Mariana Szapuová, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia
Abstract
The central problem
of the paper is the category of gender, its epistemological and methodological
role in feminist theorizing and research particularly within conditions of
transforming countries where these fields of study are only now beginning to
develop. Concerning the recently emerged gender- skepticism various arguments,
pro and against the category of gender as a tool of analysis are explored.
It is stressed that on the level of analysis
gender not only remains relevant and
topical, it also continues to evoke new questions as the following: how
is it possible to built a theory without a certain degree of
"universalization"? Does the category of gender inevitably lead to
homogenization and thus to simplification? If we reject the category of gender,
are we not getting rid of a critical tool of analysis of an already existing
cognition?.
While trying to answer these
questions it seems to be important to
differentiate between the level in which this category operates as a tool of
critical exploration of an existing cognition and the level in which it
functions as a tool for building new knowledge/understanding. In the conditions
of the lack of feminist conciousness and feminist theory the role of gender is
especially important, but its functionality must be always
viewed within the context in which it is used as well as within the framework
of intentions and goals of concrete research
programs.
It should be seen as a category depicting certain resemblances which enables us to avoid the sweeping generalizations because these resemblances
are not stable. Quite the opposite, they are viable to change and allow
various degrees (similarity in one
sense does not have to mean a
similarity in all other senses, it can change in time or degree).
In comparison with the Western, especially the
English-speaking countries, where the concept of gender has played an important role in the feminist theory
since the beginning of the 70s, in my
country and language the term “gender” was used
almost exclusively (until recently) as a grammatical category to refer to
certain words, nouns and personal
pronouns as masculine or feminine. After the political changes, when feminist
theorizing was introduced to the
intellectual and cultural spheres, the meaning of the word ”gender” began to
change and extend. It is important to note, however, that this process is
neither fast nor striking. For most people, the word ”gender” is still mainly a
grammatical category and all human beings are characterized by their
”biologically given” sex.
One of the most serious problems following the
introduction of feminist thinking in my country was the difficulty of finding
the adequate methods and conceptual
tools for explaining the meaning and role of
gender issues at the academic level as well as in the wider cultural context. Because of the lack of feminist
tradition and different social,
historical, political and cultural conditions, at the academic level feminists
have at first explored the conceptual and methodological apparatus which has
been developed within the Western
feminist thought. As one of the
most important conceptual tools for
articulating women’s issues has been the
category of gender, which was at
a certain point a basic and perhaps most important element of, especially Anglo-American, feminist theoretical arsenal. It functioned
as a conceptual tool for grasping and
articulating of the most fundamental
question of feminist thinking since the times of Simone de Beauvoir: what is a woman, what it means for a
human being to be a woman. So, it seemed to me that
to understand and explain the goals and role of feminist theory one must
consider its basic category, the category of gender. But paradoxically enough,
it has been shown as a not very easy
task – within the
courrent feminist discourse, at least
during the last decade, there are connected
with this category various
discussions , disagreements among theorists, even controversies. My aim in this
paper is to outline the way how I
see the problems with gender and to
elaborate the way of understanding it
which is, or can be useful, as I hope, for feminist theory and research in my
country. Because of the
interconnectedness of sex/gender distinction with the epistemological role of
the category of gender I would like to briefly outline the basic philosophical and theoretical
framework within which they have been operating..
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The
distinction between sex and gender
developed within feminist theory was originally directed against the dominant
traditional understanding of the
differences between women and men as "natural" phenomena
connected with the biological distinction between "the sexes". As
Linda Nicholson pointed out, "feminists came to view differences between
women and men as having two dimensions:1. the biological and 2.
the social, with "sex" referring to the former and "gender"
to the latter" (Nicholson, 1998, p.289)
The
concept of gender as a social, cultural, historical and political category in
the historical-theoretical context of
feminist philosophy was highlighted in
the 1970s. Most theories and arguments have been based on the conceptual
distinction between biological sex and
social gender. Many feminist arguments, based on this distinction
and showing that, generally speaking, the different position of women
and men in the network of social and
power relations is not a result of their
biological, anatomical
differences, it cannot be deduced from
or excused by them, are now so well known as to require little comment. Shortly
speaking, "gender" began to
function as an effective theoretical tool which provided the means to describe and explore a number of
socio-cultural mechanisms and
instruments of production of ”woman” or ”femininity”. Moreover, this distinction was also seen as a conceptual tool for overcoming the
so-called biological foundationalism or biological determinism (Nichcolson
1998, p.291, Kiczková 1997, p.167) as well as for shifting the attention and emphasis to the socially and
culturally constructed differences.
The separation of sex and gender established
a basic theoretical framework which has been frequently used to acquire new
knowledge, to unmask some hidden forms of asymmetric relationships or to raise new questions about the social
relations between women and men.
A
number of theorists mainly in English-speaking countries
have considered the
sex/gender distinction to be an important turn which occurred in feminist thinking. Beginning with the initial stress
on legal, economical and social
discrimination of women at the end of the 70s, the Anglo-American feminist thinking moved to the analysis of
the influence of " of the gender organization of human life on Western
culture - on the literary, scientific and philosophical canon
that we call 'the Western
intellectual tradition' ".
(Bordo 1988, p. 619). The analyses of gendered character of many aspects
of human history, knowledge and individual or collective human experience
have revealed some types of cultural
norms for masculinity and femininity
occurring in different spheres of human experience of the world. " They
cleared the space, described a new territory which radically
altered the male normative terms of discussion about reality
and experience." (Bordo 1990, p.137).
"Gender",
as many feminist philosophers thought,
could serve as a good basis for argumentation
against one - biological, sexual - difference,
which has traditionally been regarded as essential, and at the same time lead to highlighting of another -
social, cultural, political and
power-based - difference. Since "gender" has been functioned as a conceptual tool for grasping of the
socially constructed - in modern
societies also power-based and power-regulated
- expectations and cultural symbols serving for reproduction of "feminine" and
"masculine" characteristics, stereotypes and division of labor, the category of gender
has been used to express the social, cultural and political differences.
The above mentioned expectations and
symbols show what it means to be a woman or man on the empirical, normative
and, what is of great importance, also on symbolical level.
For
a more adequate understanding of the meaning of this distinction in the
feminist theory, mainly Anglo-American, it is important to notice that the
concepts of sex and gender has been frequently used in two different ways which Heinämaa calls the substantive and the formal use (Heinämaa 1997, p. 30).
Originally, this distinction was
considered in the mode of reality, which
means a differentiation of features and characteristics belonging either to the category of sex or
to the category of gender. American feminists usually defined gender by
relating to the mental and behavioral features, while sex was mostly defined by pointing at the biological (anatomical, genetic and hormonal)
characteristics. Later on, this real definition of gender and sex was replaced
by the formal or criterial mode which
does not require naming of features
belonging to one or the other category, it only provides criteria on the basis of which we can put the individual characteristics to one or the
other category. ”'Gender' has came to refer to any differences between women and men -
be it mental, behavioral or anatomical - which have their origin
in society and culture"(Heinämaa 1996, p. 292). However, in the light of both of these meanings of the
sex/gender distinction, the possibility
that the bodily differences between the sexes
might have their origin in culture or society is ignored (Heinämaa 1996, p.293). Moreover, as several
theorists have noted, this kind of
thinking implies an assumption according to
which the gender difference is, in a way, rooted in nature or caused by nature/sex. This assumption
continues "to construe the relations
between gender and sex in causal terms. There is, it seems,
an underlying 'natural' manifestation
of biological differences in social ones." (Lloyd 1989, p. 15). This means
that in the light of this distinction it was still possible to create
monocausal explanations of the difference. Precisely this point became the one
of the focuses of many criticism of sex/gender distinction. To put it briefly,
in the late 80s many feminists began to see this conceptual framework as
problematic and challenge the usefulness of that distinction (Nicholson 1998,
pp.290,291., Heinämaa 1996,pp.293, 296). For many theorists the differentiation
between sex and gender hides ambiguity
and confusion and often leads to controversial
attitudes. Furthermore, as some of them maintained, the category of
gender itself is connected with a
number of problems and methodological difficulties which made it a controversial term for many theorists. ”Consequently, what became central to
feminist debate was less the question of the relationship between ´sex´ and
´gender´ and more the question: does ´gender´ - or the social construction of
what it means to be a ´woman´ or ´man´- possess any unitary or ´essential´
element across cultures?”(Nicholson 1998, p. 292).
In the context of
this second question the problem of an
epistemology of gender arise, e.g. the
problem of its epistemological and
methodological role in contemporary
feminist theorizing and feminist research, particularly within
conditions, where these fields of study are only now beginning to develop.
Besides other aspects, I see the
epistemology of gender as strongly interconnected with the question of essencialism, e.g. with the question
whether the category of gender leads inevitably to “falsely universalising” ,
essentialist theories and explanations. How we can build new theories using
gender as an analytic category and at the same time not to homogenize the
heterogenity among women and obscure diversity? But before goint to these
points, I will at first briefly outline
some main lines of criticism of the category of gender, on the basis of which
most of the recent discussion or even controversies are led. I will pay attention to some
lines of those arguments which
consider gender as a problematic
concept because of its supposedly essencialist charakcter. Many of these
arguments were raised by authors
influenced by postmodernism who showed
serious doubts about the adequacy of
the category of gender as an analytical
tool. At this point , I think, it is useful to distinguish between two levels
of study of gender: of gender as a category, or as a though construct that
helps us to articulate of what means to be a woman or man in particular historical
period, society and culture and of gender as a social relation, which is
a specific relation of dominance and power (for similar point see Flax1990, p.
45). Speaking of an epistemology of gender I speak about the former level,
about the gender as a though construct, as a
theoretical/philosophical category.
At this level "gender", as I have pointed out earlier, operates as a conceptual tool for grasping and articulating of ”women
issues”. In accordance with this
assumption I want to focus my attention mainly on the analysis of the question related to the adequacy and productivity of this tool when used for construction of feminist theory and research. I will not
follow the questions regarding the
social construction of female gender as a social relationship or cultural symbol in detail, even though I am aware that it is not possible to avoid them
completely. The ways in which gender is
created through an asymmetrical, social
division of work and the difference between the sexes - constructing the symbolic contents of
masculinity and femininity within the
network of historically conditioned
cultural and political (power) relations - create a significant field of feminist philosophy or theory in
general.
As
indicated above, in the feminist philosophical discourse of the last decade one can see a growing skeptical
attitude towards gender. Susan Bordo
calls it feminist or gender skepticism
(see Bordo 1988, Bordo 1990, Bordo
1992), a skepticism "about
the use of gender as an analytical category" (Bordo 1990, p. 135).
This skepticism does not form a univocal
or stable position that could be fully accepted or rejected. It can rather be noted as a certain consonance of warning voices, emerging from various fields
of theory and theoretical positions
(Bordo 1990, p. 135). These voices say
that "gender" - even though possibly effective in revealing
of one type of difference (between men
and women) - covers and hides another,
equally vital distinction, the difference among women. This skepticism reproaches the category of gender, as
it is applied in the theory of gender
difference, for its being a universal
and universalizing concept, for designating
a universal "woman" or woman in herself. Susan Strickland has
described this situation as following: "Instead of 'Man' we are now
presented with a generic 'Woman', a
term like the universal 'man' or 'human' that hides or denies differences in situation
and experience, privilege and power - its content based
not on actual commonalities between people, but on the experiences
and interests of some who have the position and ability to impose these
terms and define what they mean for themselves and other"
(Strickland 1994, p. 265).
Theories which thematized the problem of
difference or otherness of women through "gender" were often
criticized and blamed for unacceptable
generalization, for application of a ”unitary woman” violently
homogenizing the diversity and
heterogeneity of women. Moreover, as it is maintained, they oppress, silence and exclude those subjects who do not want to - or cannot - adjust to the universalizing
definition of the female gender. If any
social analysis - including the analysis of
women's subordination - concentrates only on one element of a complex of
relationships constituting the analyzed phenomenon or situation, it suffers from methodological reductivism and consequently leads to deformed results. In
the case of feminist theory, we do not
only deal with a deformity in the sense
of inadequacy or falseness of theory, we also deal with the fact that the results of such research
are politically (from the feminist
political practice point of view) incorrect and unacceptable because they are excluding, hegemonizing and oppressing. According to Linda Nicholson,
for example, "To try to identify
unitary themes in the experiences or perspectives of women may
require the suppression of voices different from our own"
(Nicholson 1990, p. 6).
The criticism or even rejection of the category of gender were
often framed by the debate on the threat of essentialism. This debate has been
concentrated on the question, whether
the category of gender has any common, universal, ahistorical basis, or,
in other words, whether the term
“gender” (or “woman”i) has a unified universal meaning. As it is said, every general
claim about gender (or any requirement
raised in the name of women) is not only theoretically incorrect and misleading but also ideologically
unacceptable since such a claim do not
pay attention to the differences among women themselves and lead to subordination and marginalization
of a particular group of women, who do
not want identify themselves with the general, abstract subject of
"we women". In this respect,
we can find an interesting argumentation of Judith Butler who, while recognizing the political inevitability to express her voice "as a woman"
against those who oppress women and
deny the existence of their social subordination, also stresses that "there is an internal imperative not to subordinate, erase and
colonize the diverse women who are ostensibly represented by the term "
(Butler 19922, p. 163).
This imperative is , without doubt, very important and feminist theorists would accept it. But on the other hand , from the theoretical end epistemological point of view we may also ask: how to build a theory, when all theorizing is in some sense generalizing? Jane R. Martin addresses her argument to those, who sees gender as an essentialist category and maintains that for to speak only about diversity, all general terms need to be given up. ”Any naming or categorizing tends to call attention to similarities and to neglect differencies. In other words, the use of any general term…easily can give rise to the very consequence that feminist scholars have attributed to essence talk.” (Martin 1994, p. 636). According to her, to avoid generalizations means to limit feminist research to description of particularities in particular period of time. ”Taken to its logical extreme, the argument against general categories like women, gender…leaves feminist scholars in the lurch” she writes. (Martin 1994, p.637).
So, within the ”essentialist debate” the question of universalizing theories and generalizing, homogenizing concepts was primarily discussed. In this paper I can not summarize all various arguments in detail, be it pro or against the category of gender. It seems to me that this debate culminated at the break of the 80s and the 90s. At this time it may appear that this problem has been solved, resp. overdiscussed. However, I believe that on the epistemological and methodological level it not only remains relevant and topical, it also continues to evoke questions for those, who start with building their theories. As most striking I consider the following: How is it possible to built a theory without a certain degree of universalization or generalization? Does the category of gender inevitably lead to homogenization and thus to simplification? Does it necessarily lead a research in a bad direction? If we reject the category of gender, are we not getting rid of a critical tool of analysis of an already existing cognition? For example, as it is well known, ”gender” has functioned as a tool of critical analysis of our intellectual tradition, especially Western philosophy. How can we understand the gender biased character of our own discipline without certain degree of generaliztation? It seems to me that the question of productivity and adequacy of this category has in such a way concentrated mainly on the following two problems: First, the problem of gender specificity of individual areas of knowledge and prejudices against women that are present in them. As an example to illustrate how the category of gender has worked as a tool of rethinking an area of knowledge I chose my discipline, philosophy, whose traditional concepts is deeply rooted in our language and thinking ( for example the mind/body, nature/culture, subjectivity/objectivity dualisms etc.). While considering this point, maybe it is useful to differentiate between the level in which ”gender”operates as a tool of critical exploration of an existing knowledge and the level in which it functions as a tool for building new knowledge/understanding. I think that in the case of creating new theories using gender we really should be very cautious not to obscure diversity, but for me it should not mean to abandon this category in general in the name of heterogenity and diversity.. The second question is whether "gender" can serve as an appropriate tool for articulating the problem of difference (both between genders and within one gender itself), or, in other words, whether gender skepticism is the only alternative. In what follows, I will concentrate on these two questions only with the aim to show that the above mentioned difficulties with the very concept of gender must not and should not lead us inevitably to resignation .
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Numerous feminist critiques of Western
philosophical tradition were based on
the category of gender. A spreading belief emerged in feminist theory that the concept of gender can serve as a
productive analytical category. If we
look at the concept of gender from the point of view of language, we can see it
implies that the meaning of certain words
such as "reason", "knowledge", "science"
as well as "body" or
"history", are conditioned by gender, or they hide a gender specific bias (see Tanesini 1994).
Most feminist analyses of masculinity
present in the history of Western
philosophy have been directed against one of the fundamental assumptions of traditional philosophy,
against the assumption, according to which philosophy is a product of
objective, universal and unhistorical
reason, thanks to which the
philosophical reflection is able to achieve "god's eye perspective" or to use Thomas Nagel´s phrase, "the
view from nowhere". According to this assumption, the question of historical and cultural positioning of
reason through its "beholder"
is not relevant because it does not touch the correctness and adequacy of
particular philosophical theories in
any way (Grimshaw 1996, p. 734). Feminist criticism went on to undermine
exactly this assumption by arguing that the question of a social - gender, class, racial, religious - localization
of the knower (philosopher) are
connected with the contents of
philosophical concepts and with the meaning of basic philosophical terms. In the light of this criticism, it has become clear that the assumed gender neutrality of
the philosophical terms and concepts only covers up their gendered nature and gender specific
connotation, i.e. that their meanings
is always gender coded. It is in this sense that Susan Bordo talks about the "maleness" of philosophy
(Bordo 1988, p. 619).
Feminist
philosophers, who based their analysis on gender, have revealed (as they believed) behavior norms, types of cognitive style and moral conduct that were
evidently determined by gender. Thus,
they have created a new space which provides
a certain alternative to the predominant, gender neutral discourse on human experience, a space that
also enables application of gender in
contemplation on such "exclusive waters
of human intellect" as philosophy. These theories also have led the focus
of attention to the fact that "the hierarchical oppositions of
Western thought have consistently been
gender coded" (Bordo, 1988, p. 623), and the way in which the logic of power and exclusion dominates within the scheme of Western rationality.
Feminist criticism of traditional knowledge has added a new direction to this
investigation and it was the category
of gender that enabled thinkers to see the hierarchical oppositions of Western
thought as well as the very knowledge/power relations as gender coded.
Feminist
philosophers have looked critically also at
a number of special science disciplines in which they identified the presence of gender specific norms and
presumptions. The application of gender
as an analytical tool in feminist
epistemology, focused on questions how
gender norms influence on the
processes of cognition (see Anderson 1995; Webb 1995), have led to a more precise definition of areas in
which this influence is active and
clearly provable. Elizabeth Anderson has identified four such areas: gender structured division of
theoretical labor, (among individual
disciplines as well as within one discipline),
gender symbolism, (if it is a particular hierarchy in the field of cognition or the contents of individual
theories), androcentrism, (of theories
or research programs), and finally, a
direct and open or indirect, hidden sexism (Anderson 1995, p. 57,58).
Gender
skepticism, as sketched above, is often
connected with the postmodern orientation of some feminists, emphasizing the heterogeneity among women
and pointing out the - in their view -
illegitimate of sweeping generalizations based only on a partial experience of a particular group of women
who, in this way, homogenize
heterogeneity. Of course, ”generalization
can obscure, homogenize and exclude,
but they can also reveal and
illuminate, and an overemphasis on heterogenity can itself obscure the validity
and possible utility of such categories for social critique” (Fisher 1992,
p.175). Susan Bordo, even though being aware
that a certain degree of skepticism may help to correct some simplifications, also warns against extreme
skepticism and willingness to give up
the category of gender completely. She
warns against this because of practical-political as well as theoretical reasons.
On epistemological level this category can function as a prism showing numerous social and cultural phenomena in a different light and thus enabling us to articulate them in a different ways. Feminist social analyses should not abandon this category if they want to keep the ”women’s point of view”. I would like to show this on the phenomenon of the violence against women. It is important to point out that in my country relevant research regarding this phenomenon has only now started to develop. First attempts to reflect on this problem were made mostly from the psychological perspective. This perspective by itself, however, is not sufficient because it leads to the conclusion that the core of this problem is sought exclusively on the individual level. Only the ”prism” of gender enables us to see this problem from a wider, social perspective as a problem connected with the gender hierarchy and imbalance of power.
It could be also stressed that the category of gender does not function only as a tool of theoretical analysis of various fields of knowledge, but it also helps to create and theoretically
justify the strategies of practical
politics. It operates as a tool for
creation of practical political strategies focused on the change of those social conditions which
serve to close women into their sex.
Thus, if "femininity" is
connected with gender and gender is something
under creation, changeable and
flexible, if it is a result of the social, cultural and political influence,
i.e. a social construct, then it is
obvious that we can no longer refer to the ”women´s nature”, to women's natural place which is still common in my country.
It seems to me that contemplating
"gender" as a category depicting such resemblances enables us to
avoid the sweeping generalizations
because these resemblances are not stable. Quite the opposite, they are viable to change and allow various degrees (similarity in one sense does not
have to mean a similarity in all other
senses, it can change in time or degree).
To conclude, I would like to note that
functionality or dysfunctionality of the category of gender must be always
viewed within the context in which it is used as well as within the framework
of intentions and goals of concrete
research programs. Of course, feminist
thinking still has to deal with an acute task relating to the problem of "degree" (Farkašová1992)
of productivity of the category of
gender in the analysis of various aspects of social life, position of women in the network of social, political and power relationships as well as in creation
of practical political strategies.
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