Companion to Feminist Studies. Группа авторов
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that some differences are more important than others and assign particular meanings to those differences. (2016, p. 3)
One social process that was given central importance in the last decades of the twentieth century was language, a focus that was influenced by postmodern thinking and “the turn to language.” Alerted by Foucault to the role discourse plays in power relations throughout all aspects of society, feminist theorists examined discourses on the body, on male–female relations and society's discursive representations of the female and the feminine (Butler 1990; Nicholson 1990). Postmodernists also resisted the longstanding focus on male–female differences, seeking to disrupt traditional binaries and oppositions like male–female and nature–nurture (Gergen 2001).
Despite the clear rejection of essentialist theories by most feminist theorists, essentialist thinking is, as I will discuss further in the concluding section of this chapter, still very evident in both popular writing on male–female difference and in those theories that promote biological explanations, which tend in recent decades to promote the “different but equal perspective” rather than the view that women are in any way inferior. The most well‐known book that trumpets this new form of essentialism is probably Gray’s Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, which was published in 1992 and has sold over a million copies, according to its Wikipedia entry. Gray focuses on what the differences are – or what he asserts they are – and does not dwell on origins, though he does say “men and women are supposed to be different” (p. 10). Essentialist theories, like those of Gray, however seemingly benign and celebratory of women's “special” qualities are quickly translated into evidence of female deficiency and used as a reason for prejudice and exclusion. Thus Carol Gilligan's (1982) theory that women favored a morality based on valuing relationship and men based their morality on the consideration of rights could potentially be used to deny a woman a traditional high‐status post like Chief Justice. As Mednick notes,
Arguments for women's intrinsic difference (from men), whether innate or deeply socialized, support conservative policies, that in fact could do little else but maintain the status quo vis a vis gender politics. (1989, p. 1122)
Rejecting all forms of essentialism may be seen to present feminists with a dilemma because if women do not share a common essence or identity how can they have a common political cause? One solution may be to adopt the “strategic essentialism” advocated by Spivak (1988). Spivak argues for “a strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously political interest” (1988, p. 15). This would result in women (temporarily) setting aside their diversity and their differences in race, class, ethnicity, etc. and adopting the shared identity “woman” but for political purposes only. Stone considers the concept of strategic essentialism problematic, proposing instead that feminists continue to reject essentialism as “descriptively false” (2004, p. 1) but find unity between women in their shared history of oppression and in shared aspects of their current social positioning.
Sexuality and Biological Determinism
In relation to sexuality a number of different positions on the social–biological continuum have been proffered. Explanations that favor biological determinants have been seen as both negative and positive by gay, lesbian, and trans activists. In 1991, LeVay claimed to have found evidence of a difference in the hypothalamus of homosexual and heterosexual men. This finding and the claim by Hamer et al. in 1993 to have identified the “gay gene” were embraced by some activists as evidence that homosexuality was innate and therefore should not be the target of discrimination any more than the color of a person's skin or hair. However, there have been difficulties in replicating both findings and they have been subject to numerous critiques, centering on their scientific standing and their harmful implications. For example, Hegarty (1997), in a feminist interrogation of Le Vay's work, points out that Le Vay's dichotomous view of sexuality excludes those with “bisexual or queer” sexual identities. A view that homosexuality is fixed in structures of the brain reinforces the view that it is a constitutional deficiency that is universal in all homosexual men, and ignores the variety and mutability in the expression of human sexuality. As Hegarty notes, lesbian and gay people “differentiate their sexualities in complex and different ways across the life span” (1997, p. 356). Hegarty sees LeVay's work as a typical example of biological essentialism, “part of a longer ongoing attempt to inscribe sexual desire within the discipline of biology” (1997, p. 355).
Many different biological and social explanations of sexual orientation have been put forward, ranging from genetic differences to atypical early attachments with parents, but the general consensus is that while biological factors, operating via the genes or postnatally, may have a role and social factors may also have a role, sexual orientation is multiply determined and may have very different causal origins across the population (APA 2008).
An essentialist position on sexual orientation sees it as a fixed and unchanging trait of the individual. In his historical review of sexuality studies, Plummer comments that the Kinsey Institute and others in the 1970s “moved sexuality from being seen as essentially biological and reproductive to the challenge of taking seriously its socially grounded multiple meanings” (2012, p. 245). Plummer continues, “sexualities are never fixed or stable, they do not harbour one grand truth and they do not reveal our essential nature” (p. 253). He notes that by the 1990s and the publication of books such as Simon's Postmodern Sexualities (1996) scholars increasingly adopted a social constructionist perspective on sexuality, As Plummer notes sexuality was “destabilized, decentered, and de‐essentialized” (2012, p. 247).
However studies show that although scholarly thinking on sexuality may reject an essentialist perspective, essentialist thinking may still be a part of how many lay people conceptualize their own sexual orientation. Fausto‐Sterling (2012b) gives the example of a study by Stork which showed that women who have entered lesbian relationships in middle age – after having been married and having had children – tend to conclude that they must always have been a lesbian but just didn’t know it (1998).
Diamond introduced the term “sexual fluidity,” which she claims is more common in women than in men (2009). One of her studies, which study tracked young women who identified as having a same‐sex orientation into middle age and older found considerable fluctuation in their sexual preferences and behavior over time, often prompted by changes in context and opportunity (Diamond 2009). Diamond argues for a de‐essentialized, social constructionist perspective on sexual orientation which is against both biological determination and the idea that a person's sexual preference is necessarily fixed across the life course. Despite the increased discussion of sexual fluidity in academia and in the media, accompanying the higher profile for gender fluidity, empirical research indicates that the majority of people retain the same sexual orientation/preference across the life course (Savin‐Williams et al. 2012).
A Place for Biology but not for Determinism or Essentialism?
Reclaiming the Body
For many years there was a widespread rejection within feminism, across all its manifestations, of any form of theory that included biological elements. To see any female characteristic as biological in its origins or mode of functioning was seen as tantamount to accepting that it was fixed and immutable. Biology and essentialism were thus seen to go hand‐in‐hand. In the late twentieth century, with the rise of social constructivist theory and the accompanying “linguistic turn,” the body and its functions were seen as texts where discourses about the body – often positioned as oppressive and unhelpful discourses – dictate what is experienced by the individual. Thus “the thought body” became a theoretical preoccupation for many feminist scholars and the material body remained problematic (Greene 2015). Although the shift to seeing social and discursive factors as the causes of difference and therefore the target for change was understandable and productive, one consequence was the exclusion of the physical from consideration and the perpetuation of culture‐nature, mind–body binaries. Also, as Grosz comments, social constructivist perspectives reduced “materiality to representation” (Grosz 2005, p. 172). In relation to sexuality, Plummer comments that the predominantly