I agree pretty much with what you've said except this:
That male and female are not essential categories but instead the complex interaction of self-identification, behavior, and social interpellation; that the division into male and female is ultimately the result of patriarchal logics
It is complex, very complex. Gender is taught and learned culturally but sex is biologically based and they intertwine. The problem is, when folks get into the nature vs nurture, culture vs biology debate, they treat biology as unchanging. It isn't. That's what evolution is all about and culture contributes to evolution (and vice versa).
By definition, we are the descendants of folks, both male and female, who developed evolutionary strategies that worked. With women, I think there are a series of traits that contribute well to promoting the species biologically while keeping women at a cultural disadvantage. (This happens, BTW, whether you have children or not and whether you turn out to be heterosexual or not).
There's tons of research demonstrating that women's brains are organized and process differently than men's (even gay men's) ---not inferior, mind you (for many tasks, they are actually superior) but different.
Probably, if culture was structured according to brain organization and other traits, most diplomats would be women and indeed, most goverment would be run by women.
But there's two problems we'll have to overcome: (1)on average, men are bigger and stronger and they enjoy competition (2) women have the babies. The first we can actually change by choosing to have children with shorter, smarter, more verbal and sensitive men.
The second we may be stuck with unless you want to grow the babies in bottles on the window like sea monkeys or give them over to the state to raise. I find the latter a distasteful notion.
I once had a discussion in a Gender and Comm class in which a young woman maintained to me that the *only* difference between men and women was that women had the children.
Well, yeah. Duh. But this isn't an 'only'. It's really big and until we share maternity as in Alien Nation, the sexes will always be at least a little different. Culturally, we can try to minimize and perhaps even positively exploit that difference ---or at least be aware of it ---but we're better off recognizing and working with it rather than denying it.
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Date: 2008-03-26 01:45 pm (UTC)That male and female are not essential categories but instead the complex interaction of self-identification, behavior, and social interpellation; that the division into male and female is ultimately the result of patriarchal logics
It is complex, very complex. Gender is taught and learned culturally but sex is biologically based and they intertwine. The problem is, when folks get into the nature vs nurture, culture vs biology debate, they treat biology as unchanging. It isn't. That's what evolution is all about and culture contributes to evolution (and vice versa).
By definition, we are the descendants of folks, both male and female, who developed evolutionary strategies that worked. With women, I think there are a series of traits that contribute well to promoting the species biologically while keeping women at a cultural disadvantage. (This happens, BTW, whether you have children or not and whether you turn out to be heterosexual or not).
There's tons of research demonstrating that women's brains are organized and process differently than men's (even gay men's) ---not inferior, mind you (for many tasks, they are actually superior) but different.
Probably, if culture was structured according to brain organization and other traits, most diplomats would be women and indeed, most goverment would be run by women.
But there's two problems we'll have to overcome: (1)on average, men are bigger and stronger and they enjoy competition (2) women have the babies. The first we can actually change by choosing to have children with shorter, smarter, more verbal and sensitive men.
The second we may be stuck with unless you want to grow the babies in bottles on the window like sea monkeys or give them over to the state to raise. I find the latter a distasteful notion.
I once had a discussion in a Gender and Comm class in which a young woman maintained to me that the *only* difference between men and women was that women had the children.
Well, yeah. Duh. But this isn't an 'only'. It's really big and until we share maternity as in Alien Nation, the sexes will always be at least a little different. Culturally, we can try to minimize and perhaps even positively exploit that difference ---or at least be aware of it ---but we're better off recognizing and working with it rather than denying it.