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Gender, betwixt biology and society
Sexologies (2012) 21, 192—194
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www.sciencedirect.com
CLARIFICATION
Gender, betwixt biology and society夽 B. Cordier (MD) Psychiatry Department, Hôpital Foch, 40, rue Worth, BP 36, 92151 Suresnes cedex, France Available online 13 August 2012
KEYWORDS Gender; Sex; Meaning; Confusion
Summary This article raises issues as general as the meaning of words like ‘‘gender’’ and ‘‘sex’’ or the gramatical use of gender for nouns in certain languages such as French. The idea is to remind us that gender is a concept firmly established in our cultures and that sexual ‘‘pre-assignement’’ of individuals is a fact of life from a biological, psychological and social standpoint. This will help us to have a better understanding of the perpetual suffering induced by the psychological inversion of gender. © 2012 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.
In the context of a rather unusual debate about gender, perhaps we should come back to the transdisciplinary and consensual fundamentals. This is what the philosopher JeanFrancois Mattei is trying to do when he raises the question ‘‘why have all human societies always made a distinction between male and female, masculine and feminine? What are the foundations upon which the grammatical, cultural and political constructions are built?’’ This question serves to remind us just how powerful gender really is as a concept; a fact that contributes to the singular source of distress and pain we call gender dysphoria.
Gender and sex, the meaning of words Etymologically The word gender comes from the latin genus-genesis, a masculin word, meaning the group, the species, the family, and is the root of ‘‘general’’, ‘‘generic’’. The word ‘‘sex’’ comes from the latin ‘‘sexus’’, meaning a section, a separation. Interesting to highlight that in Latin, gender is a uniting element, bringing things together, whereas sex divides and separates.
Common meaning and neology In the dictionnary, the word gender has many similar but slightly different meanings. The word can signify: DOI of original article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sexol.2012.07.002. 夽 Ce numéro inclut également une version franc ¸aise : Cordier B. Le genre, entre biologie et sociétal. E-mail address: [email protected]
• either a group based on similar characteristics (abstract or concrete); • or something related to appearance, attractiveness; • or a grammatical meaning; we shall come back to this later.
1158-1360/$ – see front matter © 2012 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sexol.2012.07.001
Gender, betwixt biology and society The word sex, apart from the external genital organs, means, according to the dictionnary, ‘‘either of the two main divisions into which many organisms are placed on the basis of their reproductive functions or capacities’’, respectively called male and female to which approximately half of the adult individuals of the human race belong, in addition to many animal species and some rare plant species, and which play a specific role in the reproduction of these species. The adjective ‘‘sexed’’ means ‘‘possessing the distinctive mark of one sex only’’. These two words, gender and sex, do not have the same meaning and the word gender does not refer to sexual preference. According to the French General Commission for Terminology and Neology, ‘‘replacing the word sex with gender does not meet any linguistic requirement, and the extension of the meaning of the word gender is not justified in French’’. In fact this extension, as we know, is an Anglicism.
193 a general programme of masculinisation or feminisation: it designs the internal and external anatomical differences and defines the type of hormones secreted; the result is a whole host of differences between males and females, divided as follows: • primary sexual characteristics, directly related to reproduction; • secondary sexual characteristics, not directly related to reproduction: body hair, body structure, voice, mammary glands, etc. One might also speak of tertiary sexual characteristics to designate clothing, hairstyles, jewellery, make-up, that vary according to the sociocultural environment. Can be mentioned here ‘‘sexed cerebral dimorphism’’, both functional and anatomical, although today we are unable to assess the weight of the innate and the acquired, an assessment that needs to take into account all the recent discoveries in the field of cerebral stimulation.
The gender of words Psychological aspects Grammatical gender is worthy of some investigation, in the light of the present subject. Some languages divide their nouns into two or even three categories, male, female and neuter. Grammatical gender refers to the sex for the names of living sexed animals, including human beings, where it represents the sex and can be applied to functions, occupations, first names, etc. and affects the articles, adjectives and participles that apply to them. For words referring to inanimate objects, the attribution of gender seems to be rather arbitrary — this is the subject of morpho-phonetics: in French for example, why should a table be female and a bench be male? Why are some words female in one language and male (or neuter) in another? And some words mean different things according to their gender: in French ‘‘un page’’ means a page-boy; ‘‘une page’’ means a page; ‘‘la mémoire’’ means the memory, ‘‘un mémoire’’ means a thesis. All we know is that when Latin was evolving into the romance languages, such as French, the marks of gender lost their original characteristics. In Latin, the gender of a word was defined by its ending.
Sexual preassignment in human beings By ‘‘preassignment’’ we refer to that which defines and designates an individual’s sex before the construction of gender identity.
Biological aspects Human beings are a sexed species, this is an irrefutable fact from a biological standpoint, since our chromosomes are homo- or heterogametic, XX or XY. During fertilization, the choice of one or the other, male or female, is purely random, 50/50. Nevertheless, there are 105 boys born for every 100 girls, although this sex distribution changes with age, mainly due to the fact that the ‘‘weaker sex’’ is in fact more resistant. Like software, the sequence XY or XX runs
A good place to start is the very frequent ‘‘parental preassignment’’, even before fertililisation of the egg. People have long being using various illusory methods to influence whether they have a boy or a girl: diet, recipes, time and position of the woman during fertilisation, and so on and so forth. Then came artificial fertilisation, able for the first time to really enable potential parents to choose the sex of their child. But what had the deepest effect on preassignment was the arrival of the ultrasound, able to reveal the child’s sex, and to potentially foster a kind of objective ‘‘discrimination’’ (first name, colours, clothing, etc.) and subjective discrimination by means of multiple projections in the parental imagination. Once the baby is born, the child tries to take back control and progressively forge his or her own gender identity that, according to Stoller, is contemporary to the acquisition of language, enabling the child to structure his or her personality as he becomes aware of him — or herself, of the world in which he lives and his own place in that world. This identity is obviously influenced by the previous factors, associated with the inevitable sexual bias of education and the environment; even toys have a sex!
Sociological aspects With just a few exceptions, since human beings developed a social organisation, sexual differentiation has applied. Before the arrival of the Civil Registry, there was already clothing, ornamentation, functions, the respective tasks and so on. These are heavy constraints, but apparently freely accepted. As Judith Butler writes, ‘‘the norms produce us as much as we produce them’’. Since it started, the Civil Registry states an individual’s sex in French law, and in accordance with the public order principle of the nonavailability of the human body and of civil status, it cannot be changed, except by deed poll. And yet it is defined purely by the appearance of the external genitals! It is confirmed in France by the National Insurance number (the first digit
194 means male or female), by the title (Mr, Mrs, Miss) and was for hundreds of years a major factor in the decision for availability of education and the choice of profession.
The incessant reminder of gender This is a reality of which we have been made aware by our transsexual patients. For the population at large, the reminder of gender is something natural, either not even noticed at all, or on the contrary, appreciated as a mark of courtesy. But for people suffering from gender dysphoria, this constant reminder of their biological gender is painful, or even seen as hostile. All the considerations mentioned above, underline the weight of sexual assignment, despite all the current societal turbulence, and lead us to the conclusion that: • the cultural foundations are strong; • the biological consolidation is deep; • this duality in our species has some almost Manichean aspects.
B. Cordier Confusion between genders or blurring of the limits between the sexes creates fear; could this be a threat to the survival of the human race? For transsexual patients, the answer to this question is of little importance — they are confronted every day with numerous reminders of their biological assignment. Every morning, they have to make a decision whether or not to comply with customs for clothing, and whatever they chose to wear, they will always be ‘‘in disguise’’, forced to take part in a somber circus. For them, hormone and surgical reassignment and reassignment in the civil registry are their ‘‘psychosocial rehabilitation’’. Presented as an introduction to the second congress of the SOFECT (French society of research and treatment of transsexualism).
Disclosure of interest The author declares that he has no conflicts of interest concerning this article.
Disponible en ligne sur
www.sciencedirect.com
CLARIFICATION
Gender, betwixt biology and society夽 B. Cordier (MD) Psychiatry Department, Hôpital Foch, 40, rue Worth, BP 36, 92151 Suresnes cedex, France Available online 13 August 2012
KEYWORDS Gender; Sex; Meaning; Confusion
Summary This article raises issues as general as the meaning of words like ‘‘gender’’ and ‘‘sex’’ or the gramatical use of gender for nouns in certain languages such as French. The idea is to remind us that gender is a concept firmly established in our cultures and that sexual ‘‘pre-assignement’’ of individuals is a fact of life from a biological, psychological and social standpoint. This will help us to have a better understanding of the perpetual suffering induced by the psychological inversion of gender. © 2012 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.
In the context of a rather unusual debate about gender, perhaps we should come back to the transdisciplinary and consensual fundamentals. This is what the philosopher JeanFrancois Mattei is trying to do when he raises the question ‘‘why have all human societies always made a distinction between male and female, masculine and feminine? What are the foundations upon which the grammatical, cultural and political constructions are built?’’ This question serves to remind us just how powerful gender really is as a concept; a fact that contributes to the singular source of distress and pain we call gender dysphoria.
Gender and sex, the meaning of words Etymologically The word gender comes from the latin genus-genesis, a masculin word, meaning the group, the species, the family, and is the root of ‘‘general’’, ‘‘generic’’. The word ‘‘sex’’ comes from the latin ‘‘sexus’’, meaning a section, a separation. Interesting to highlight that in Latin, gender is a uniting element, bringing things together, whereas sex divides and separates.
Common meaning and neology In the dictionnary, the word gender has many similar but slightly different meanings. The word can signify: DOI of original article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sexol.2012.07.002. 夽 Ce numéro inclut également une version franc ¸aise : Cordier B. Le genre, entre biologie et sociétal. E-mail address: [email protected]
• either a group based on similar characteristics (abstract or concrete); • or something related to appearance, attractiveness; • or a grammatical meaning; we shall come back to this later.
1158-1360/$ – see front matter © 2012 Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sexol.2012.07.001
Gender, betwixt biology and society The word sex, apart from the external genital organs, means, according to the dictionnary, ‘‘either of the two main divisions into which many organisms are placed on the basis of their reproductive functions or capacities’’, respectively called male and female to which approximately half of the adult individuals of the human race belong, in addition to many animal species and some rare plant species, and which play a specific role in the reproduction of these species. The adjective ‘‘sexed’’ means ‘‘possessing the distinctive mark of one sex only’’. These two words, gender and sex, do not have the same meaning and the word gender does not refer to sexual preference. According to the French General Commission for Terminology and Neology, ‘‘replacing the word sex with gender does not meet any linguistic requirement, and the extension of the meaning of the word gender is not justified in French’’. In fact this extension, as we know, is an Anglicism.
193 a general programme of masculinisation or feminisation: it designs the internal and external anatomical differences and defines the type of hormones secreted; the result is a whole host of differences between males and females, divided as follows: • primary sexual characteristics, directly related to reproduction; • secondary sexual characteristics, not directly related to reproduction: body hair, body structure, voice, mammary glands, etc. One might also speak of tertiary sexual characteristics to designate clothing, hairstyles, jewellery, make-up, that vary according to the sociocultural environment. Can be mentioned here ‘‘sexed cerebral dimorphism’’, both functional and anatomical, although today we are unable to assess the weight of the innate and the acquired, an assessment that needs to take into account all the recent discoveries in the field of cerebral stimulation.
The gender of words Psychological aspects Grammatical gender is worthy of some investigation, in the light of the present subject. Some languages divide their nouns into two or even three categories, male, female and neuter. Grammatical gender refers to the sex for the names of living sexed animals, including human beings, where it represents the sex and can be applied to functions, occupations, first names, etc. and affects the articles, adjectives and participles that apply to them. For words referring to inanimate objects, the attribution of gender seems to be rather arbitrary — this is the subject of morpho-phonetics: in French for example, why should a table be female and a bench be male? Why are some words female in one language and male (or neuter) in another? And some words mean different things according to their gender: in French ‘‘un page’’ means a page-boy; ‘‘une page’’ means a page; ‘‘la mémoire’’ means the memory, ‘‘un mémoire’’ means a thesis. All we know is that when Latin was evolving into the romance languages, such as French, the marks of gender lost their original characteristics. In Latin, the gender of a word was defined by its ending.
Sexual preassignment in human beings By ‘‘preassignment’’ we refer to that which defines and designates an individual’s sex before the construction of gender identity.
Biological aspects Human beings are a sexed species, this is an irrefutable fact from a biological standpoint, since our chromosomes are homo- or heterogametic, XX or XY. During fertilization, the choice of one or the other, male or female, is purely random, 50/50. Nevertheless, there are 105 boys born for every 100 girls, although this sex distribution changes with age, mainly due to the fact that the ‘‘weaker sex’’ is in fact more resistant. Like software, the sequence XY or XX runs
A good place to start is the very frequent ‘‘parental preassignment’’, even before fertililisation of the egg. People have long being using various illusory methods to influence whether they have a boy or a girl: diet, recipes, time and position of the woman during fertilisation, and so on and so forth. Then came artificial fertilisation, able for the first time to really enable potential parents to choose the sex of their child. But what had the deepest effect on preassignment was the arrival of the ultrasound, able to reveal the child’s sex, and to potentially foster a kind of objective ‘‘discrimination’’ (first name, colours, clothing, etc.) and subjective discrimination by means of multiple projections in the parental imagination. Once the baby is born, the child tries to take back control and progressively forge his or her own gender identity that, according to Stoller, is contemporary to the acquisition of language, enabling the child to structure his or her personality as he becomes aware of him — or herself, of the world in which he lives and his own place in that world. This identity is obviously influenced by the previous factors, associated with the inevitable sexual bias of education and the environment; even toys have a sex!
Sociological aspects With just a few exceptions, since human beings developed a social organisation, sexual differentiation has applied. Before the arrival of the Civil Registry, there was already clothing, ornamentation, functions, the respective tasks and so on. These are heavy constraints, but apparently freely accepted. As Judith Butler writes, ‘‘the norms produce us as much as we produce them’’. Since it started, the Civil Registry states an individual’s sex in French law, and in accordance with the public order principle of the nonavailability of the human body and of civil status, it cannot be changed, except by deed poll. And yet it is defined purely by the appearance of the external genitals! It is confirmed in France by the National Insurance number (the first digit
194 means male or female), by the title (Mr, Mrs, Miss) and was for hundreds of years a major factor in the decision for availability of education and the choice of profession.
The incessant reminder of gender This is a reality of which we have been made aware by our transsexual patients. For the population at large, the reminder of gender is something natural, either not even noticed at all, or on the contrary, appreciated as a mark of courtesy. But for people suffering from gender dysphoria, this constant reminder of their biological gender is painful, or even seen as hostile. All the considerations mentioned above, underline the weight of sexual assignment, despite all the current societal turbulence, and lead us to the conclusion that: • the cultural foundations are strong; • the biological consolidation is deep; • this duality in our species has some almost Manichean aspects.
B. Cordier Confusion between genders or blurring of the limits between the sexes creates fear; could this be a threat to the survival of the human race? For transsexual patients, the answer to this question is of little importance — they are confronted every day with numerous reminders of their biological assignment. Every morning, they have to make a decision whether or not to comply with customs for clothing, and whatever they chose to wear, they will always be ‘‘in disguise’’, forced to take part in a somber circus. For them, hormone and surgical reassignment and reassignment in the civil registry are their ‘‘psychosocial rehabilitation’’. Presented as an introduction to the second congress of the SOFECT (French society of research and treatment of transsexualism).
Disclosure of interest The author declares that he has no conflicts of interest concerning this article.