Fleshing Gender, Sexing the Body: Refiguring

The Southern Journal of Philosophy (1996)Vol. XXxF! Supplement
Fleshing Gender, Sexing the Body:
Refiguring the SedGender Distinction
Nancy Tuana
University of Oregon
I’m going to make m e a man.
Frank N. Furter
Rocky Horror Picture Show
The young man stands on stage his skin glistening. The
flesh of his body offered up to the excited crowd is displayed
with pride, all but that part hidden by a tight spandex bathing
suit t h a t appears as if molded onto his body. As he begins his
routine, offering pose after pose designed to highlight different
parts of his body, huge veins on his neck and arms stand out
creating a roadmap t h a t shifts and changes as he moves. He
flexes his muscles t o expose the perfect washboard stomach,
the huge throbbing pecs, the biceps and triceps he has braided
into intricate patterns. The body on stage is a very carefully
sculpted body. It is not enough to be big, muscles expanding
neck, chest, and thigh size far beyond the parameters of storebought clothing. The body must be symmetrical and proportionate, which, given current competitive aesthetics, means a
perfect V-shape. For the climax of his routine, he presents his
most muscular pose. He turns to the audience, bends forward,
and brings his arms half-way out from his body, bent at the elbow, hands clenched into fists, and pointing at one another.
Taking a deep breath, he flexes his whole upper torso, and
doubles the size of his shoulders, chest, and neck. The audience goes wild and t h e auditorium rings with the loud baritone cry “Beef! Beef! Beef!”’
ATTENDING TO BODIES
The body has been made so problematic for women that it
h a s often seemed easier to shrug it off and travel as a
disembodied spirit.
Adrienne Rich
Of Woman Born
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Nancy Tuana
I want to call attention to bodies-fleshed, pulsating, volatile2 bodies. Over a decade ago I argued t h a t t h e distinction
between sex a n d gender was pernicious a n d advocated t h a t
.~
I continue t h i s argufeminists refuse its p ~ l a r i z a t i o n Here
ment and do so by focusing on bodies. I believe t h at in embraci n g the distinction b e t w e e n se x a n d g en d er we h av e
inadvertently contributed to a problematic neglect of bodies in
feminist scholarship.
I exaggerate. Feminists have not completely ignored bodies.
In fact, much of t h e work on t h e topic San d ra Harding labels
“the science question in f e m i n i ~ r n is
” ~devoted to exposing t h e
ways i n which theories of biological determinism have been
used to justify a range of sexist and racist practices. We have
examined t h e ways science inscribed mark ers of inferiority
onto woman’s body-her smaller brain size, her role in reproduction, h e r skeletal structure-and t h e ways in which these
theories were intricately interwoven with theories of racial inf e r i ~ r i t y Indeed,
.~
my own Less Noble Sex was designed to advance such studies by locating t h e points at which scientific
theorizing about t h e structures of woman’s body was interwoven with religious and philosophical viewpoints.6 The goals of
such studies are t o expose such theories as empirically false
and to reveal t h e ways i n which scientific theorizing concerning sex and race differences both arose out of and in t u r n reinforced socially held biases about women a n d about people of
oppressed races.
I do not want to completely deny t h e value of such studies.
They have contributed to our understanding of institutionalized racism a n d sexism, a n d t o t h e ways i n which science,
even good science, emerges out of t h e values of t h e cultures in
which it is practiced. However, as I will demonstrate, it is pernicious to simply critique theories of biological determinism on
their own terms, for doing so leaves t h e metaphysic underpinning them in place. That is epistemically irresponsible.’
O u r ongoing reliance on t h e dichotomy between sex a n d
gender is also epistemically irresponsible for we continue t o
make t h e distinction in a way t h a t replicates t h e metaphysic
t h a t provides t h e foundation for biological determinism. The
problem I refer to is well illustrated i n Anne Minas’ introductory text Gender Basics: Feminist Perspectives on Women and
Men.
We have become increasingly aware of the possibility that some of
the differences between men and women have social causes. We
need some way of saying so, especially if we want to discuss how
social structures may function in creating particular differences.
Perhaps if we can change the structures, we may be able to
change the differences they cause. (It hardly makes sense to direct
social change at the genetic-the strictly biological-features.)
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Fleshing Gender, Sexing the Body
Thus the word “sex”is coming to be restricted to biological, or genetic male/female differences, leaving its official synonym, “gender,” free to drift toward meaning those differences that have
social causes.”
This quote frames a dichotomy, a n absolute separation, between those traits of women and men t h a t have social causes
and those t h a t are rooted in biology. But the distinction does
not stop there; added to this basic division is the belief t h a t
features due to biology a r e not malleable. “It hardly makes
sense to direct social change at the genetic-the strictly biological-features.” Feminism here repeats a key tenet of biological determinism: t h a t nature places marks upon women
and men, Anglos and Latinos, and these marks are indelible.
Having championed this distinction, many feminists then
felt compelled to minimize t h e body. Indeed t h e t e n e t t h a t
there are no significant biological differences between women
and men is a hallmark of certain versions of liberal feminism,
with t h e t e r m “significant” h e r e often defined i n t e r m s
of wage-earning labor. As one example, I t u r n to Bonnie
Spanier’s delineation of the premises of her recent study of
molecular biology entitled Irn /partial Science. “I also start
from the belief, based on accumulated evidence, that the only
jobs men a r e constitutionally incapable of performing a r e
childbearing and wet-nursing, while the only job a woman cannot perform is sperm d ~ n a t i o n . Although
”~
some feminists
seem to resent even modifying the denial (signifzcant differences), critics simply call attention to the body. In many cases
this attention is directed at the same features t h a t centuries
of biological determinists had raised against the specter of
women’s equality: ovaries and hormones, pregnancy and lactation. Faced with the body, feminists have embraced meaning
rather than flesh.1° Feminist denials of “significant sex differences” too often are articles of faith, shored up by attention to
social causes of perceived differences, namely, “gender.” To offer j u s t one example, we have investigated institutions of
motherhood, looked to alternative gender practices concerning
child rearing i n other cultures, and examined links between
economic practices and cultural attitudes about motherhood.
The few attempts to muddy the waters by including the body,
such as Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born,” are often criticized
as essentialist. Indeed, during the last two decades (and perhaps even now) it seemed almost impossible to speak of the
fleshed particularities of women’s bodies without evoking the
charge of essentialism.
At a time when feminists felt that they had to confront socially dominant arguments for the biological basis of male superiority, “gender” was a useful tool to explain male privilege
a s a result of complex structures of oppression and privilege
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Nancy Tuana
t h a t w e r e historically variable a n d cu l t u ral l y constituted.
Along with Beauvoir we gloried in arguing t h a t women were
made, not born. Given t h e long history of reducing women to
our bodies, it is no surprise t h a t feminist accounts have often
held t h e body at arm’s length. B u t i n doing so we have failed
to properly theorize it or t o account for i t s materiality. This
paper is a call for a return to t h e flesh.
Not only do I e x a g g e ra t e , I a m n o t easily satisfied. My
shelves a r e full of new books written by feminists with t h e
te r m “body” in t h e title. I n all too many of t h es e I find only
abstract, theoretical bodies rather t h a n fleshed, lived bodies. I
intend to avoid this omission.
TRANSFORMATIONS OF
THE FLESH
When you meet a h u m a n being, t h e first distinction you
m a k e is “male or female?” a n d you a r e accustomed t o
make the distinction with unhesitating certainty.
Sigmund Freud
”Femininity”
The s e d g e n d e r distinction is only one of a wider s et of dichotomies t h a t are metaphysically linked-naturelnurture, biologylculture, essentiallaccidental, innate/learned, genetic/
environmental, fixedlvariable. Traits due t o n at u re or biology
a r e perceived as fixed a n d unchangeable. Those arising from
n u r t u r e via our particular cultures are seen as variable and,
to some extent, within human control. The phrase “human nature” is t ak e n t o refer t o essential properties t h a t constitute
our fundamental n a t u re . These traits are, by definition, innate. And since their source is biology (what modern traditionalists refer to a s genetic), essential traits are defined a s fixed.
And it h a s been, perhaps, no accident t h a t t h e religious systems of Judaism and Christianity have linked fact an d value
by insisting t h a t natural properties are “good” and
This is a n old story t h a t is well known, b u t t h a t seems not
to diminish delight in retelling it. You will no doubt recollect
the 20 J a n u a r y 1992 i ssu e of Time t h a t carri ed , inscribed
across its cover, the message: “Why are men and women different? It isn’t j u s t upbringing. New studies show they are born
t h a t way.” The Time issue, unwittingly, described t h e problem
with feminist critiques of sex (or should I s ay gender?) differences. After reporting t h a t scientific research “proves” t h a t
“gender differences have as much to do with t h e biology of t h e
b r ain as with t h e way we a r e raised,” t h e article goes on t o
discuss feminist attitudes. “During t h e feminist revolution of
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Fleshing Gender, Sexing the Body
the 1970s, talk of inborn differences in the behavior of men and
women was distinctly unfashionable, even taboo.” Characterizing t h e feminist position as holding t h a t the “end of sexism”
would bring the end to sex differences, t h e author concludes
t h a t “biology has a funny way of confounding expectations ...
perhaps nature is more important than nurture after all.”13
By keeping in place a fixed, biological given, feminist theorizing leaves itself open to the critique that this biological body
is more significant t h a n we hoped, t h a t t h i s body is o u r
unchanging destiny. Unfortunately, t h e l a s t t e n years h a s
witnessed a dramatic increase in popular acceptance of t h e
view t h a t sex differences and race differences a r e biologically
caused and t h u s inevitable. I believe t h a t we feminists have
been epistemically irresponsible in leaving in place a fixed, essential, material basis for human nature, a basis t h a t renders
biological determinism meaningful. We have not attended sufficiently to the body, to the ways in which it is formed and transformed by social institutions. We must turn our attention to the
sexing of the body and to fleshing gender to understand both
how the body is socially constituted and how its materiality in
t u r n informs the parameters of i t s configurations. Let me be
clear. I do not advocate disproving biological determinism. I advocate rendering it nonsense. l4
Although Foucault a n d feminist theorists influenced by
his work focus attention on t h e ways in which power is inscribed onto bodies, we also need to attend more carefully to
the fact t h a t in talking about male bodies or female bodies we
refer neither to a biological entity nor to meaning, nor even
to a combination of t h e two. We refer to a material-semiotic
matrix, an intra-activeprocess that will be mischaracterized as
long as we a t t e m p t to understand i t through t h e false
dichotomy of sex/gender or through t h e related binarisms
of biology/culture, essential/constructed. I borrow t h e term
“intra-active” here from Karen Barad who uses i t as a visual
a n d auditory reminder t h a t t h e r e a r e no two things t h a t
interact-a reminder to avoid reinscription of t h e contested
dichotomy.15
This paper is a call for feminist attention to transformations
of the flesh. Much of recent feminist theorizing about bodies
has focused on semiotic aspects of particular material-semiotic
matrixes. But we will never understand bodies fully without
also attending to flesh, and doing so in ways that do not render
it separate from the discursive.
I here employ the term “flesh” as a reminder that bodies are
not inanimate. They a r e not dead matter. I wish to present
fleshed bodies as alive, as pulsating. I evoke its verb tense: to
inflame the passions, to become more substantial, to incite to
battle, to saturate. What is fleshly is carnal and sensual. The
flesh presents a volatile reminder t h a t bodies a r e not inert.
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Nancy Tuana
They are pulsating, sensual, fluid. Feminists must return bodies to philosophy in the flesh.
Bodies are material-semiotic spaces.“j Representation does
not supersede materiality ( t h e common misreading of social
constructivism) nor does materiality supersede representation.
It is t h e either/or of t h i s choice I protest. The relationship is
rather one of a complex intra-action t h a t is not adequately described by making distinctions in kind between “the effects of
socially inscribed meanings” and “the impact of matter.”
The case for this position is made by attending to bodies. If
we flesh out the story of the bodybuilder, we discover t h a t bodies can be fabricated through deliberate alterations.
Here’s the kind of NEW MAN I build.
Charles Atlas
Building bodies is no easy task. Although deliberate, cons t r u c t i n g bodies resembling those made famous by Arnold
and Rambo is no mean feat. Bodybuilders view their bodies as
a form of highly r e s i s t a n t plastic t h a t m u s t be severely
disciplined into shape. J o e Weider, named by Arnold Schwarzenegger as “the greatest trainer bodybuilding h a s ever seen,”
advises would be champions to “ ... show no mercy to the pitiful
wretches [those resistant little musclesl. Bomb t h e m harder.
Blitz them more often. Bury them under tons of weights. H i t
them with less rest between sets. P u t more mental effort into
it. In short, hound t h e lagging areas a s h a r d as you can until
they give u p and grow.”17Cartilage must be stretched to enlarge
rib cages a n d “improve overall body structure.” Most importantly one must gain muscle mass, increasing muscular body
weight by four to six pounds per year. Every year.
H a r d work is not enough to fashion t h e perfect body, a n d
many serious bodybuilders use steriods as a m a t t e r of course.
Steroids increase strength and enable the body to “bulk up” by
accelerating the rate at which the body can metabolize nitrogen
into muscle. According to Joe Weider, “most bodybuilders t a k e
s t e r o i d s , a n d a few t a k e p u r e androgenics ( s u c h as testosterone), for six weeks before competing.”ls Thyroid stimulants are used to speed up the metabolism and help the body to
get “cut up.” And t h e current fashion for “vascularity,” the road
map of veins criss-crossing t h e pumped body, requires minimal
body fat which is often obtained by use of special drugs.
PHILOSOPHIES OF THE BODY
Elizabeth Grosz identifies two broad kinds of philosophical
approaches to t h e body, w h a t s h e labels inscriptive a n d lived
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Fleshing Gender, Sexing the Body
body. Foucault is currently t h e best known advocate for inscriptive philosophies of t h e body. Inscriptions a r e seen as
“mark[ing] the surface of the body, dividing it into zones of intensified or de-intensified sensation, spreading a libidinal concentration unevenly over the written-and-erotic surface.”lgAs
we see from the combination of “punishing” workout routines
and routine use of steroids, these are not surface inscriptions.
Muscles are not simply marked, they are “grown.” The body is
transformed from outside/in and inside/out.
Bodybuilders like Schwarzenegger have not only transformed their own bodies, they have participated in a transformation of cultural attitudes towards male bodies. When I was
young, bodybuilders were regarded with suspicion. Men who
admired the bodies of muscle-bound men were seen as narcissistic a t best, deviant at worst. Bodybuilding, we were warned,
would lead boys t o “compare their bodies with those of other
boys” which could eventually “take the form of being sexually
aroused by the others, and out of this comes the desire to have
sex with the body of another person.”20Thanks to over a dozen
Schwarzenegger films, backed up by a pumped Sylvester
Stallone in the Rocky and Rambo series, the bodybuilder has
been converted from social deviant to warriodpatriot. This occurred a t t h e same time t h a t presentations of male bodies
changed dramatically. The last ten years has witnessed an explosion of partially nude male bodies in advertising. And these
bodies are buffed. We no longer worry if our sons plaster their
bedroom walls with posters of these pumped male bodies, for
all of us, men and women alike, a r e learning to see the male
body (well, a properly muscled one) as an object of desire.
This cultural transformation has an impact on lived experience. A young boy’s bodily, fleshed presence has been changed
by this transformation. Think of what it takes i n the days of
Conan a n d Rambo for a boy to feel manly. I t is no longer
enough to be powerful, one must look the role by presenting a
body t h a t is hard, muscular, and athletic. The change in culture perhaps parallels, in reverse, the phenomena of anorexia
in women. How many pumped men, pros and amateurs alike,
look in the mirror and see themselves as lacking in muscled
manliness? This newly eroticized body is paradoxical, for at
the same time that bodybuilders have, thanks in large part to
Arnold’s antics, come out of t h e closet a n d invaded mainstream US.culture, the new butch-shift in gay culture rears
the fearful head of homoerotic desire while at the same time
reinforcing gender stereotypes of manliness. Yet we all know,
don’t we, t h a t real men, manly men, those musclebound bodies, are heterosexual! Aren’t they?!? Unpacking all this would
require another paper.
But lest you begin to think that my focus here is limited to
discursive practices, let me remind you once again of the need
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Nancy Tuana
t o see bodies as material-semiotic intra-actions. Changes in
t h e culture of bodybuilding not only shift and shape t h e meanings of masculinity, they are incorporated into bodies, which in
t u r n shift and shape. When bodybuilders at t emp t to inscribe
th eir bodies with t h e (currently) perfect form of masculinity,
the body has a say.
The prolonged use of steriods causes a condition known a s gynecomastia, or “bitch tits,” the growth of a bulbous swelling under one or both nipples a s a result of the body’s oestrogen level
rising to counteract the massive dose of what i t takes to be testosterone ... with prolonged steriod use testicles atrophy, penises s h r i n k a n d erections become infrequent or cease
altogether. In other words, the bodybuilder using steroids i s effecting his own castration. This is the unavoidable logic of the
bodybuilder’s long term scourging of his masculine body. After
years of abuse with drugs and “intensitylinsanity” routines,
“Mr. Universe” [Ray] Michalik found his body finally taking the
hint and effecting the final transformation: “His testosterone
level plummeted, h i s sperm count went to zero a n d all t h e
oestrogen i n his body, which had been accruing for years,
turned his pecs to soft, doughy breasts. Such friends a s he still
had pointed out t h a t his ass was plumping like a woman’s and
tweaked him for his sexy, new hip-switching walk.7721
Masculinities-femininities are performed-and-embodied. To say
t h a t th e body is “always already” culture is not to deny t h a t it
is “always already” material; j u s t do not make a dichotomy out
of it.
A METAPHYSICAL INTERLUDE
Traditional theories of n a t u r e h u r t u r e employ a notion of
genetic fixity. Unfortunately, even recent attempts to acknowledge a n interaction between n a t u r e a n d environment replicates th is notion of genetic fixity. As I argued in “Re-Fusing
Naturernurture,” typical interpretations of t h e biological concept of epigenesis (t h e concept t h a t a n organism develops by
the new appearance of structures a n d functions through t h e
interaction of gene and surrounding conditions) retain a n additive model t h a t does not undercut t h e division between nat u r e h u r t u r e . Although theorists who adopt such a n account
insist t h a t traits a r e t h e result of a n interweaving of genetic
and environmental factors, and t h u s deny t h a t any particular
trait is static a n d unchanging, they persist in positing a n ontological divide between t h e two. Such a move simply changes
t h e question from “Which t ra i t s are due to innate factors and
which ar e due to environmental factors?” to “To what extent is
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Fleshing Gender, Sexing the Body
the trait in question due to innate factors and to what extent
is it due to environmental factors?” The genetic factors remain
static and unchanging in the sense of delimiting a fixed set of
possibilities, although the trait, now seen as a combination of
the manifestation of genetic factors within a particular (and
perhaps changing) environment, need not be static. Nature
and nurture continue to be seen as separate, though perhaps
not separable, mechanisms. Correlated to this additive model
is an equally mechanical design for a trait’s ability to change.
Crudely put, a trait that is the result of 80 percent nature and
20 percent environment is seen as far less variable than one in
which the percentages are reversed.
Contemporary philosophies of t h e body must be supplemented with a new metaphysic that treats the relationship between bodies a n d culture as a dynamic intra-action, t h a t
refuses to treat nature and nurture as dichotomous, and t h a t
rejects a mechanistic, additive model. Feminists must replace
the traditional physical object metaphysic, wherein each object
h a s essential and accidental characteristics, with a process
metaphysics t h a t emphasizes phenomena. Karen Barad’s
Bohrean-inspired theory of “agential realism” offers a contemporary version of this much needed metaphysic. On Barad’s
account, “phenomena are constitutive of reality.” Reality is not
composed of things-in-themselves or things-behind-phenomena, but things-in-phenomena.22
Phenomena a r e simultaneously material-semiotic. On a
process account, observable features of a n individual (phenotype) result from the genetic makeup of the individual (genotype) i n intra-action with t h e environment i n which t h e
genotype develops. This intra-action must be seen as dynamic
and nonlinear. On such a model, rather than determining a set
of characteristics or potentials, the fixity woven into the above
two models, genotype specifies patterns of reaction of a developing organism t o the environment i t encounters. The notion
of certain outcomes being “natural” and others “unnatural,” or
more or less so, makes no sense here. The process is the development of new structures and patterns from the results of the
intra-action of previously existing structures and p a t t e r n s
both within the organism and its internal environment and between the organism and its external environment. Since new
patterns and structures emerge from such intra-actions, the
organism is different at each stage of its development. It is not
enough to say nature cannot be separated from nurture. We
must also provide models adequate to the cumulative dynamic
of organism-environment intra-actions.
A process metaphysics replaces the notion of unchanging
substances affecting one another by external contacts (molecules colliding) with activity (force, energy) intra-acting with
other activity. Entities are not fixed, but emergent. Complex
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intra-actions between entities transform t h e previous struct u r e of each activity. Notions of essential characteristics or
fixed natures (Kantian noumena) make no sense. Nor would a
dichotomy between n a t u r e h u r t u r e or s ep arat e genetic a n d
environmental mechanisms be a d e q u at e t o a n intra-active
model of t h e dynamic relation between gene, environment,
an d organism. A process metaphysic of phenomena does not
preclude making distinctions, even distinctions between nature and nurture. But doing so must always be richly situated
an d acknowledge t h e complexity of t h e developmental intraaction. What is rejected is t h e claim t h a t these distinctions
(nature-nurture) signify n a t u ra l boundaries. Bu t do not t ri p
over t h a t refusal into t h i n k i n g t h a t t h es e distinctions are
then arbitrary divisions of a prior oneness. Revealing distinctions, constructing boundaries between n a t u r e a n d n u r t u r e
are im p o r ta n t , b u t t h e y will be time, s i t u at i o n , a n d value
relative, and must re-fuse dichotomization. What is needed is
a metaphysic adequate to a critical understanding of t h e complexities of the material-semiotic matrix of phenomena.
Although recent feminist accounts seem to be veering towards such a view, they often miss t h e mark due, I would argue, to t h e unhnder-theorized impact of a traditional realist
metaphysic and t h e either/or of realism/social constructivism
it engenders. As j u s t one example, consider Dorothy Nelkin
and Susan Lindee’s claim in “The Media-ted Gene” t h a t
Genes seem to cause the bodily differences that matter most in
this cultural debate [namely over the meanings of gender and
race]. But bodily difference i s historically specific, written not
in the body but in the culture that defines what aspects of the
body are most important when one begins to sort people into
groups ... Scientific claims [about nature1 ... are, in effect, a
way to construct the body in ways that will legitimate existing
social c a t e g o r i e ~ . ~ ~
I n continuing to make a dichotomy between n a t u r e h u r t u r e ,
genelenvironment, mattedlanguage, feminist theorists fail to
realize t h e radical potential of their position. We reify the dichotomy that will be used against us.
Given a process metaphysic, we undermine t h e eitherjor of
biological determinismhadical social constructivism by rendering meaningless t h e poles of t h i s dichotomy. Bodies a r e
theorized ( an d lived) as a material-semiotic matrix. B u t we
must be careful i n such rendering to give full voice to all aspects of t h i s matrix. Take t h e case of J u d i t h Butler as j u s t
one example of a feminist theorist who clearly supports t h e
spirit if not t h e particulars of such a metaphysic. In h er first
book Gender Double, she rejects t h e presumption of a binary
gender system on t h e grounds t h a t it “implicitly retains t h e
Fleshing Gender, Sexing the Body
belief i n a mimetic relation of gender to sex whereby gender
mirrors sex or is otherwise restricted by it.”24Although Butler
clearly rejects a metaphysical division of nature from nurture,
her attention is overly focused on discursive elements, which
too often leads her to ignore or obscure the materiality of the
intra-action.
Bodybuilders perform sex by transforming flesh. Culture
intra-acts with biology. Biology is a well-spring for performativity, but i t i s neither fixed nor static. Nor is i t a completely plastic background that the social forms into particular
structures. I t is active, productive, acted upon, and produced.
There is a materiality t h a t must always be taken into account
but not separated from the discursive. Indeed, the discursive
is itself marked by the body.25
Do we truly need a true sex?
Michel Foucault
Herculine Barbin
But I have over-simplified. The sex/gender dichotomy is
linked to the nexus of dichotomies listed above, but the full
connection requires a n additional belief, the belief t h a t there
are two and only two sexes. An early rendition of this linkage
can be found in Ann Oakley’s 1972 book, Sex, Gender, and Society.
‘Sex’ is a word t h a t refers to the biological differences between
male and female: the visible difference in genitalia, the related
difference in procreative function. ‘Gender’ however is a matter
of culture: it refers to t h e social classification into ‘masculine’
and ‘feminine.’26
Although feminists have done a n excellent job of delineating
the ways in which understandings and practices of femininity
and masculinity have been fluid and situational, we have been
far less successful in conceptualizing being a woman and being
a man as fluid and situational. We continue to posit a fixed,
essential binarism. Why do we hold so tenaciously to this dichotomy? What holds it in place?
Man is always defined in opposition to woman: “1.an adult
male person, as distinguished from a boy or a woman. MAN,
MALE, GENTLEMAN refer to adult humans of the sex t h a t
produces sperm for procreation. MALE n.1. a person bearing
a n X and Y chromosome pair in the cell nuclei and normally
having a penis, scrotum, and testicles, and developing hair on
the face at adolescence. MALE classifies individuals on the basis of their genetic makeup or their ability t o fertilize an ovum
in bisexual reproduction. It contrasts with FEMALE i n all its
uses. FEMALE n.1. a person of the sex whose cell nuclei con63
Nancy Tuana
tain two X chromosomes and who is normally able to conceive
and bear young.”27
T h e sex/gender distinction imports t h e n a t u r e h u r t u r e dichotomy, b u t adds to it t h e tenet t h a t there are two, an d only
two, tr u e sexes, woman a n d m a n , a n d t h a t t h e i r n a t u r e is
grounded i n evolution and innate psychological and biological
dispositions. MAN/WOMAN a r e natural, unmediated categories. They ar e real and “out there.” Femininities/masculinities
a r e “made,” not so sex. Herein lies another concern for femin i s t u s e of t h e sex/gender distinction. Should we n o t a s k ,
along with Foucault, “DOwe truly need a true sex?”28A version
of t h i s q u es t i o n h a s been posed, a n d an s wered , by An n e
Fausto-Sterling who a rg u e s t h a t two sexes a r e not enough.
“For biologically speaking, there are many gradations running
from female t o m a l e ; a n d d e p e n d i n g on how o n e calls t h e
shots, one can argue t h a t along t h a t spectrum lie a t least five
sexes-and perhaps even more.”29
Calling u s back to t h e “facts” of biology, Fausto-Sterling reminds us of intersexuality. S h e calls attention to t h e fact t h a t
intersexuals may constitute as many a s 4 percent of births,
yet their existence h a s been incredibly well erased by current
medical practices and completely denied by Western legal systems. As annoying as we might find t h e cu rren t d eb at es i n
Congress concerning same-sex marriage, we seldom notice t h a t
opponents and proponents alike presume “bi-sexuality.”
The biological fact of intersexuality, confounds t h e markers
used to define sex. “MAN, MALE, GENTLEMAN refer to adult
h u m a n s of t h e sex t h a t produces sperm for procreation.” The
intersexual is a combination of female a n d male anatomical
structures, such t h a t t h e individual cannot be clearly defined
as male or female. The so-called “true hermaphrodite” is a person who has one testis and one ovary; “pseudohermaphrodites”
are individuals who have testes a n d some female genitals, b u t
no ovaries, or have ovaries a n d some male genitals b u t no testis. Nor will chromosomes provide such markers. “MALE n.1. a
person bearing a n X a n d Y chromosome pair i n t h e cell n u clei.” Some so-called “sex-reversed” individuals combine XX
chromosomes a n d male genitalia or XY chromosomes a n d female genitalia. (Let me not erase here t h a t Western medical
science r e f e rs t o s u c h i n d i v i d u a l s as XY femal es a n d XX
males. Note t h e bias of bipolar sex.) Some intersexuals a r e
XXY, others a r e genetic mosaics where some cells are XX o r
XO and others are XY.
B u t F a u s t o -S t e rl i n g does n o t a d d r e s s t h e e n t i r e t y of
Foucault’s question. We could, I think fairly, render h er question “Must we render (true) sex as binary.” Though displacing
t h e division between woman a n d m a n , it is accomplished by
addition (man + woman + 31, a n d t h e questioning of “true” sex
(“Do we truly need a true sex?”) does not arise. Sex becomes
64
Fleshing Gender, Sexing the Body
f a r more diverse, b u t its biological fixity remains unquestioned. Fausto-Sterling clearly recognizes the cultural role in
how such sexual difference is both understood and managed.
“Why should we care if t h e r e a r e people whose biological
equipment enables them to have sex “naturally” with both
men and women? The answers seem to lie in a cultural need
to maintain clear distinctions between the sexes ... [and] the
specter of homosexuality.”30But she maintains the eitherlor of
naturelnurture. We have moved from two true sexes to at least
five. But once again, addition will not help.
THE BODY PLASTIC
We live in a world of two biological genders. But that may
not be the only world.
Suzanne J. Kessler and Wendy McKenna
Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach
Do we really? Which “we”?
To begin to flesh out the reason why a process metaphysic
with its inherent intra-active model of nature-culture is so important, I will give two examples t h a t illustrate t h e ways in
which the volatility of flesh renders the question of true sex
problematic.
.~~
As a first example, consider the Brazilian t r a ~ e s t i sMany
of the sex workers in Salvador Brazil are individuals who have
carefully sculpted their bodies to exaggerate the curves identified with the female body. In many ways they a r e the mirror
opposite of bodybuilders. One sculpts a manly form; the other
the full breasts, buttocks, and thighs of a womanly form. They
are scantily clad in ways t h a t will both augment their voluptuous curves and accentuate the size of their penises. “They do
not self-identify as homens (men) or mulheres (women), but as
t r a u e s t i ~ . ”Like
~ ~ bodybuilders they shape their bodies both
mechanically and through use of hormones.
Like bodybuilders, trauestis are the result of an intra-action
of flesh and environment. And like t h e bodybuilder, though
perhaps more obviously, they not only explode t h e conception
of two and only two sexes, but present a n argument against
simply “adding to” t h e currently accepted numbers of sexes
“third sex,” (or perhaps “sixth sex”). To add to the number of
sexes reinforces the view that there is some sort of biological
t r u t h to sex, t h a t there is behind the confusion truly a t r u e
sex. But such a position also eradicates the complex intra-action involved here.
To understand the extent of this intra-action, I would like
to compare Brazilian trauestis with the history of transsexuals
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Nancy Tuana
in the United States and
Understanding the transsexual experience in t h e U.S. and Europe i n the twentieth
century involves telling a variety of stories including the development of plastic surgery techniques and a t t i t u d e s towards their use, the notion of gender identity that arose out
of scientific theorizing about intrasexuals, t h e efforts of
transsexuals to create their subjectivity, but most of all understanding the tenacity of the hold of binarism on Western
scientific thinking about sedgender.
Story One: Plastic surgery has been a recognized medical
speciality for less than 80 years. Although i t was originally
developed to render whole those bodies t h a t had been deformed by war, accident, mistake of birth, or illness, the industry of “cosmetic surgery” quickly created a place for itself
in Western medical practices. The latter transformed notions
of “normal appearance” within the Western world and linked
such an appearance with psychological health.
A 1952 article in Better Homes and Gardens began with a discussion of “Henry,” who became a young hoodlum as a result of
protruding ears. The judge in his case sentenced him to plastic
surgery, after which a social worker reported: “He appears to
have lost entirely the old feeling of inferiority about his ears
which drove him into seeking out acquaintances of dubious
character, because he felt they were the only persons who
would associate with him on an equal plane.”34
Stories T h o a n d Four: Physicians managing intersexuality
began to shift away from the notion of a true sex hidden in
the flesh of such individuals. A deepening understanding of
the naturally occurring gradation of normal sexual variance
carried with it a notion of a continuum of psychological and
anatomical sex differences. Still t h e absolutism of bipolar
sexuality died hard, and medical science in the twentieth century insisted on “managing” the bodies of intersexed individuals by enforcing binary sex, something t h a t was impossible
prior to the advances in plastic surgery. But if science was to
enforce binary sex, while a t t h e same time denying t h a t in
the case of intersexuals there was one single indicator (chromosomes, genitals, etc.) t h a t could infallibly be invoked as
the arbiter of sex identity, there had to be a new measure.
This measure was provided by the concept of “gender identity” developed in the work of scientists such as John Money
and Robert Stoller. Gender identity was defined as a person’s
inner experience of gender, a person’s feelings of maleness or
femaleness. Money argued t h a t gender identity, although a
psychosocial phenomena and thus not innate, is indelibly imprinted by early childhood rearing within the first 4 ‘/z years
of age. While advocating sex assignment based on presenta-
Fleshing Gender, Sexing the Body
tion of external genitalia for infants, Money insisted t h a t the
sex of older children and adults is determined by their gender
identity, and argued t h a t i t was impossible to then physically
impose a change of sex t h a t would go contrary to t h a t gender
identity. Here a psychosocial process, not a physiological
marker, was held to determine appropriate surgical and hormonal interventions. In this way, the physician was seen as
once again insuring psychological health through modifying
bodily “deformities,” but always in line with the binarism of
womanlman.
Story Three: The stage is now set for trannsexuals to argue
t h a t t h e i r core gender identity, which Stoller defines as a
“person’s unquestioned certainty t h a t he [sic] belongs to one
of only two sexes,”35was i n tension with their physical sex.
This, in t u r n , provides t h e foundation for “the transsexual
experience’’ i n t h e U.S.and Europe.36Transsexuals, unlike
intersexuals, had no physiological justification for surgical and
hormonal sex change. But t h e development of the notion of
gender identity and the use of plastic surgery to manage psychological health provided transsexuals with a rationale to
gain t h e support of t h e medical establishment. As Bernice
H a u s m a n i n Changing Sex explains, “by demanding sex
change, transsexuals distinguished themselves from transvestite and homosexual subjects-the other designations available
in the sexological discourses of the period to identify cross-sex
proclivities-and t h u s engaged actively i n producing themselves as
Transsexuals not only believed themselves to be the other sex; they demanded to be made into the
other sex. They wished to be transformed.
Comparison: The transsexual who turns to the medical establishment to obtain hormones and plastic surgery t h a t will
make her or him into the opposite sex is quite different from
the Brazilian trauestis who denies being either man or woman,
though the trauestis, like the transsexual, turns t o hormones
and plastic surgery to craft t h e appropriately gendered (or
should I say sexed?) bodily manifestations. Despite certain important similarities, these are different intra-actions. A transsexual identity turns on a notion of true, original sex to which
one really belongs.38The identity of trauestis exposes another
possibility. Most trauestis do not think they are really women
or really men, nor a r e they identified as such by others. Neither the performativity of transvestites who desire to perform
the other sex, nor the transformativity of transsexuals who desire to be the other sex fits the material-discursive intra-action
of trauestis. The point is that neither sex nor gender is a static
entity. As Andrea Cornwall phrases it, “people gender others
and actively create, perform, and modify their own gendered
identities in different settings. Bodies are not mere biological
material providing a canvas for the bold strokes of gender to
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Nancy Tuana
be painted. They can be reshaped and modified to embody discourses about sexuality or gender liter all^."^^
Although I reject t h e notion of biological fixity, seeing bodies as simply cultural constructs is equally problematic. Consider this example from Dislocating Masculinity:
The pervasive use of paired oppositions within the anthropology
of women of the 1970s derived in large part from the influence
of structuralism. Such usage privileged idealized versions of
gendered difference and implied t h a t “men” and “women” a r e
natural objects rather t h a n cultural constructions. Even more
fundamentally, i t begged awkward questions about t h e presumed dichotomy “male” and “female.” An alternative perspective seems far more appropriate: that biology itself is a cultural
construction a n d t h a t t h e link between a sexed body a n d a
gendered individual is not necessary but on tin gent.^^
Such a view overlooks t h e materiality of bodies. The bodies I
have here called attention to, these fleshed, pulsating, volatile
bodies, are neither biologically given nor cultural constructions. They are simultaneously material-cultural. It is t h e either/or we must transform.
EMBRACING DIFFERENCE
I believe i n t h e difference between men a n d women. I n
fact, I embrace the difference.
Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Takes Off
Orlando h a d become a woman-there is no denying it.
But in every other respect, Orlando remained precisely as
he had been.
Virginia Woolf
Orlando: A Biography
I want you all to know t h a t there are only three real men
on this stage-me and my two backup girls!
Madonna
I have r u n out of space and muddied t h e waters sufficiently
for one talk, b u t indulge me in one more gesture. In t h i s case
simply a set of questions.
If I a m right about t h e need for a n alternative metaphysic,
though I a m su re t h e re will be questions about t h e specificities of th e one I propose, how do we embody-perform it? What
types of institutions and practices hold t h e axis of bipolar sex/
gender in place in our society and how can we dislodge them?
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Fleshing Gender, Sexing the Body
How do we destabilize both “sex” and “gender” as a normalizing narrative not only in feminist theory but in twentieth century U.S. culture? Does the current transgender movement
provide an opportunity to refigure sedgender? Will these attempts to embrace differences-the performativity of drag or
the constitution of transgendered individuals-succeed in destabilizing the normativity of being “normally sexed?” In what
ways does heterosexism keep the axis of sex binarism in play?
And what of the category of woman and the roles it plays in
feminist theory and women’s studies?
How do we avoid the eitherlor and embrace difference?
NOTES
*
My use of the example of the bodybuilder in this paper was stimulated by Mark Simpson’s provocative article “Big Tits!: Masochism and
Transformation in Bodybuilding,” a chapter from his Male Zmpersonators: Men Performing Masculinity (New York: Routledge, 1994). Although he puts the example to a very different use, examining t h e
paradox of homoerotic desire and bodybuilding, I like to think that our
approaches are complementary.
I use the term intentionally here to invoke Elizabeth Grosz’s Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), which is one of the most exciting attempts to
return feminist theorizing to the body.
Nancy Tuana, “Re-Fusing NatureRVurture,” Women’sStudies Znternational Forum 6, no. 6 (1983):621-632.
Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1986).
See, e.g., Anne Fausto-Sterling, Myths of Gender (New York: Basic
Books, 1985); Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the
Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1989); Nancy Leys Stephan, “Race and Gender: The Role of Analogy in
Science,” Zsis 77 (1986):261-277.
Nancy Tuana, The Less Noble Sex: Scientific, Religious, and Philosophical Conceptions of Woman’s Nature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).
I borrow the notion of epistemic responsibility from Lorraine Code.
She introduces t h e practice i n her book, Epistemic Responsibility
(Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1987) and develops it
further in What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction
of Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991) and Rhetorical
Spaces: Essays on Gendered Locations (New York: Routledge, 1995).
Anne Minas, Gender Basics: Feminist Perspectives on Women and
Men (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1993), 4. I do not intend to pick on
Minas; her text is representative of a widely held perspective.
Bonnie B. Spanier, Zm /partial Science: Gender Ideology in Molecular Biology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 19951, 12.
lo Not only has the bulk of feminist attention been directed at gender, even when feminists attend to the body, their accounts are more
likely to be what Elizabeth Grosz in “Bodies and Knowledges: Feminism
and the Crisis of Reason,” Feminist Epistemologies, Linda Alcoff and
Elizabeth Potter, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1993), 187-216, has de-
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Nancy Tuana
scribed a s “inscriptive” rather t h a n “lived experience,” a phenomena
I interpret as indicating a feminist discomfort in dealing with t h e
flesh, compared to our dexterity in dealing with meaning.
l1 Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (New York W. W. Norton, 1976).
l2 I discuss this point further in “Re-Fusing NatureDJurture.”
l 3 Christine Gorman, “Sizing Up the Sexes,” Time, 20 January 1992,
42-45.
l4 For an account of the Wittgensteinean concept of “rendering nonsense” put to radical feminist use, see Sarah Lucia Hoagland’s “Making
Mistakes, Rendering Nonsense, and Moving Toward Uncertainty,” Fetninist Interpretations of Wittgenstein, ed. Naomi Scheman (University
Park: Pennsylvania State Press, forthcoming).
l5 Karen Barad, “Meeting t h e Universe Half-Way: Ambiguities,
Discontinuities, Quantum Subjects, and Multiple Positionings in Feminism and Plysics,” Feminism, Science, and the Philosophy of Science,
Lynn Hankinson Nelson and Jack Nelson, eds. (Great Britain: Kluwer,
1996).
l6 I borrow the phrase “material-semiotic” from Donna Haraway,
“Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism a s a Site of
Discourse on the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies 14,
no. 3 (1988): 575-599.
Joe Weider, Bodybuilding: The Weider Approach (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 19811, 115.
la Weider, Bodybuilding, 163.
l9 Elizabeth Grosz, “Feminism and the Crisis of Reason” in Feminist
Epistemologies, Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter, eds. (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1994), 197. See also her Volatile Bodies,
2o Wardell B. Pomeroy, Boys and Sex (London: Pelican, 1968), 59.
21 Mark Simpson, Male Itpersonators: Men Performing Masculinity
(New York: Routledge, 19941, 41-42.
z2 Barad, “Meeting the Universe Half-Way,” 22.
23 Dorothy Nelkin and M. Susan Lindee, “The Media-ted Gene: Ston e s of Race and Gender,” in Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture, Jennifer Terry and Jacqueline
Urla, eds. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 399-400, my
emphasis.
24 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion o f
Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), 6.
25 For a n example of the ways in which language is informed by the
materiality of the body see Mark Johnson’s, The Body in the Mind: The
Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1987).
26 Ann Oakley, Sex, Gender and Society (London: Temple Smith,
19721, 16.
27 Entries cited are from Random House Webster’s College Dictionary,
electronic version.
** Michael Foucault, “Introduction,” in Herculine Barbin, Herculine
Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-century
French Hermaphrodite, translated by Richard McDougall (Brighton, England: Harvester Press, 1980), vii.
29 Anne Fausto-Sterling, “The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are
Not Enough,” The Sciences (MarcWApril 1993): 20.
30 Fausto-Sterling, “The Five Sexes,” 23.
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Fleshing Gender, Sexing the Body
31 My analysis here is based on Andrea Cornwall’s excellent article
“Gendered Identities and Gender Ambiguity among navestis in Salvador Brazil,” in Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies, Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne, eds. (London and New York:
Routledge, 1994), 111-132.
32 Cornwall, “Gendered Identities and Gender Ambiguity,” 111.
33 I am beholding here to Bernice Hausman’s complex rendition of
the history of transsexualism in the U.S.and Europe in her Changing
Sex: Transsexualism, Technology, and the Idea of Gender (Durham:
Duke University Press, 1995).
34 Hausman, Changing Sex, 53-54.
35 Robert Stoller, Sex and Gender: On the Development of Masculinity and Feminity (New York: Science House, 19681, 39.
36 I a m not convinced t h a t “the transsexual experience” is quite as
uniform and universal as Hausman makes it out to be.
37 Hausman, Changing Sex, 111.
38 Although this insistence on an experienced true sex contrary to
the sex of their body may have been opportunistic in some cases since
transsexuals are dependent upon the medical establishment, autobiographical accounts belie such opportunism being a common practice.
39 Cornwall, “Gendered Identities and Gender Ambiguity,” 114-115.
40 Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne, eds. Dislocating Masculinity: Comparative Ethnographies (London and New York: Routledge,
1994), 34, my emphasis. It is important here to note that Cornwall and
Lindisfarne are not embracing this view but offering it as a widely held
tenet of constructionist theories. Cornwall, in her article and this introduction, embraces a position similar to my own.
71