There is a lot to say about the current anti-trans sentiment and policy/legal shifts in the US. I will focus here on what critics call gender ideology, which they claim denies the reality of biological sex as binary and unchangeable, substituting for it a made-up concept of gender identity. On this view, trans people are not really what they say they are; transwomen are really men, and transmen are really women. The concern from both non-feminist and feminist critics alike is not just that trans folks are somehow lying about who/what they are, but that their very existence is threatening to biological women. Allowing biological males to self-identify as women can lead to 2 problems, critics say: these folks would be able to enter women-only spaces, thereby placing “real” women at risk for sexual harassment and violence (a claim I will set aside for now); and (for the feminists) the category of “women” would become meaningless, making legal protections from discrimination for women unenforceable. The bogeyman (bogeyperson?) for many of these critics is Judith Butler, whose work on gender and sex as socially constructed has become synonymous with “gender ideology” (Butler was even burned in effigy in Brazil while they were there for a conference back in 2017). Let us, then, explore Butler’s view.
First, a note about terms. “Gender” itself has become rather slippery. Sometimes it’s conflated with sex, sometimes it seems to mean gender identity, sometimes it seems to refer to masculinity and femininity. I think it’s useful to maintain distinctions for the sake of clarity. So, I will use “sex” to refer to the kind of body that one has (female, male, or intersex, along with things like genitals, secondary sex characteristics, hormones, etc.) and “gender” to refer to a host of socially defined roles, norms, and acceptable behaviors considered appropriate for males and females. I will use the term “gender identity” exclusively to refer to a sense of oneself as a man or woman (or something else entirely) that does not necessarily correlate with one’s sex.
In some ways, gender as socially constructed is rather obvious, because our expectations for women and men have changed over the years. White, middle-class women used to be largely confined to the home, unable to vote, mostly kept out of the workforce (except in the “helping” professions), and expected to focus on their physical appearance rather than the development of their intellect or character, but things have changed (thanks to feminist activism). What was once seen as natural to women and thus unchangeable has come to be seen as socially created and hence able to change. Things have changed less for men, but there has been some movement: a man who co-parents his children or becomes a nurse, for instance, is less likely to be bullied or mocked for it than has been the case in the past. Butler uses the term performative to get at this aspect of gender. She does not mean by this either that gender is merely a performance nor that it is an insincere display meant to make one look good (as the term has come to mean recently). Rather, it means that gender is something that we do rather than something that we merely are. What we take to be simply natural is actually the result of social forces that could be otherwise. If gender is something that we do, then we can do it differently, or perhaps even undo it completely.
Butler’s example of the performativity of gender is drag. Drag queens are biological males who convincingly take on feminine expectations, wearing clothing, hairstyles, and makeup that are typically associated with women. Many would be taken for women outside the drag context. Drag queens thus disrupt gender expectations and norms, showing that they could indeed be quite different. If men can be feminine, then femininity is not necessarily tied to women. That isn’t to say that gender is simply a choice that we can make, that social expectations don’t matter. Gender norms and expectations have a social force behind them such that challenging them can lead to various punishments, from bullying to physical violence, with LGBTQ+ people of color experiencing the highest rates of violence in the US than any other group. Short of violence, consider the numerous attempts to restrict drag performances and cancel LGBTQ+ Pride parades around the country, often with the justification that they harm children. To say that gender is socially constructed is thus not to say that it is somehow unreal; indeed social norms and expectations are woven through society, in our schools and communities, in our religious organizations, in our laws and policies, in the assumptions that influence how we see someone who challenges those expectations (do I see a fellow human being? A brave soul? A weirdo? Etc.). But if we understand that gender is socially constructed, then we have an opportunity to think carefully about how it operates as both enabling some ways of being and closing others down, to ask if closing down those ways of being is unjust, to envision and embrace other ways of doing gender than those endorsed by society. This possible rethinking allows us to ask what a “real” woman or a “real” man might be, rather than assuming that we already know; it is one step toward making space for transwomen and transmen.
Critics of “gender ideology,” though, claim that the problem with trans identities goes deeper than gender to sex. At least some trans folks seek to change sex, which can include altering identity papers from, say, M to F. This move, critics say, should not be allowed. Sex is binary (one is either male or female) and cannot be changed; there’s nothing socially constructed about it! The first problem here is that sex is not, in fact, binary. Intersex people, those who are between male and female or some combination thereof, exist. Critics of gender ideology either ignore these people or claim that their existence is the exception that proves the rule: because there are so few of them statistically speaking, it’s clear that for the most part people are either male or female. This claim seems to me akin to saying that because hazel eyes are rare, eye color is really binary, with blue and brown the only “real” colors. The difference between sex and eye color, of course, is that we don’t “fix” hazel-eyed people and demand that they have either brown or blue eyes; the sex binary, though, is frequently literally imposed on intersex infants through medical interventions like surgery.
It also seems to me that on the terms of biological sex that gender critics identify—genitals, hormones, secondary sex characteristics, etc.—sex can indeed be changed, precisely because at least some of these components can be altered. Indeed, some “real” women and “real” men seek to change their sexed bodies for what I want to all gender enhancement reasons: breast enlargement surgery, vulvar cosmetic surgery, penile implants, and testosterone supplements for men all seek to enable cisgender women and men to embody culturally defined standards of acceptable male and female bodies. What we think of as “sex” is thus already infused with gender: if a woman’s breasts are “too small,” she is not a real woman; if a man’s sex drive is “too low,” he is not a real man. Bodily alterations that align with gender expectations are culturally allowed, even encouraged; bodily alterations that challenge those expectations are not. But they’re both alterations to bodily sex.
This last point illustrates the claim that sex itself is socially constructed: our sexed bodies are always already gendered. We don’t just see vaginas and penises or hormone levels; we “see” the range of social expectations that we attach to men and women. Pink is for girls, and blue is for boys; girls shouldn’t fight, and boys shouldn’t cry; women should crave love, men should crave sex; and so on. It’s not that sex isn’t real. Rather, our understandings of sex are themselves infused with cultural notions about what sex means. A penis isn’t just a penis; it’s a sign of manhood. And a vagina is a sign of womanhood. Intersex genitals, as noted above, are an error that must be corrected. Sex is infused with gender; that is precisely what it means to say that sex is socially constructed.
Lastly, let’s examine the claim from gender critical feminists that allowing changes to sex will undermine legal protections for women against discrimination. Consider the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton that firing someone for being gay or transgender violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (Title VII prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, or national origin). The thinking is that, for instance, firing someone for being gay, lesbian, or trans is a form of sex discrimination. If a lesbian is fired for being a lesbian, then she would not have been fired if she were a man; her sex is salient to her firing. The same logic applies to firing a trans woman for being trans: if she had not altered her sex, she would not have been fired, so her sex is salient to her firing. In these cases, a person is targeted for discrimination as gay, lesbian, or trans; that does not mean that a woman cannot also suffer from sex-based discrimination. Even if a trans woman is fired for being a woman rather than for being trans, then the category of woman defines her firing just as it does if a “real” woman is fired for being a woman.
This last point suggests that both sex and gender are power-laden concepts. Rather than being merely descriptive, they are mechanisms for justifying inequality on the basis of perceived sex, sexual identity, and gender identity. Right-wing gender critics clearly seek to reinscribe social hierarchies along lines of sex and gender, keeping women confined to the home and raising children (this ideal is also racialized and class-based, which will be the focus for another post or two). Gender critical feminists, on the other hand, are also critical of this view of women and seek women’s equality with men. Where they go astray, I think, is in their analysis of social power and privilege. Sexism, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and classism intertwine in the same system. They don’t necessarily operate in the same way, but they sustain and justify one another. One cannot fully understand the working of sexism without an analysis of the other axes of power. I think gender critical feminists see sexism as power of men over women. They acknowledge that other forms of power exist, and that we should pay attention to them, but they think we can analyze sexism on its own. I do not. Sexism, homophobia, and transphobia are all forms of gender discrimination and are themselves racialized and classed. (My analysis thus far has focused implicitly on whiteness.) Confronting sexism will fail if we try to do so in a vacuum.
Sources:
Julian Baggini, “Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism—A Review” (https://philosophersmag.com/material-girls-why-reality-matters-for-feminism-a-review/)
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex
Butler, Who’s Afraid of Gender?
Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body
Fausto-Sterling, Sex/Gender: Biology in a Social World
Holly Lawford-Smith, “What is Gender-Critical Feminism (and why is everyone so mad about it)?” (https://hollylawford-smith.org/what-is-gender-critical-feminism-and-why-is-everyone-so-mad-about-it/)
Jay W. Richards, “What is Gender Ideology?” (https://www.heritage.org/gender/commentary/what-gender-ideology)
Kathleen Stock, “Entering the parallel universe of transactivism” (https://kathleenstock.substack.com/p/entering-the-parallel-universe-of)
For Love of the World: 