The Journey of Gender
Does the Sex/Gender Distinction Do More Harm Than Good?
This week, we bring you an exchange between Alex Byrne and Featured Author Abigail Favale, on the merits of the sex/gender distinction.
Back in January, Favale published a thought-provoking essay, "Has Gender Become Too Troubled?" There, she writes,
Despite the cultural dominance of disembodied “gender” in elite environments and on social media, it has not wholly colonized the mind or tongue of the average person. This presents us with an opportunity for redeeming the term “gender,” to build upon that intuition that gender is rooted in the sexed body, and that one’s gender refers simultaneously to one’s sex and one’s personal identity as man or woman—because those are inseparable.
Quoting Sr. Prudence Allen, Favale argues that we should "ransom" gender by reclaiming the word and linking back to our embodied nature as men and women.
In the first installment of today's double-header, MIT Philosopher Alex Byrne responds to Favale, pushing back against her tacit acceptance of the division between sex and gender.
The Journey of Gender: There and Back Again
Alex Byrne
Favale’s proposal inevitably introduces an unwelcome ambiguity where there was none before....
The better idea, I suggest, is to go with the flow and use “gender” only as a synonym for sex. Other distinctions that are sometimes made using that word can be made more clearly with other words. The uninhibited use of “gender” has already ruined swathes of philosophy, not to mention the public discourse; we can each do our part to limit the damage.
In this week's second FD original, Abigail Favale responds to Byrne, giving the reader a sneak peak into the evolution of her views on this question.
Does the Sex/Gender Distinction Do More Harm Than Good?
A Response to Alex Byrne
Abigail Favale
What, then, is the difference between sex and gender, if by defining gender The sex/gender distinction originated as a way to guard against an overly enthusiastic biological determinism. The second-wave feminists who first employed it were trying to make a reasonable distinction between the stable biological reality of sex and the various cultural interpretations of that reality, which should not be read as strictly natural or inevitable. But it has been decades since the sex/gender distinction remained within those tidy constraints. In hindsight, after fifty years of its usage, it’s clear that the distinction has ultimately served to diminish the significance of biology and define “woman” and “man” apart from sex altogether. Is there any merit in trying to salvage the sex/gender distinction, given that its overall effect has been to deconstruct sex and reify “gender,” in all its various iterations?
This Week: The Child Care Cliff, Retooling Agrarian Wisdom, and the Craft of Homemaking
This week: Rachel M. Cohen on the child care cliff, Erika Bachiochi on the agrarian model, Ivana Greco on homoemaking as a craft, the La Leche League erases mothers, midlife crises, what Featured Author Nina Power is reading—and more!
Summer Reading Group
Interested in a summer read-along of Erika Bachiochi’s The Rights of Women? This one has just started.