The Sexed Body and Biology

This topic addresses how biological sex is understood in gender studies, including arguments that the categories used to describe the sexed body are themselves shaped by history and culture.

Definition

The study of how biological sex is conceptualized, including the scientific understanding of bodily sex characteristics and the argument that the categories framing them are historically and culturally shaped.

Scope

It surveys feminist science studies and the history of the body, including Fausto-Sterling's work on the biology and variability of sex, Laqueur's history of changing models of sexual difference, and the theoretical claim that 'sex' is not simply a pre-cultural given. It treats the range of positions, including those that stress biological reality, in a descriptive and even-handed manner.

Core questions

• Is biological sex a simple binary, or a more complex and variable set of traits?
• How have models of sexual difference changed across history?
• In what sense, if any, is the sexed body 'constructed'?

Key theories

The variability of biological sex

Fausto-Sterling's analysis showing that the biological markers of sex, including chromosomes, hormones, and anatomy, do not always align neatly into two categories, and that intersex variation complicates a strict binary.

The one-sex and two-sex models

Laqueur's historical thesis that Western understanding shifted from a 'one-sex' model, in which the female body was seen as a lesser version of the male, to a 'two-sex' model of incommensurable difference, showing that scientific accounts of sex have a history.

History

Feminist science studies from the 1980s and 1990s scrutinized the biology of sex; Laqueur's Making Sex (1990) historicized models of sexual difference, and Fausto-Sterling's Sexing the Body (2000) examined the biology of intersex and the cultural framing of sex categories, while Butler's Bodies That Matter (1993) addressed the materiality of sex philosophically.

Debates

How far sex is constructed

Whether the claim that sex categories are culturally shaped denies the biological reality of bodily differences, or whether it concerns the interpretive frameworks through which those differences are classified, a distinction central to the debate.

Key figures

• Anne Fausto-Sterling
• Thomas Laqueur
• Judith Butler

Seminal works

• laqueur1990
• fausto2000
• butler1993

Frequently asked questions

Does saying sex is 'constructed' deny biology?

Most theorists distinguish between bodily differences, which they do not deny, and the cultural categories used to classify and interpret them, which they argue have a history and are not simply natural.