Gender Trouble - Anatomical Function

Summary:

Just a few thoughts about biology. I would love if someone would help me understand!

Gender Trouble - Anatomical Function

(account deleted) 02 Sep 2009 17:08

I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around that we have all been fooled about sex all allong as said by Luce Irigaray.

The reason that we don't specify people by hair color or eye color or height because to each person they have the same (or similar) functions.

It is true it can be said the male parts and female parts have similar functions but the have different roles to meet the same end. Creating the next generation of life seems to be the ultimate goal of all biological beings - mammal, amphibian, insect etc.

There has never been a child born from the union of two men or two women as far as I know (at least not without the help from science)

I would say people (or puppies) who have both would base their sexual identity on which organs function. (Why else would the vet call Jessica's dog a girl even though she has male dangly parts?)

It is true there is a third category of sex based on asexual reproduction. - there aren't girl sponges and boy sponges (sorry Spongebob)
These "its" in humans show genetic mutation not a third human sex. It is not common enough to call them a completely third category. Usually (if I am not mistaken) in the case of hermaphrodites they only have one set of sexual organs that function correctly.

Maybe I am just completely immersed in the dogma that is the Dead Men of Europe's perspective but it seems to make logical sense.

Re: Gender Trouble - Anatomical Function

BusyMom 04 Sep 2009 15:12

I would have to agree with you that there is only male & female as far as the categories go. To me, the word "gender" describes whether you are male or female and the word "sex" refers to the physical part of a relationship. We may be getting hung up on the terms and missing the real issue that has divided us for so long. It goes to the "male jobs" vs "female jobs" or the odd little sayings like "you throw like a girl"; well duh, I am a girl…but its a "jab" at a boy when that is said.

Re: Gender Trouble - Anatomical Function

Mac_Deeds 10 Sep 2009 19:48

Sure, defining gender based strictly on the divide between ova and sperm works in theory, but it isn't terribly sound in practice.

After all, you can't simply go up to every androgynous person you encounter and ask them which they carry. And sometimes people don't even know which they carry. Like that episode of House, where a teenaged female model turned out to be a boy who went through puberty weird because his testicles never dropped. Fictional show, but a real condition. Is someone with this condition a male even though everyone else would conclude female? Does he become male only after his testes are discovered? Do the other physical developments, fully in line with a female body, count for nothing?

So, going simply by which half of a new person someone would provide, is a system that can rarely be fit over a category of people that you are trying to group. Moreover, it has the unfortunate implication that women cease to be women once they undergo menopause.

Re: Gender Trouble - Anatomical Function

Mark Hantla 12 Sep 2009 01:19

To me, the most relevant implication of Irigaray's perspective on gender is that in diminishing emphasis on the categorization of gender, it allows for a simple acceptance of every unique gender identity at face value. The categorization of information is inherently an imperfect descriptor of data. In gender identity, the pressure of what it means to "be a man" and "be a woman" arises from an arbitrary ideal, and to what end is this pressure justified? Irigaray's notion of gender may seem counter-intuitive (and indeed, for most practical purposes, it is), but humanity can only benefit from a system which, instead of comparing everyone with an unnecessary ideal, understands each person simply for who he, she, or otherwise, is.

Poison loves Irigaray's work combating phallogocentrism