I am just over 2 years late to this article. And I really enjoyed reading it, returning from your latest article at American Reformer.
Reading, I came across this from your article "(Gender” is just a euphemism for biological sex.)" Is this something you maintain or have you changed your views since then?
I am especially curious because I am thinking through the issues of gender, Mammon, and the death of Eros and how they are all might be connected at the moment. And the issue of gender seems to be the most tenuous.
Because while we cannot deny the dimorphic nature of the sexes, the cultural interpretation of the same throws a tiny spanner in the wheel.
So, if it isn't any trouble, what are your current thoughts and pointers? Thank you.
I think I would stand by the statement. My first encounter with the word "gender" was on forms for school and health. There, "gender" had replaced "sex" (in many cases) but without any implication that gender was something distinct from biological sex. One marked, in response, "M" or "F" and left it at that.
There are a number of things distinct from biological sex that get conflated into a single category by gender-theorists: A culture's sex-stereotypes, for appearance and behavior, and an individual's conformity or non-conformity to those stereotypes. Jordan Peterson would also mention variances in personality across the overlapping bell curves of men and women. Given average differences, masculinity and femininity turn out to be real phenomena, such that some men are more feminine and some women more masculine.
Conforming or not to stereotypes and being more masculine or feminine are real phenomena, but they do not affect one's biological sex. Nor do they amount to a difference in gender identity.
We could also name "gender identity" simply as one's sense of identification with one's biological sex. There, Peterson would point out that sex and gender identity do not vary independently. The vast majority of men believe that they are men, or lack a belief that their gender identity is other than their biological sex. The same for women.
Some of the phenomena gender theorists highlight certainly exist, but they do not produce a second layer of reality called "gender."
I would also point out that Hegel, in his Philosophy of Right, describes the social dimension of male and female and attributes great importance to it. A conservative, then, does not have to deny that there are socially-determined conceptions of male and female. Instead, they argue that these are important and shouldn't be haphazardly deconstructed.
I suppose I initially held that gender was pretty synonymous with sex. So imagine my surprise when I grew up and I met the gender theorists. I held my stand for a while that gender is synonymous to sex. Just until I found a passage from C.S Lewis' 'Perelandra' that held that gender "is a reality, and a more fundamental reality than sex. Sex is, in fact, merely the adaptation to organic life of a fundamental polarity which divides all created beings." This opened up a new level of inquiry for me.
Then I read DC Schindler's paper "Perfect Difference" which gave an Aristotelian backing to the same line of thought that although gender is still masculine and feminine, it is form that transcends matter; and this form is what enables sophisticated cultural formation such as education our young. He also claims that this form that transcends matter also influences personality. So I think Peterson is up to something.
Then I still read Ivan Illich's 'Gender' where he gave a good anthropological view of gender (he calls it vernacular gender) and says it is opposed to 'economic sex.' His claim was that economic sex is a product of industrialisation which apart from ticking boxes on forms, basically treat the sexes as neuters. Whereas vernacular gender so distinguishes the sexes that terms like "travesty" were used to connote a violation of gender boundaries (which are usually deliberate for effect). According to his elaborate account, cultures were so particular about vernacular gender that tools denoted gender (a woman touching a man's bow was considered a failing on the man's part and he could be banished behind the women's huts to live and feed using bad baskets which were women's tools). Or that women couldn't pull carts; they only did so in cases of tragedies where maybe their husbands and sons were dead or that the sons, in event of the husband's death, were too young to do the designated male work.
I think it is a really interesting problem. And I am certain of a few things: such as that although cultures may interpret gender in various ways, gender is a normative category; it has specific intelligible and universal content.
This is my little effort so far. And I will be delighted to know where else I should look.
I am just over 2 years late to this article. And I really enjoyed reading it, returning from your latest article at American Reformer.
Reading, I came across this from your article "(Gender” is just a euphemism for biological sex.)" Is this something you maintain or have you changed your views since then?
I am especially curious because I am thinking through the issues of gender, Mammon, and the death of Eros and how they are all might be connected at the moment. And the issue of gender seems to be the most tenuous.
Because while we cannot deny the dimorphic nature of the sexes, the cultural interpretation of the same throws a tiny spanner in the wheel.
So, if it isn't any trouble, what are your current thoughts and pointers? Thank you.
Thanks for reading an old piece!
I think I would stand by the statement. My first encounter with the word "gender" was on forms for school and health. There, "gender" had replaced "sex" (in many cases) but without any implication that gender was something distinct from biological sex. One marked, in response, "M" or "F" and left it at that.
There are a number of things distinct from biological sex that get conflated into a single category by gender-theorists: A culture's sex-stereotypes, for appearance and behavior, and an individual's conformity or non-conformity to those stereotypes. Jordan Peterson would also mention variances in personality across the overlapping bell curves of men and women. Given average differences, masculinity and femininity turn out to be real phenomena, such that some men are more feminine and some women more masculine.
Conforming or not to stereotypes and being more masculine or feminine are real phenomena, but they do not affect one's biological sex. Nor do they amount to a difference in gender identity.
We could also name "gender identity" simply as one's sense of identification with one's biological sex. There, Peterson would point out that sex and gender identity do not vary independently. The vast majority of men believe that they are men, or lack a belief that their gender identity is other than their biological sex. The same for women.
Some of the phenomena gender theorists highlight certainly exist, but they do not produce a second layer of reality called "gender."
I would also point out that Hegel, in his Philosophy of Right, describes the social dimension of male and female and attributes great importance to it. A conservative, then, does not have to deny that there are socially-determined conceptions of male and female. Instead, they argue that these are important and shouldn't be haphazardly deconstructed.
But what do you think? Thanks for the exchange.
Thank you for your thoughtful response.
I suppose I initially held that gender was pretty synonymous with sex. So imagine my surprise when I grew up and I met the gender theorists. I held my stand for a while that gender is synonymous to sex. Just until I found a passage from C.S Lewis' 'Perelandra' that held that gender "is a reality, and a more fundamental reality than sex. Sex is, in fact, merely the adaptation to organic life of a fundamental polarity which divides all created beings." This opened up a new level of inquiry for me.
Then I read DC Schindler's paper "Perfect Difference" which gave an Aristotelian backing to the same line of thought that although gender is still masculine and feminine, it is form that transcends matter; and this form is what enables sophisticated cultural formation such as education our young. He also claims that this form that transcends matter also influences personality. So I think Peterson is up to something.
Then I still read Ivan Illich's 'Gender' where he gave a good anthropological view of gender (he calls it vernacular gender) and says it is opposed to 'economic sex.' His claim was that economic sex is a product of industrialisation which apart from ticking boxes on forms, basically treat the sexes as neuters. Whereas vernacular gender so distinguishes the sexes that terms like "travesty" were used to connote a violation of gender boundaries (which are usually deliberate for effect). According to his elaborate account, cultures were so particular about vernacular gender that tools denoted gender (a woman touching a man's bow was considered a failing on the man's part and he could be banished behind the women's huts to live and feed using bad baskets which were women's tools). Or that women couldn't pull carts; they only did so in cases of tragedies where maybe their husbands and sons were dead or that the sons, in event of the husband's death, were too young to do the designated male work.
I think it is a really interesting problem. And I am certain of a few things: such as that although cultures may interpret gender in various ways, gender is a normative category; it has specific intelligible and universal content.
This is my little effort so far. And I will be delighted to know where else I should look.