Gender and Sexuality

Critical Theories, Critical Thinkers

Chris Beasley

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781446223383
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This accessible introduction to gender and sexuality theory offers a comprehensive overview and critique of the key contemporary literature and debates in feminism, sexuality studies and men?s studies. Chris Beasley?s clear and concise introduction combines a wide-ranging survey of the major theorists and key concepts in an ever-growing and often passionately debated field.

The book contextualizes a wide range of feminist perspectives, including: modernist, liberal, postmodern, queer and gender difference feminism; and in the realm of sexuality studies covers modernist liberationism, social constructionism, transgender theorising and queer theory. In men?s studies, Chris Beasley examines areas of debate ranging from gender and masculinity to questions of race, ethnicity, imperialism and gay masculinities. Interconnections between the subfields are highlighted, and Beasley considers the implications of body theory for all three.

Key theorists covered include:

Altman · Brod · Butler · Califia · Carbado · Connell · Dowsett · Grosz · Halberstam · Hook · Jackson · Jagose · Nussbaum · Rich · Seidman · Spivak · Stoltenberg · Weeks · Whittle · Wolf · Wollstonecraft The only book of its kind to draw together all the important strands of gender analysis, Gender and Sexuality is a timely and impressive overview that is invaluable to students and academics taking courses on gender and feminist theory, sexuality and masculinity.

PART 1

Gender/Feminist Studies

1	Gender and Feminism: an Overview

In this chapter I initially discuss the term ‘gender’ in order to place Feminism as a subfield within the overall gender/sexuality field. This discussion also introduces some ongoing themes within that overall field which will be reiterated within the sections on Sexuality and Masculinity Studies. I then turn to an analysis of the first subfield, namely Feminism. Feminism is considered both in specific terms and also as a means to exemplify the methodological approach employed throughout the book. The analysis indicates in a preliminary way some of the features of the three subfields, as well as how I intend to characterise them. In particular, I undertake an account of Feminism that demonstrates how I will delineate the main directions in the gender/sexuality field.

Gender: the meaning of the term

Feminism is one of two subfields (along with Masculinity Studies) that arguably can be situated under the umbrella term ‘gender’. For this reason, before we can examine Feminism, some brief account of this term is necessary. ‘Gender’ typically refers to the social process of dividing up people and social practices along the lines of sexed identities. The gendering process frequently involves creating hierarchies between the divisions it enacts. One or more categories of sexed identity are privileged or devalued. In modern Western societies¹ gender divides into two. This is not necessarily the case in other times, places and cultures (see Herdt, 1994). Gender in the modern West usually refers to two distinct and separate categories of human beings (the division into men and women) as well as to the division of social practices into two fields. The gendering of social practices may be found, for example in contemporary Western societies, in a strong association between men and public life and between women and domestic life, even though men and women occupy both spaces.

Gender in Western society refers to a binary division (into two categories) of human beings and social practices to the point of this division even being construed as oppositional. We see this at work in the phrase ‘the opposite sex’. The two categories are not merely regarded as distinct and opposed, they are also put into a hierarchy in which one is typically cast as positive and the other negative. Cranny-Francis et al. (2003: 2) note in this setting that ‘a buddy (a word derived from brother) is a good thing to have, but no one wants to be a sissy (derived from sister)’. Similarly, positive masculine categories such as ‘bachelor’ may be set against negative feminine equivalents like ‘spinster’. While such categorical distinctions insistently divide, they also indicate connections. The binary nature of gender in Western society means that the features of one category exist in relation to its supposed opposite. To be a man is to be not-woman and vice versa.

Although the account I have provided so far indicates the usual contemporary meanings of gender in Feminist and Masculinity Studies, these meanings have altered over time and continue to be the subject of debate. Prior to the 1960s it was restricted ‘primarily to what is coded in language as masculine or feminine’ (Richardson, 2001: 5491–3). Many writers today describe gender comparatively narrowly in terms of social identities (men and women) (see Cranny-Francis, 2003: 1–4), while other commentators see it more in terms of social interactions and institutions that form between groups. The latter approach, which rather than locating gender in identities, conceives it as a structuring process, may be seen in Bob Connell’s notion of ‘gender relations’ (Connell, 2002: 9; 2000: 23). Different understandings of the term are obviously evident in accounts of what it describes. In recent times it has, for example, been variously extended to denote personality attributes associated with men and women, social constructions broadly linked to the male/female distinction, the existence of social groups (men and women) produced in hierarchical relationship to one another, and social practices enacted through reiteration rather than derived from any natural distinction (Richardson, 2001: 14018). Although gender is commonly linked to social interpretation of reproductive biological distinctions, some analysts reject any suggestion that it is necessarily connected to notions of reproduction.² Attitudes towards gender and social change differ as well. Some writers advocate getting rid of gender and gender categories (Lorber, 2000: 1; Whittle, 1996), while others see such categories at the moment at least as a political starting point and indeed suggest that the premature abandonment of marginal group identities like ‘women’ may produce political paralysis (Young, 1997a; Bordo, 1990: 33–156).

However gender is understood or regarded by critical thinkers in the gender/sexuality field, in practice it covers or refers to two major subfields – that is, Feminist and Masculinity Studies. While Feminist studies talks largely about women, and Masculinity Studies largely about men, both increasingly discuss both. These subfields tend to focus on only two sexes,³ but recently have begun to allow for more plural sexed identities. To the extent that gender encompasses these subfields, debates about the term itself reveal much about tensions in and between these subfields and provide signals regarding the current shape of the gender/sexuality field as a whole. Such debates about the term therefore offer a useful entry point to introduce the broader field and the discussion of the subfield, Feminism, which follows.

Debates about gender

Debate 1

The term ‘gender’ is now the dominant coverall one for analysis of sexed identities and practices – that is, for discussing social relations within and between groups identified as men and women (Kemp and Squires, 1997: 11). This dominance is comparatively recent; the shift from focusing on particular identities, such as occurs in Women’s Studies, to a focus on Gender Studies has been disputed by many feminists on the grounds that this involves conveniently moving attention away from women’s subordination. Such commentators suggest that the supposedly more neutral language of gender might well involve the imposition of a politically suspect agenda (Libertin, 1987; Evans, 1990: 457–62; Richardson and Robinson, 1994: 11–27; Serematakis, 1994). Gender is here associated with attempts to excise the radical critique of Women’s Studies and with prescriptive demands that Women’s Studies must be accompanied by a matched emphasis on men (Canaan and Griffen, 1990). By contrast, other writers have suggested that this scepticism is unwarranted. In this context, some note that analysis of gender still largely means a focus upon women, even though it should not (Carver, 1996).

It would seem that the term ‘gender’ as the ‘proper’ name for a combined field including Feminist and Masculinity agendas may be deemed problematic on several fronts.⁴ While Masculinity Studies writers are generally more accepting of the terminology, they too often appear concerned about the potential for retreating from a focus on power relations between men and women. Moreover, some gay male writers are not convinced that their issues can be adequately addressed under the broad mantle of Gender Studies (Messner, 1997: 80–8; Brod, 1987a: 179–96; Dowsett, 1993; Clark, 1995: 241–55). Indeed a number of writers attending to sexuality see the term as not merely describing a particular socio-historical process of binary division into two sexed categories, but as prescribing such a division (Bornstein, 1994: 8, 114–15).

Ironically, it would seem that gender is disputed both on the grounds that it is associated with the diminution of a focus on particular sexed identities (such as ‘women’) and with the shoring up of such identities. Still others view gender’s concern with sexed identities as precisely the means to undo these identities (Lorber, 2000). What this debate signals is an ongoing discussion central to the entire field of gender/sexuality theory regarding the question of whether focus on particular identity groups is politically helpful or harmful.⁵ Discussion about the status of identity politics arises not only in Feminist but also in Sexuality and Masculinity Studies. Identity politics is also a question that highlights very clearly the array of different directions and frames of reference in the gender/sexuality field along a Modernist–Postmodern continuum. Indeed, the significance of this question and the way in which it reveals the diversity of thinking in the field is a crucial reason for my usage of the continuum in mapping out field characteristics.

Debate 2

The term ‘gender’ has also been criticised on the basis that it sets up too sharp a divide between social and natural/bodily. Gender has been used to indicate that nature (bodies) do not necessarily tell you much about human social organisation of sexed identities and practices. In short, a male body does not necessarily result in social masculinity, in a personal identity deemed ‘masculine’. Gender in this setting was seen as a reference to ‘social construction’. The word implied a radical critique of conservative views that asserted biological determinism. Gender, in other words, suggested a critique of the wide range of views that assumed that bodily ‘sex’ determines the self and that biological sex difference explains human social arrangements. Gender was a term that enabled a questioning of biologistic presumptions, such as that male bodies are naturally more aggressive, women are less mathematical thinkers, and so on.⁶

However, other thinkers asserted that setting up gender against (bodily) sex in this way recreates a Western tradition of presuming a sharp distinction between social/cultural and biological/natural distinction that cannot be upheld (Scott, 1999: 70–3; Moi, 2001; Young, 2002). This distinction is perceived as ignoring interactions between society and biology, and/or ignoring (bodily) ‘sex’ per se – as if ‘the biological’ were merely brute inert matter. Yet there is considerable evidence to indicate that notions of biology do change over time. Julia Epstein has noted, for example, that hermaphrodites were once seen as springing from the devil (Epstein, 1990). On this basis some writers (especially those employing psychoanalytic frameworks and/or attending to bodily materiality) prefer to use ‘sex’, ‘sexuality’ or ‘sexual difference’ as the coverall term rather than gender (Grosz, 1994a: 15–17; Mitchell, 1982; Braidotti, 1994b). Moreover, as Jackson points out, the term gender has a decidedly English-speaking heritage. Writers employing English but, for instance, influenced by French theorists like Foucault or Wittig may be less enamoured of the term. Even in the English-speaking world, gender did not become widespread in critical thinking on the topic until the 1970s (Jackson, 1998b: 132).

I have used gender in this book, not because I have any particularly strong commitment to it, but simply because it is the most common term today across the subfields of Feminist, Sexuality and Masculinity Studies. This pragmatic usage should not prevent recognition of the ways in which debates about the term gender reveal different understandings of the relationship between biology and the social ordering of sexed identities, as well as the historical/cultural specificity of theoretical names and traditions. The latter point raises another important problem.

Debate 3

Writers who justify the usage of the term ‘gender’ as against ‘sex’ or ‘sexuality’ do so as a means of indicating that the differentiation of men and women is not a simple direct expression of eternal nature. By contrast, those who dispute its usage reject the biological–social division this seems to imply and relatedly refuse to demarcate (bodily) sex, sexuality and gender. Biological (reproductive) sex differences, sexuality (erotic, sometimes reproductive) and gendered social arrangements (typically linked to sex differences and reproduction) are considered interconnected in this analysis. What we see here is also a debate about the links between what is described under the terms gender and sexuality. Commentators who reject gender entirely offer one example of theorising which asserts that gendered arrangements and sexuality are bound together, but they are not alone. Most writers in Feminist and Masculinity Studies (that is, in Gender Studies) view gender as intertwined with sexuality (Cranny-Francis et al., 2003: 7). Many go so far as to presume that gender (sexed identities and practices) is the foundation of sexual identities and practices. This approach asserts that gender comes first and that sexuality is subsequently shaped by gender (Jackson, 1995). Most Sexuality Studies writers are unconvinced. Gayle Rubin (1984), for instance, claims that sexuality should be treated separately from gender and is highly critical of analyses that reduce the former to the latter. Indeed, sexuality theorists in general are much more inclined – along with a relatively small number of Feminist and Masculinity writers – to assert that sexuality is prior to gender.⁷

These disputes, as I noted in the Introduction, indicate that the conception of a field of gender/sexuality theory is not straightforward but also demonstrates points of difference in orientation between the three subfields. Feminist and Masculinity Studies tend to line up together and focus on the significance of gender (sexed identities), while Sexuality Studies focus upon the organisation of desire (not on having or doing sex per se, but upon sexualities) and are increasingly somewhat antagonistic to gender approaches.

You can see by looking at the term ‘gender’ that there are ongoing and important debates about it, which also tell us something about other relevant terms. I have drawn attention to three of these debates:

1. The question of whether we should focus on particular (usually marginal) groups/identities (for instance, focus on women rather than gender).
2. The question of the relationship between the social and biological/natural/bodily (which surfaces in considering gender, versus sex/sexuality/sexual difference, as coverall term for the field of study of sexed identities).
3. The question of the connection between sex, sexed and sexual, in particular between gender and sexuality.

These debates recur in various incarnations in all of the three subfields of gender/sexuality theory – that is, Feminist, Masculinity and Sexuality Studies. I have drawn attention to them to show how such debates chart out the thematic terrain of the gender/sexuality field. They demonstrate the spread of the field across the continuum of Modernist–Postmodern frameworks, the character of its subfields and the significance of particular writers/writings within it, as well as indicating its simmering tensions. For this reason they also shape the format of this book. I will now show how the term ‘gender’ and debates related to it are played out in relation to the subfield, Feminism.

Introducing Feminism

Feminism is the first of the three subfields to be discussed under the overarching field of gender/sexuality (see Figure I.1 in Introduction). The short overview of this subfield that follows also provides an opportunity to show you how I intend to develop the whole book. Looking at Feminism gives me the space to model the format I use to characterise and differentiate between different directions/trajectories in the subfields of the field of gender/sexuality (G/S). In much the same way as I used the specific term ‘gender’ to show something of the broad ‘terrain’ of this field, I shall now employ Feminism as the initial specific exemplar which sets out in the way I intend to explore G/S theory and categorise its main directions.

Throughout the book I consider the G/S field in terms of five main theoretical directions, which are distin...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: Gender/Feminist Studies
• Part 2: Sexuality Studies
• Part 3: Gender/Masculinity Studies
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Methodological Issues
• Glossary of Key Terms
• Bibliography
• Index