Social constructionism edit
Social constructionism emerged in feminism as a response to biological determinist claims of female inferiority.[1] Existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir argues in her seminal work The Second Sex that, although biological features distinguish men and women, these features neither cause nor justify the social conditions which disadvantage women.[2]
She was the first feminist theorist to distinguish sex from gender, as is suggested by her famous line, "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman."[2] Since then, many feminists have argued that constructed categories reinforce social hierarchies because they appear to be natural,[3] which influenced gender abolitionist thinking.[4]
Later theorists would challenge the commitment to the pre-social existence of sex, arguing that sex is socially constructed as well as gender.[2][1] This began with materialist feminists like Monique Wittig, who maintains that the division of bodies into sexes is the product of a heterosexual society.[5]
There is but sex that is oppressed and sex that oppresses. It is oppression that creates sex and not the contrary. The contrary would be to say that sex creates oppression, or to say that the cause (origin) of oppression is to be found in sex itself, in a natural division of the sexes preexisting (or outside of) society.[6]
— Monique Wittig, The Category of Sex
This is expanded by Judith Butler in Gender Trouble. Drawing on post-structuralist theory, Butler criticizes the dependence on a pre-discursive sex upon which gender would be constructed, instead proposing gender as a performative doing.[7]
- ^ a b Grosz, Elizabeth (2011). "Refiguring bodies". Volatile bodies: toward a corporeal feminism. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press. ISBN 9780253208620.
- ^ a b c Sveinsdóttir, Ásta Kristjana (2011). "The Metaphysics of Sex and Gender". Feminist Metaphysics: Explorations in the Ontology of Sex, Gender and the Self. Springer Netherlands: 47–65. doi:10.1007/978-90-481-3783-1_4. ISBN 978-90-481-3782-4.
- ^ Warnke, Georgia (2008). After Identity: Rethinking Race, Sex, and Gender. Cambridge, UK & New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-88281-1. OCLC 165408056.
- ^ Mikkola, Mari (2011), Witt, Charlotte (ed.), "Ontological Commitments, Sex and Gender", Feminist Metaphysics, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 67–83, doi:10.1007/978-90-481-3783-1_5, ISBN 978-90-481-3782-4
- ^ Zerilli, Linda (1990). "The Trojan Horse of Universalism: Language as a "War Machine" in the Writings of Monique Wittig". Social Text (25/26): 146–170. doi:10.2307/466245. ISSN 0164-2472. JSTOR 466245.
- ^ Wittig, Monique (2001). "The Category of Sex.". The straight mind and other essays (5. [print.] ed.). Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0-8070-7917-1.
- ^ Hood-Williams, John; Harrison, Wendy Cealey (February 1998). "Trouble with Gender". The Sociological Review. 46 (1): 73–94. doi:10.1111/1467-954X.00090. ISSN 0038-0261.