. As was argued earlier, the main quality of separatism and
‘complementarism’ is an insurmountable border, sometimes contained under
the titles: love, desire etc.
