gender identity essay pdf

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Article Contents

1. introduction, 2. gender identity first, 3. the no connection view, 4. contextualism, 5. pluralism, 6. further and future work.

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Recent Work on Gender Identity and Gender

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Rach Cosker-Rowland, Recent Work on Gender Identity and Gender, Analysis , Volume 83, Issue 4, October 2023, Pages 801–820, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/anad027

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Our gender identity is our sense of ourselves as a woman, a man, as genderqueer or as another gender. Trans people have a gender identity that is different from the gender they were assigned at birth. Some recent work has discussed what it is to have a sense of ourselves as a particular gender, what it is to have a gender identity ( Andler 2017 , Bettcher 2009 , 2017 , Jenkins 2016 , 2018 , McKitrick 2015 ). But beyond the question of how we should understand gender identity is the question of how gender identities relate to genders.

Our gender is the property we have of being a woman, being a man, being non-binary or being another gender. What is the relationship between our gender identity and our gender? According to many people’s conceptions and the standards operative in trans communities, our gender identity always determines our gender. Other people and communities have different views and standards: some hold that our gender is determined by the gender we are socially positioned or classed as, others hold that our gender is determined by whether we have particular biological features, such as the chromosomes we have. If our gender is determined by our gendered social position or whether we have certain biological features, then our gender identity will not determine our gender.

There are several different ways of approaching the question what is the relationship between our gender identity and our gender? We can approach this question as a descriptive or hermeneutical question about our current concepts of gender identity and gender: what is the relationship between our concept of gender identity and our concept of gender? ( Bettcher 2013 , Diaz-Leon 2016 , Laskowski 2020 , McGrath 2021 , Cosker-Rowland forthcoming , Saul 2012 ) Rather than focusing on descriptive questions about our gender concepts, many feminists, such as Sally Haslanger (2000) and Katharine Jenkins (2016) , have proposed ameliorative accounts of the concepts of gender which we should accept; these are gender concepts which they argue that we can use to further the feminist purposes of fights against gender injustice and campaigns for trans rights. We might then ask the ameliorative question, what is the relationship between our gender identity and our gender according to the concepts of gender and gender identity that we should accept? However, some of the most interesting recent work on the relationship between gender identity and gender has focussed on the metaphysical issue of the relationship between being a member of a particular gender kind G (e.g. being a woman) and having gender identity G (e.g. having a female gender identity). As we’ll see, we can answer these different questions in different ways: for instance, we can hold that we should adopt concepts such that someone is a woman iff they have a female gender identity but hold that metaphysically someone is a woman iff they are treated as a woman by their society, that is, iff they are socially positioned as a woman.

Four positions about the relationship between gender identity and gender that give answers to these ameliorative and metaphysical questions have emerged. This article will explain and evaluate these four positions. In order to understand these different views about the relationship between gender identity and gender it will help to have a little understanding of recent work on gender identity. The two most well-known and popular accounts of gender identity in the analytical philosophy literature are the self-identification account and the norm-relevancy account. On the self-identification account, to have a female gender identity is to self-identify as a woman. One way of explaining what it means to self-identify as a woman is to hold that such self-identification consists in a disposition to assert that one is a woman when asked what gender one is. 1 On the norm-relevancy account, to have a female gender identity is to experience the norms associated with women in your social context (e.g. the norm, women should shave their legs) as relevant to you ( Jenkins 2016 , 2018 ).

A first view of the relationship between gender and gender identity is what we can call gender identity first . According to a metaphysical version of gender identity first , what it is to be gender G (e.g. a woman) is to have a G gender identity (e.g. to have a female gender identity). Talia Bettcher (2009 : 112), B.R. George and R.A. Briggs (m.s.: §1.3–4), Iskra Fileva (2020 : esp. 193), and Susan Stryker (2006 : 10) argue for gender identity first or views similar to it. And the view that our gender is always determined by our gender identity is, as Briggs and George discuss, part of the standard view in many trans communities and among activists for trans rights. One key virtue of gender identity first is that it ensures that gender is always consensual: on this view, we can be correctly gendered as gender G (e.g. as a woman) only if we identify as a G , and so we can be correctly gendered as a G only if we consent to be gendered as a G by others ( George and Briggs m.s. : §1.3) ( Figure 1 ). 2

Gender identity first

Elizabeth Barnes (2022 : 2) argues that we should reject gender identity first as both a metaphysical and as an ameliorative view. She argues that

(i) Some severely cognitively disabled people do not have gender identities, but

(ii) These severely cognitively disabled people without gender identities have genders and should be categorized as having genders.

And in this case, although having gender identity G is sufficient for being gender G , it is not necessary for being gender G nor necessary for being categorized as a G according to the concepts of gender that we should accept. So, we should reject gender identity first as both a metaphysical view and as an ameliorative view.

Regarding (i), Barnes argues that gender identity

requires awareness of various social norms and roles (and, moreover an awareness of them as gendered), the ability to articulate one’s own relationship to those norms and roles, and so on. But many cognitively disabled people have little or no access to language. Many tend not to understand social norms, much less to identify those norms as specifically gendered. (6)

The norm-relevancy account of gender identity implies that this is true, since on this view having a gender identity involves taking certain gendered social norms to be relevant to you. And the self-identification account also seems to imply that having a gender identity involves having capacities that many severely cognitively disabled people do not have, since self-identification as a particular gender involves a linguistic capacity to say or be disposed to say that one is, or think of oneself as, a particular gender, and many severely cognitively disabled people do not have these capacities.

Barnes has two arguments for

(ii) Severely cognitively disabled people without gender identities have genders.

First, Barnes argues that severely cognitively disabled people who do not have gender identities nonetheless have genders because they suffer gender-based oppression ( 2022 : 11–12). For instance, severely cognitively disabled women are subject to gendered violence and forced sterilization to a greater degree than severely cognitively disabled men. This argument may seem strongest as an argument for (ii) as a metaphysical claim: the view that severely cognitively disabled people without gender identities have genders is the best explanation of what we find happening in the world.

Second, Barnes argues that holding that some severely cognitively disabled people do not have genders because they do not have gender identities would involve othering, alienating or dehumanizing these severely cognitively disabled people. Gender identity first implies that agender people do not have genders because their gender identity is that they have no gender. But Barnes argues that gender identity first’s implication that severely cognitively disabled people without gender identities lack a gender is more pernicious. Agender people have the capacity to form a gender identity but they opt-out of gender. Gender identity first implies that severely cognitively disabled people without gender identities fail to have genders because they do not have the capacity to form a gender identity. So, it implies that they fail to have a gender in the way that tables and animals fail to have a gender – by failing to have the right capacities to have a gender – rather than in the way that agender people do so; for agender people have these capacities. Therefore, Barnes argues, gender identity first others and alienates severely cognitively disabled people from other humans, since all other humans have the capacity to have a gender and having a gender (or opting out of it) is a central part of human (social life). 3 This second argument seems best understood as an argument that we shouldn’t adopt concepts of gender that imply that one is gender G iff one has gender identity G because there are moral and political costs to adopting such concepts.

A second account of the relationship between gender identity and gender is the opposite view; this view understands gender identity and gender as entirely disconnected. On this no connection view, the fact that a woman has a sense of herself as a woman is never what makes her a woman; other features of her, such as the way that she is socially positioned, the way she was socialized, or her biological features, make her a woman.

Several accounts of gender imply the no connection view, including Haslanger’s (2000) influential account of gender. Haslanger’s account was originally proposed as an ameliorative account of the concepts of gender that we should adopt rather than as a metaphysical account of gender properties. But in later work Haslanger also endorsed her account of gender as a metaphysical account of gender properties ( 2012 : e.g. 133–134). On Haslanger’s account, to be a woman is to be systematically subordinated because one is observed or imagined to have bodily features that are presumed to be evidence of a female’s biological role in reproduction; on Haslanger’s view, women are sexually marked subordinates. This view of what it is to be a woman implies that one’s being a woman is never determined by one’s female gender identity. Since, whether one has a sense of oneself as a woman, is disposed to assert that one is a woman or takes norms associated with women to be relevant to one, is neither necessary nor sufficient for one to be a sexually marked subordinate.

Although our gender is not directly determined by our gender identity on Haslanger’s account, one’s female gender identity can indirectly lead one to be a woman on Haslanger’s account. For instance, a trans woman’s female gender identity may lead her to take estradiol which will make her have female sex characteristics, which may lead to her being assumed to play a female biological role in reproduction, to be oppressed accordingly, and so to be a woman on Haslanger’s account. In this case, on Haslanger’s account, someone’s female gender identity can indirectly lead to their becoming a woman ( Figure 2 ).

The n o connection view

Other accounts of gender similarly imply the no connection view of the relationship between gender identity and gender. According to Bach’s (2012) account of gender, to be a woman one has to have been socialized as a woman. But one can have a sense of oneself as a woman without having been socialized as a woman and one can be socialized as a woman without forming a sense of oneself as a woman. So, having a female gender identity is neither necessary nor sufficient to be a woman on Bach’s account (although it may be more likely that A will have a sense of themself as a woman if A was socialized as a woman). Biological or sex-based accounts of gender on which our genders are determined by our biological features, such as our chromosomes, also imply the no connection view, since to have a female gender identity is neither necessary nor sufficient for having XX chromosomes. 4

The no connection view implies that many trans women are not women. For instance, Haslanger’s version of this view implies that trans women who are not presumed to have female sex characteristics by those in their society are not women; so trans women who are not recognised as women, or who ‘do not pass’, 5 are not women. This is because such trans women are not observed or imagined to have features that are presumed to be evidence of a female’s biological role in reproduction. There are many such trans women. So, no connection views such as Haslanger’s imply that many trans women are not women ( Jenkins 2016 : 398–402). Some have argued that this is an unacceptable result for a metaphysical view about the relationship between gender identity and gender, either because all trans women are women or because this view would marginalize trans women within contemporary feminism ( Mikkola 2016 : 100–102). These implications are even more problematic for ameliorative no connection views, that is, for views of how gender identity and gender are related according to the concepts that we ought to accept. For we should not adopt gender concepts that imply that we should not classify many trans women as women ( Jenkins 2016 ).

Furthermore, trans communities and trans-inclusive communities ascribe gender entirely on the basis of the gender identities people express or which people are presumed to have. Another problem with the no connection view is that it may seem to imply that there are no genders being tracked or ascribed in these communities ( Jenkins 2016 : 400–401; Ásta 2018 : 73–74).

These problems do not establish that Haslanger’s account of gender should be abandoned entirely. Elizabeth Barnes (2020) has recently argued that we can rescue Haslanger’s account of gender from the problem that it excludes trans women by understanding it as an account of what explains our experiences of gender. According to Barnes’ version of Haslanger’s account, our practices of gendering people, and our gender identities, are the product of Haslangerian social practices of subordinating and privileging people on the basis of perceived sex characteristics. Barnes’ version of Haslanger’s account does not imply that one is a woman iff one is systematically subordinated because one is observed or imagined to have bodily features that are presumed to be evidence of one’s playing a female’s biological role in reproduction. This is because Barnes’ account is only an account of what gives rise to our experiences of gender rather than an account of who has what gender properties or of the gender concepts that we should accept. Barnes might rescue a version of Haslanger’s account from the problem that it excludes trans women. But if she does, she does this by revising Haslanger’s account so that it drops the no connection view of the relationship between gender identities and gender; Barnes’ revised version of Haslanger’s account of gender is instead silent on the issue of the relationship between having gender identity G and being a member of gender G . So, Barnes’ rescue of Haslanger’s account of gender does not rescue the no connection view of the relationship between gender identity and gender.

Gender identity first and no connection views such as Haslanger’s are invariantist views of the relationship between gender identity and gender: they hold that the relationship between gender identity and gender does not vary across different contexts. A third account of the relationship between gender identity and gender is the opposite of invariantism, contextualism. According to this view, the features that determine our gender, and so the relationship between gender identity and gender, is different from context to context.

Ásta (2018) and Robin Dembroff (2018) have proposed and/or defended forms of (metaphysical) contextualism. On their views, the gender properties that we have, or the gender kinds that we are members of, are determined by the way that we are treated in particular contexts. We are a member of gender G in virtue of our gender identity G in certain contexts, namely trans-inclusive contexts where people are treated as genders based on their (avowed) gender identities. But in other contexts, we are never a member of gender G in virtue of our gender identity G : in contexts in which people are treated as a gender based on features other than their gender identities – such as traditional or conservative societies – we are not members of genders based on our gender identities. For instance, trans woman Amy is a woman in the context of the support group Trans Leeds – she is a woman (Trans Leeds) – but she is not a women in the context of her conservative parents in Henley who don’t recognize her as a woman and who treat people as women based on the chromosomes that they believe them to have – she is not a woman (family-in-Henley) . And Alex is non-binary in the context of the support group Non-Binary Leeds, where one is conferred a particular gender status based on one’s avowed self-identification – they are non-binary (Non-Binary Leeds) – but Alex is perceived as male in most contexts and is treated as male regardless of their self-identification at school, work and in public, and so Alex is not non-binary in most contexts – e.g. they are not non-binary (Alex’s school) . Importantly, on this view, there is no such thing as being gender G simpliciter , that is, beyond whether one is a G -relative-to-a-certain-context – and the way one is treated or the standards that are operative in that context. So, it is not the case that Alex is non-binary simpliciter or genuinely non-binary; they are merely non-binary relative to one standard or context and not non-binary relative to another.

Contextualism can explain why the way that some people are gendered varies from context to context: in explaining her contextualist view, Ásta (2018 : 73–74) gives an example of a coder who is one of the guys at work, neither a guy nor a girl at the bars they go to after work, and one of the women – and expected to help out like all the other women – at their grandmother’s house (85–86). Contextualism also allows us to explain how sometimes people are gendered on the basis of their perceived biological features and sometimes gendered based on their avowed (or assumed) gender identities. Dembroff argues that a contextualist view is particularly useful in explaining how, in many societies and contexts, trans people are unjustly constrained, or as they put it ‘ontologically oppressed’, by being constructed and categorized as a member of a category with which they do not identify; identifying such ontological oppression is essential to explaining the oppression that trans people face ( Dembroff 2018 : 24–26, Jenkins 2020 ) ( Figure 3 ).

Contextualism

However, there are several problems with contextualism. One problem is that it implies that gender critical feminists are, in a sense, right when they claim that trans women are not women and trans men are not men because trans women are not women according to the standards of many people and of many places: in many places trans women, for instance, are not treated as women, and in many places trans women are not women relative to the dominant standard for who is a woman, which is sex-based or biology-based. So, for instance, when in 2021 the then Tory UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid said that ‘only women have cervixes’, according to contextualism, what he said was true in a sense: only women (dominant UK-standards) have cervixes; and only women (Tory party conference) have cervixes. Even though it is false that only women (Trans Leeds) have cervixes because trans men have cervixes. This conclusion may seem problematic and paralyzing because it implies that Javid’s claim is true in a sense in certain contexts, and we cannot truthfully claim that it is just plain false ( Saul 2012 : 209–210, Diaz-Leon 2016 : 247–248). 6

Ásta (2018 : e.g. 87–88) and Dembroff (2018) argue that we can solve this problem by holding that, although it is true that trans men are not men relative to most dominant UK contexts, we should still treat and classify trans men as men. We should classify trans men as men because facts about how we should classify someone – the gender properties that we should treat them as having – are established by moral and political considerations. But although we should classify trans men as men, they are not – as a matter of social metaphysical fact – men (dominant UK contexts) . So, we should accept contextualism as a metaphysical view about the relationship between gender identity and gender but not as an ameliorative view about the gender concepts we should accept; we can call this combination of views purely metaphysical contextualism.

Dembroff (2018 : 38–48) recognizes that purely metaphysical contextualism may seem to have problematic implications. It may seem to imply that many trans women (for instance) are mistaken when they say that they are women in many contexts, such as dominant UK and US contexts, where there are chromosomes-based or assigned-sex-at-birth-based gender standards. Yet Dembroff argues that purely metaphysical contextualism does not have this problematic implication because trans women are women relative to the gender kinds operative in trans-inclusive contexts.

However, this will not always be a helpful form of correctness. Suppose that Alicia is a trans woman in London in 1840. There are no trans-inclusive societies, communities or contexts that she knows of. But she takes herself to be a woman, and suppose that according to both of the accounts of gender identity that we discussed in §1, Alicia has a female gender identity. We can say that Alicia’s judgement that she is a woman is correct in the sense that it is correct-relative to the gender kinds operative in future contexts and fictional contexts. But any judgment that we might make is true relative to the standards in some future or merely possible context. And we might wonder why it matters that someone’s judgment about their own gender is true relative to the standards operative in some future context that they could not possibly be aware of. This form of truth is not what they want and it’s hard to see why it should be relevant in this context. Furthermore, trans people are widely held to be misguided, mentally unstable, suffering from a delusion or making believe ( Bettcher 2007 , Serano 2016 : ch. 2, Lopez 2018 , Rajunov and Duane 2019 : xxiv). If the only interesting way in which Alicia is correct about her gender is that she is that gender according to standards far in the future that she is not aware of, then it would seem that Alicia is misguided about her gender – given that she could not know about these standards – and that she is in a sense making believe. This seems like an undesirable consequence, especially if we think that Alicia is really a woman, that is, that she is not misguided.

There are two further, more general, problems for contextualism. 7 First, contextualism seems to clash with how many of us think about our own and others’ genders. For instance, many trans men think that they should be classified as men because they are men, and not just because they are men-relative to the standards of trans-inclusive communities and societies ( Saul 2012 : 209–210). 8 Gender critical feminists think that trans women are not women, that standards which align with this view track the standard-independent truth, and standards which don’t align with this view do not.

Second, contextualism seems to be in tension with the idea that many of our disagreements about gender are genuine disagreements. Suppose that contextualism is true and that we (and everyone else) accept it. In this case, it is hard for us to sincerely genuinely disagree with Javid about whether only women have cervixes. Since, when he says that only women have cervixes we know that he means that only those who count as women, relative to the dominant UK standards or relative to the standards operative amongst Tory MPs and members, have cervixes. And we agree with him about this, since we know that according to these standards trans men are women. So, if contextualism is true and we accept it, it is hard for us to genuinely disagree with Javid. Contextualism could be true without our knowing or believing it. In this case, we could genuinely disagree with Javid. But our disagreement here would only be possible because we are significantly mistaken about what kinds of things gender kinds are; we think gender kinds are not all context- or standard-relative but in fact they are. And attributing such a significant mistake to all of us is a significant cost of a metaphysical theory, for other things equal we should accept more charitable theories that do not imply that we are significantly mistaken rather than theories that do imply this ( Olson 2011 : 73–77, McGrath 2021 : 35, 46–48).

These problems with contextualism about the relationship between gender identity and gender are analogues of problems that contextualist views face in other domains such as in metaethics. According to metaethical contextualism, moral claims, their meanings and their truth are always standard-relative. There is no such thing as an act being morally wrong, only its being morally-wrong-relative-to-utilitarianism or morally-wrong-relative-to-the-standards-of-Victorian-England. But metaethical contextualism faces a problem explaining fundamental moral disagreement. Act-utilitarians and Kantians agree that pushing the heavy man off of the bridge in the footbridge trolley case is wrong (Kantianism) and right (act-utilitarianism) but they still disagree and they take themselves to be disagreeing about which of their moral standards is correct, and which standard tracks the truth about which actions are right and wrong simpliciter ( Olson 2011 : 73–77, Cosker-Rowland 2022 : 57–59). If there are no non-context- or standard-relative properties of right and wrong, then although Kantians and Utilitarians do disagree – they think there are such properties – there is in fact nothing for them to disagree about. So, metaethical contextualism seems to be committed to a kind of error theory about morality that, other things equal, we should avoid: Kantians and Utilitarians think that they are talking about which of their moral standards is independently correct, but there is no such standard-independent moral correctness. Contextualists in metaethics have developed several types of resources to mitigate this kind of problem or to enable contextualism to explain what’s happening in these disagreements better. Perhaps these proposals could be used to mitigate the analogous problems with contextualism about the relationship between gender identity and gender. McGrath (2021 : esp. 42–49) considers this possibility and argues that these responses are not plausible, and that they face similar problems to the problems faced by the analogous responses proposed by contextualists in metaethics. 9 More broadly, whether contextualists’ proposals to mitigate these problems for metaethical contextualism do, or could, succeed is contested ( Cosker-Rowland 2022 : 59–64). 10

Contextualism holds that the features that determine our gender vary from context to context and so whether our gender identity determines our gender varies from context to context. Invariantist views such as gender identity first and the no connection view hold that one feature (e.g. gender identity or whether one is a sexually marked subordinate) determines our gender in every context. But we need not adopt such a monist invariantist view; we can instead adopt a pluralist invariantist view that holds that multiple features are relevant to, or determine, our genders across different contexts ( Figure 4 ). A version of pluralism that has been proposed is what we can call the two properties view. According to the two properties view, two and only two properties determine our gender in all contexts: our gender identity and our gendered social position or class. Gender identity first and Haslanger’s no connection view hold that one of these two properties determines our gender in every context; the two properties view holds that both of these properties can make us a particular gender in every context. 11

Views of the relationship between gender identity and gender

Katharine Jenkins (2016) proposes an ameliorative version of the two properties view. She proposes that we accept gender concepts according to which there are two senses of woman . In one sense of woman , to be a woman is to have a female gender identity; in another second sense, to be a woman is to be socially classed as a woman, which we can understand in terms of Haslanger’s account: to be a woman in this second sense is to be a sexually marked subordinate. Jenkins argues that if we accept gender concepts according to which there are two senses of ‘woman’, we do not objectionably exclude trans women, since trans women who are not socially classed as women do have female gender identities and so are still women on this view. So, Jenkins argues that we should accept gender concepts such that A is a woman iff A is socially classed as a woman or has a female gender identity. She then argues that, although we should accept gender concepts on which there are two senses of gender, we should, at least primarily, use ‘woman’ to refer to people with a female gender identity rather than those who are classed as women.

Jenkins’ two properties view avoids the problems with the ameliorative gender identity first and no connection views. It does not imply that severely cognitively disabled women are not women and it does not imply that trans women are not women. Yet if we adopt a concept of ‘woman’ with two senses but use ‘woman’ to refer to people with female gender identities, it still seems that we adopt concepts according to which trans women who are not socially classed as women are not women in an important sense. We may want to avoid this consequence with our ameliorative proposals, since trans women want to be thought of as women, and many trans women want to be thought of as in no way men, rather than merely being referred to as women rather than men (see e.g. Wynn 2018 ). We might also worry that adoption of Jenkins’ view would create a hierarchy of women on which someone who is a woman in both senses is more of a woman than someone who is a woman in only one sense: we might worry that if such concepts of gender were adopted, a trans woman who does not have her womanhood socially recognized would be seen as less of a woman than a trans woman who is socially positioned as a woman. 12

Elizabeth Barnes (2022 : 24–25) briefly articulates a similar metaphysical two properties view. On this view, there are two different properties that one can have that can make it the case that one is gender G : the property of being socially classed as a G and the property of having gender identity G . And the relevant gender identity property takes priority when A is socially classed as a G1 (e.g. as a man) but has gender identity G2 (e.g. a female gender identity): in such a case A is a G2 (a woman) rather than a G1 (a man) ( Figure 5 ).

The two properties view

However, the two properties view needs to explain why our gender identities take precedence over our gendered social position in determining our gender when the two conflict. Without further supplementation the metaphysical two property view does not do this; it does not explain why A is a man when A has a male gender identity but is socially positioned as a woman. If the two properties view does not explain this, it has an explanatory deficiency, and this deficiency gives us reason to accept competing views that do not face this explanatory problem over the two properties view.

One natural way to supplement the two properties view to try to solve this explanatory problem is to hold that moral and political considerations determine that gender identity takes priority over gender class when they conflict. 13 . First, it is controverisal that there is moral encroachment on gender metaphysics, that what's morally best makes a difference to what gender we metaphysically are. For instance, Ásta (2018) , Dembroff (2018) and Jenkins (2020) argue that morality does not encroach on gender metaphysics in this way.

Second, we can think of this as the moral encroachment explanation. However, moral encroachment does not look like a plausible explanation of how, metaphysically, gender identity takes priority over gendered social position in determining our genders. To see this, suppose that Alexa understands herself to be a woman and is treated by those around her as a woman. An evil demon will kill 2000 members of Alexa’s community unless we hold that Alexa is a man, treat Alexa as, think of Alexa as, and assert that Alexa is a man for the next hour. In this case, moral and political considerations establish that we morally ought to treat Alexa as a man for the next hour, but this doesn’t mean that Alexa is in fact a man. 14

It might seem that a nearby view on which moral and political considerations play a smaller role is more plausible. On this view, moral and political considerations only come in to determine whether, metaphysically, A is a member of gender G1 or of gender G2 when A is socially classed as a G1 but has identity G2 . But this view would also generate counterintuitive results. To see this, suppose that Beth has a female gender identity and she was assigned female at birth, but she is socially classed as a man – she doesn’t resist this because of the strong economic advantages she receives, which outweigh the discomfort she feels by being constantly misgendered. Now suppose that an eccentric, very powerful and malevolent millionaire brings these facts to light but will torture everyone in our society unless we continue to classify, think of and refer to Beth as a man. In this case, plausibly, moral and political considerations establish that we should classify Beth as a man, but these facts do not seem to bear on whether Beth is a man or a woman; intuitively Beth is a woman, and intuitively the fact that morally we should think of, treat, and classify Beth as a man does not make it the case that Beth is a man – and really has nothing to do with Beth’s gender in this case. So, if moral and political considerations play this more limited role in determining our genders, they still sometimes generate the wrong result because there are cases in which the social and political considerations side with someone’s gendered social position rather than their gender identity, but in which this does not seem to be relevant to, or establish that, their gender lines up with their gendered social position. So, the moral encroachment explanation does not seem to solve the explanatory problem for the two properties view. 15

These evil millionaire cases may be too fantastical for some. But the same point can be made with real world examples too. Norah Vincent (2006) disguised herself as a man for 18 months so that she could investigate men and their experiences. She became socially positioned as, and treated by others as, a man. While she was effectively disguised as a man, moral and political considerations seem to have established that everyone should treat her as a man: those who didn’t know her real gender had an obligation to take her assertions that she was a man as genuine and those who did know her real gender had an obligation not to blow her cover. But although everyone ought to have treated Vincent as a man, she was not a man: she did not identify as a man at the time, nor prior or subsequent to her journalistic project. Moral and political considerations favoured treating Vincent in line with her social position as a man rather than in line with her female gender identity. But these factors do not establish that she was a man rather than a woman. So, the moral encroachment explanation generates the wrong results in this case too.

One way to respond to this problem for the two properties view is to drop the view that gender identity takes priority. But this would be problematic for then trans women who are socially positioned as men would be both men and women on this view – and not just people with female gender identities who are socially positioned as men. This is implausible. This view is also different from contextualism since contextualism holds that such trans women are women-relative-to-the-standards-of-trans-inclusive-contexts and men-relative-to-other-contexts; a version of the two properties view that drops the priority of gender identity holds that such trans women are both men and women tout court .

In this paper I’ve discussed metaphysical and ameliorative inquiries into the relationship between gender identity and gender. I’ve discussed four different views about this relationship. All four views face problematic objections. Gender identity first seems to objectionably exclude some severely cognitively disabled people from having genders. No connection views seem to be objectionably trans exclusionary. Contextualism seems to be in tension with how we think about gender and implies that trans people are not the genders that line up with their gender identities in many contexts; despite contextualists’ best efforts, these implications still seem problematic. Pluralist views struggle to plausibly explain how their plurality of features interact when they conflict to determine our genders.

One avenue of future research involves examining the extent to which these objections really undermine these different views. For instance, we might question whether Barnes really shows that we should reject gender identity first. Barnes has two arguments for the view that, contra gender identity first, severely cognitively disabled people without gender identities have genders.

The first argument was that, if we reject this view, we cannot explain the gendered oppression that severely cognitively disabled women face. But we might wonder whether this is really true. All we need in order to explain the oppression that severely cognitively disabled women face is the claim that they are socially treated or understood to be women. But we can be socially treated or understood to be a gender other than the gender we are: e.g. many non-binary people who were assigned female at birth (AFAB) are discriminated against because they are understood to be women even though they are not women. We might think that we should explain the gendered oppression that AFAB severely cognitively disabled people without gender identities face and the gendered discrimination that AFAB non-binary people face in the same way: we should say that although they are not women, they are assumed to be women and are treated as women and this is why they face this gendered oppression. Barnes’ second argument was that the view that severely cognitively disabled people without gender identities do not have genders others and alienates these severely cognitively disabled people. However, we might wonder whether this is necessarily true. Perhaps we should think of the capacity to have a gender as inessential to human personhood just as we think of the capacity for membership in other categories as something that is not required for personhood: perhaps we should think that just as some severely cognitively disabled people lack the cognitive capacities to identify as a Christian or as a punk, and so are not Christians or punks, they similarly lack the capacities to identify as a woman and so are not women. If gender need not be central to human life, as religion (or music) need not be, perhaps we might reasonably claim to not other anyone by holding that they could not have a gender.

A second avenue of further work concerns genders beyond the gender category woman . Most of the work on the relationship between gender identity and gender has concerned the relationship between being a woman and having a female gender identity. But views about this may not straightforwardly generalize to provide plausible accounts of other genders such as genderqueer and other non-binary genders. 16 In one of the few published articles in analytic philosophy discussing genders beyond the gender binary, Dembroff (2020) argues that non-binary and genderqueer are critical gender kinds, which should be understood as kinds, membership in which constitutively involves engagement in the collective destabilization of dominant gender ideology. One way to destablize dominant gender ideology is to destabilize the idea that there are two mutually exclusive genders. Such destabilization of the binary gender axis can involve using gender neutral pronouns, cultivating gender non-conforming aesthetics, asserting one’s non-binary gender categorization, queering personal relationships, eschewing sexual binaries and/or switching between male and female coded spaces. Dembroff argues that to be genderqueer is ‘to have a felt or desired gender categorization that conflicts with the binary [gender] axis, and on that basis collectively destabilize this axis’ ( 2020 : 16). This understanding of the category genderqueer does not quite fit into the typology that I’ve explained in this article. For, on this account, a particular kind of non-binary gender identity is necessary but not sufficient for membership in the kind genderqueer .

There are issues with this account. For instance, Matthew Cull (2020 : 162) argues that this account misgenders agender people because many agender people have a felt or desired gender categorization that conflicts with the binary gender axis and are engaged in the collective destabilization of the gender binary but are not genderqueer; they are agender. 17 However, in general, more work is needed on gender kinds beyond the gender binary. This work may also provide new avenues for conceptualizing and/or complicating the relationship between gender identity and gender more generally. 18

See Bettcher (2009) ( 2017 : 396) and Jenkins (2018 : 727). cf. Barnes (2020 : 709).

See also Bornstein (1994 : 111, 123–124).

On the centrality of gender for social life see Witt 2011 .

See Bryne (2020) and Stock (2021 : ch. 2, ch. 6).

There are problems with using this terminology of passing. For instance, we typically think of A as passing as an F only if they are not an F . But if all trans women are women, then there are no ‘non-passing’ trans women. For discussion of issues with the concept of passing see e.g. Serano 2016 : 176–180.

Many gender critical feminists will want to reject contextualism for a similar but opposite reason: they believe that there is no sense in which Javid is mistaken, but contextualism implies that there is a sense in which he is mistaken.

For problems along these lines see McGrath 2021 : esp. 42–49.

Cf. Bettcher 2013 : esp. 242–243.

Cf. Dembroff 2018 : 44–45.

According to Jenkins’ (2023) ontological pluralism, there are a plurality of gender properties. For instance, there is the property of being a woman in the sense of having a female gender identity, and the property of being socially positioned as a woman in a particular context, but there is no further property of being a woman. Ontological pluralism about gender properties is a slightly different view about gender properties from the social position account of gender properties that Ásta and Dembroff propose; see Bettcher 2013 and Jenkins 2023. But ontological pluralism similarly implies that being a woman (social position) is not determined by one’s gender identity but being a woman (gender identity) is; and that there is no such thing as being a woman tout court beyond such a plurality of more specific gender properties. Since it has similar implications about the relationship between gender identity and gender to Ásta and Dembroff's views, it faces similar problems.

Other work on the metaphysics of gender, such as Stoljar’s (1995) nominalism or a view similar to it, could also be understood as a form of pluralist invariantism; although cf. Stoljar 1995 : 283 and Mikkola 2016 : 70.

Cf. Mikkola 2019 : §3.1.2 and Jenkins 2016 : 418–419.

Cf. Jenkins 2016 : 417–418 and Diaz-Leon 2016 .

Cases like this may also cause problems for Ásta’s and Dembroff’s social position accounts of gender.

Heather Logue suggested to me that a more specific form of moral encroachment might solve this problem: our autonomy might establish that our gender identities trump our gendered social positions when they conflict, without establishing that Beth is a man. However, we can imagine a version of this case in which Beth autonomously chooses to waive her right to be treated in line with her gender identity. In such a case Beth is still not a man.

We may also wonder whether this work will generalize to the category man given that human beings are still by default understood to be men in many contexts.

Another worry is that analogous accounts of the kind non-binary will either: (a) make the conditions for engagement in collective resistance too onerous and thereby exclude non-binary people who are not able to engage in this resistance due to oppressive circumstances; or (b) make these conditions too easy to satisfy, in which case it is unclear what work engagement in collective resistance is doing in this account; that is, it is unclear why we should prefer an account of the kind non-binary like this to a gender identity first account of the category non-binary . For work relevant to (a), arguing that trans people in the past who could not express their gender identities or resist the binary gender axis due to hostile circumstances may still be correctly considered to be trans, see Heyam 2022 : ch. 1.

I am grateful to a reviewer, who revealed themself to be Ray Briggs, for wonderful extremely thorough comments on a previous draft of this paper. I would also like to thank an audience of my colleagues at the University of Leeds for comments, thoughts and objections that shaped the final version of this paper.

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Gender Identity Essay

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Introduction

Interaction between hormones and behavior, current arguments on sexual identity, biological influences on gender identity and sexual differentiation, environmental influences.

Gender refers to the state of being either male or female, which is distinguished by factors such as gender roles, social and economic status, perceptions, and ideals and values (Lee, 2005). Gender has been described as a psycho-sociocultural aspect. In contrast, sex is a biological concept that is determined by factors such as hormones and genetic make-up (Lee, 2005). Gender is also understood as evaluation of behavior based on individual perceptions and societal expectations.

Gender identity is defined as personal concepts and perceptions of self that are based on gender (Lee, 2005). This paper will explore determination of gender identity based on connections between hormones and behavior. In addition, it will scrutinize how biological and environmental factors affect gender identity. It will also explore current arguments on gender identity.

Research studies have revealed that hormones have great influence on behavior. For example, hormonal processes contribute towards hostile and aggressive behaviors (Lee, 2005). Studies associate certain behaviors with certain hormones. For example, testosterone is associated with aggressiveness. Studies on effect of hormones on behavior are based on the net effect of hormones on emotions. They cause varying level of moods or behavior depending on their concentrations.

For example, in adults, estrogen causes positive moods while lack of estrogen causes depressive moods (Lee, 2005). This is the same effect testosterone has on moods and behaviors. Some hormones affect behavior directly while others affect behavior indirectly. For example, hormones that determine body size affect behavior indirectly. Big-sized people are domineering and usually rough towards small-sized people. Abnormal activity of glands can also influence behavior directly.

Hormones respond by combining with specific cell receptors to form behavior. Puberty and prenatal periods are the most critical periods in human development that hormones have the greatest impact (Lee, 2005). During the prenatal period, any anomaly in production of hormones results in anomalies in gender identity.

For example, a study conducted on 25 androgenized girls found out that even though they were raised as girls, they exhibited masculine attitudes, sexuality, and grooming (Lee, 2005). After the development of Money’s theories on gender identity, several studies followed that established connections between gender identity and environmental factors.

Current arguments on sexual identify claim that is mainly determined by biological factors rather than environmental factors (Lee, 2005). This argument is based on lifestyles such as homosexuality and lesbianism. These arguments claim that people who adopt these lifestyles were born that way because of interaction between different biological factors.

Other arguments claim that such lifestyles can be caused by environmental factors. If an individual gets exposure to one of these lifestyles early in childhood, then he/she would adopt a similar lifestyle owing to influence of the environment (Lee, 2005). However, research has established that these lifestyles are mainly caused by influence of biological factors and further augmented by environmental factors.

The influence of biological factors on gender identity can be explained by considering functions of hormones and cerebral lateralization of the brain (Lee, 2005).

Gender is determined before birth by biological factors. Studies have revealed that brain lateralization and hormonal functions contribute in determination of gender. Males and females contain sexual and reproductive hormones in varying quantities. This is observed from childhood through adulthood although in each stage of development certain changes take place. During puberty, gender characteristics become more pronounced because attraction towards the opposite sex develops (Lee, 2005).

Brain lateralization follows different systems of development in males and females. For example, in females the left side of the brain is more developed compared to males whose right side is more developed. Variation in brain lateralization accounts for high performance by males in sciences and mathematics and better performance in languages by girls.

The first environmental child experiences after birth is the family (Lee, 2005). Mothers dress newborn babies in clothes that depict their gender. As they go through different development stages, children learn to discern their gender from how they are treated. Fathers influence boys and mothers influence girls.

Absence of a father in the family affects discernment of gender identity significantly. Other environments outside the family also play critical roles. Television, music, movies, and books depict different genders in different ways (Lee, 2005). Children pick gender cues from these environments and incorporate them in their gender identity discernment processes.

Environmental factors have the greatest influence on gender identity compared to other factors. Environments such as family and classrooms have the greater influence on gender identity compared to biological and psychological factors (Lee, 2005).

Gender differs from sex in that it is psycho-sociocultural while sex is biological. Aspects such as social and economic status, roles, and personal perceptions determine gender. Gender identity is influenced and determined by biological, psychological, and environmental factors.

The environment has the greatest influence compared to other factors. From childhood to adulthood, people interact with different environments that influence how they discern and define gender identity. According to the foregoing discussion, nurture has greater influence on gender identity than nature. Each of the three factors plays a different role in determination of gender identity.

Lee, J. (2005). Focus on Gender Identity . New York: Nova Publishers.

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MINI REVIEW article

Sexual orientation and gender identity: review of concepts, controversies and their relation to psychopathology classification systems.

• Instituto Universitário de Lisboa ISCTE-IUL, CIS, Lisboa, Portugal

Numerous controversies and debates have taken place throughout the history of psychopathology (and its main classification systems) with regards to sexual orientation and gender identity. These are still reflected on present reformulations of gender dysphoria in both the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and the International Classification of Diseases, and in more or less subtle micro-aggressions experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans patients in mental health care. The present paper critically reviews this history and current controversies. It reveals that this deeply complex field contributes (i) to the reflection on the very concept of mental illness; (ii) to the focus on subjective distress and person-centered experience of psychopathology; and (iii) to the recognition of stigma and discrimination as significant intervening variables. Finally, it argues that sexual orientation and gender identity have been viewed, in the history of the field of psychopathology, between two poles: gender transgression and gender variance/fluidity.

Numerous controversies and debates have taken place throughout the history of psychopathology and mental health care with regards to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. The present paper aims to review relevant concepts in this literature, its historical and current controversies, and their relation to the main psychopathology classification systems.

Concepts and Definitions

Concepts and definitions that refer to sexual orientation and gender identity are an evolving field. Many of the terms used in the past to describe LGBT people, namely in the mental health field, are now considered to be outdated and even offensive.

Sexual orientation refers to the sex of those to whom one is sexually and romantically attracted ( American Psychological Association, 2012 ). Nowadays, the terms ‘lesbian’ and ‘gay’ are used to refer to people who experience attraction to members of the same sex, and the term ‘bisexual’ describe people who experience attraction to members of both sexes. It should be noted that, although these categories continue to be widely used, sexual orientation does not always appear in such definable categories and, instead, occurs on a continuum ( American Psychological Association, 2012 ), and people perceived or described by others as LGB may identify in various ways ( D’Augelli, 1994 ).

The expression gender identity was coined in the middle 1960s, describing one’s persistent inner sense of belonging to either the male and female gender category ( Money, 1994 ). The concept of gender identity evolved over time to include those people who do not identify either as female or male: a “person’s self concept of their gender (regardless of their biological sex) is called their gender identity” ( Lev, 2004 , p. 397). The American Psychological Association (2009a , p. 28) described it as: “the person’s basic sense of being male, female, or of indeterminate sex.” For decades, the term ‘transsexual’ was restricted for individuals who had undergone medical procedures, including genital reassignment surgeries. However, nowadays, ‘transsexual’ refers to anyone who has a gender identity that is incongruent with the sex assigned at birth and therefore is currently, or is working toward, living as a member of the sex other than the one they were assigned at birth, regardless of what medical procedures they may have undergone or may desire in the future (e.g., Serano, 2007 ; American Psychological Association, 2009a ; Coleman et al., 2012 ). In this paper we use the prefix trans when referring to transsexual people.

Since the 1990’s the word transgender has been used primarily as an umbrella term to describe those people who defy societal expectations and assumptions regarding gender (e.g., Lev, 2004 ; American Psychological Association, 2009a ). It includes people who are transsexual and intersex, but also those who identify outside the female/male binary and those whose gender expression and behavior differs from social expectations. As in the case of sexual orientation, people perceived or described by others as transgender – including transsexual men and women – may identify in various ways (e.g., Pinto and Moleiro, 2015 ).

Discrimination and Impact on Mental Health

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people often suffer from various forms of discrimination, stigma and social exclusion – including physical and psychological abuse, bullying, persecution, or economic alienation ( United Nations, 2011 ; Bostwick et al., 2014 ; European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2014 ). Moreover, experiences of discrimination may occur in various areas, such as employment, education and health care, but also in the context of meaningful interpersonal relationships, including family (e.g., Milburn et al., 2006 ; Feinstein et al., 2014 ; António and Moleiro, 2015 ). Accordingly, several studies strongly suggest that experiences of discrimination and stigmatization place LGBT people at higher risk for mental distress ( Cochran and Mays, 2000 ; Dean et al., 2000 ; Cochran et al., 2003 ; Meyer, 2003 ; Shilo, 2014 ).

For example, LGB populations may be at increased risk for suicide ( Hershberger and D’Augelli, 1995 ; Mustanski and Liu, 2013 ), traumatic stress reactions ( D’Augelli et al., 2002 ), major depression disorders ( Cochran and Mays, 2000 ), generalized anxiety disorders ( Bostwick et al., 2010 ), or substance abuse ( King et al., 2008 ). In addition, transgender people have been identified as being at a greater risk for developing: anxiety disorders ( Hepp et al., 2005 ; Mustanski et al., 2010 ); depression ( Nuttbrock et al., 2010 ; Nemoto et al., 2011 ); social phobia and adjustment disorders ( Gómez-Gil et al., 2009 ); substance abuse ( Lawrence, 2008 ); or eating disorders ( Vocks et al., 2009 ). At the same time, data on suicide ideation and attempts among this population are alarming: Maguen and Shipherd (2010) found the percentage of attempted suicides to be as high as 40% in transsexual men and 20% in transsexual women. Nuttbrock et al. (2010) , using a sample of 500 transgender women, found that around 30% had already attempted suicide, around 35% had planned to do so, and close to half of the participants expressed suicide ideation. In particular, adolescence has been identified as a period of increased risk with regard to the mental health of transgender and transsexual people ( Dean et al., 2000 ).

In sum, research clearly recognizes the role of stigma and discrimination as significant intervening variables in psychopathology among LGBT populations. Nevertheless, the relation between sexual orientation or gender identity and stress may be mediated by several variables, including social and family support, low internalized homophobia, expectations of acceptance vs. rejection, contact with other LGBT people, or religiosity ( Meyer, 2003 ; Shilo and Savaya, 2012 ; António and Moleiro, 2015 ; Snapp et al., 2015 ). Thus, it seems important to focus on subjective distress and in a person-centered experience of psychopathology.

On the History of Homosexuality and Psychiatric Diagnoses

While nowadays we understand that higher rates of psychological distress among LGB people are related to their minority status and to discrimination, by the early 20th century, psychiatrists mostly regarded homosexuality as pathological per se ; and in the mid-20th century psychiatrics, physicians, and psychologists were trying to “cure” and change homosexuality ( Drescher, 2009 ). In 1952, the American Psychiatric Association published its first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-I), in which homosexuality was considered a “sociopathic personality disturbance.” In DSM-II, published in 1968, homosexuality was reclassified as a “sexual deviation.” However, in December 1973, the American Psychiatric Association’s Board of Trustees voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM.

The most significant catalyst to homosexuality’s declassification as a mental illness was lesbian and gay activism, and its advocacy efforts within the American Psychiatric Association ( Drescher, 2009 ). Nevertheless, during the discussion that led to the diagnostic change, APA’s Nomenclature Committee also wrestled with the question of what constitutes a mental disorder. Concluding that “they [mental disorders] all regularly caused subjective distress or were associated with generalized impairment in social effectiveness of functioning” ( Spitzer, 1981 , p. 211), the Committee agreed that homosexuality by itself was not one.

However, the diagnostic change did not immediately end the formal pathologization of some presentations of homosexuality. After the removal of the “homosexuality” diagnosis, the DSM-II contained the diagnosis of “sexual orientation disturbance,” which was replaced by “ego dystonic homosexuality” in the DSM-III, by 1980. These diagnoses served the purpose of legitimizing the practice of sexual “conversion” therapies among those individuals with same-sex attractions who were distressed and reported they wished to change their sexual orientation ( Spitzer, 1981 ; Drescher, 2009 ). Nonetheless, “ego-dystonic homosexuality” was removed from the DSM-III-R in 1987 after several criticisms: as formulated by Drescher (2009 , p. 435): “should people of color unhappy about their race be considered mentally ill?”

The removal from the DSM of psychiatric diagnoses related to sexual orientation led to changes in the broader cultural beliefs about homosexuality and culminated in the contemporary civil rights quest for equality ( Drescher, 2012 ). In contrast, it was only in 1992 that the World Health Organization ( World Health Organization, 1992 ) removed “homosexuality” from the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), which still contains a diagnosis similar to “ego-dystonic homosexuality.” However, this is expected to change in the next revision, planned for publication in 2017 ( Cochran et al., 2014 ).

Controversies on Gender Dysphoria and (Trans)Gender Diagnoses

Mental health diagnoses that are specific to transgender and transsexual people have been highly controversial. In this domain, the work of Harry Benjamin was fundamental for trans issues internationally, through the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (presently, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, WPATH). In the past few years, there has been a vehement discussion among interested professionals, trans and LGBT activists, and human rights groups concerning the reform or removal of (trans)gender diagnoses from the main health diagnostic tools. However, discourses on this topic have been inconclusive, filled with mixed messages and polarized opinions ( Kamens, 2011 ). Overall, mental health diagnoses which are specific to transgender people have been criticized in large part because they enhance the stigma in a population which is already particularly stigmatized ( Drescher, 2013 ). In fact, it has been suggested that the label “mental disorder” is the main factor underlying prejudice toward trans people ( Winter et al., 2009 ).

The discussion reached a high point during the recent revision process of the DSM-5 ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ), in which the diagnosis of “gender identity disorder” was revised into one of “gender dysphoria.” Psychiatric diagnosis was thus limited to those who are, in a certain moment of their lives, distressed about living with a gender assignment they experience as incongruent with their gender identity ( Drescher, 2013 ). The change of criteria and nomenclature “is less pathologizing as it no longer implies that one’s identity is disordered” ( DeCuypere et al., 2010 , p. 119). In fact, gender dysphoria is not a synonym for transsexuality, nor should it be used to describe transgender people in general ( Lev, 2004 ); rather, “[it] is a clinical term used to describe the symptoms of excessive pain, agitation, restless, and malaise that gender-variant people seeking therapy often express” ( Lev, 2004 , p. 910). Although the changes were welcomed (e.g., DeCuypere et al., 2010 ; Lev, 2013 ), there are still voices arguing for the “ultimate removal” ( Lev, 2013 , p. 295) of gender dysphoria from the DSM. Nevertheless, attention is presently turned to the ongoing revision of the ICD. Various proposals concerning the revision of (trans)gender diagnoses within ICD have been made, both originating from transgender and human rights groups (e.g., Global Action for Trans ∗ Equality, 2011 ; TGEU, 2013 ) and the health profession community (e.g., Drescher et al., 2012 ; World Professional Association for Transgender Health, 2013 ). These include two main changes: the reform of the diagnosis of transsexualism into one of “gender incongruence”; and the change of the diagnosis into a separate chapter from the one on “mental and behavioral disorders.”

Mental Health Care Reflecting Controversies

There is evidence that LGBT persons resort to psychotherapy at higher rates than the non-LGBT population ( Bieschke et al., 2000 ; King et al., 2007 ); hence, they may be exposed to higher risk for harmful or ineffective therapies, not only as a vulnerable group, but also as frequent users.

Recently, there has been a greater concern in the mental health field oriented to the promotion of the well-being among non-heterosexual and transgender people, which has paralleled the diagnostic changes. This is established, for instance, by the amount of literature on gay and lesbian affirmative psychotherapy which has been developed in recent decades (e.g., Davis, 1997 ) and, also, by the fact that major international accrediting bodies in counseling and psychotherapy have identified the need for clinicians to be able to work effectively with minority clients, namely LGBT people. The APA’s guidelines for psychotherapy with lesbian, gay, and bisexual client ( American Psychological Association, 2000 , 2012 ) are a main reference. These ethical guidelines highlight, among several issues, the need for clinicians to recognize that their own attitudes and knowledge about the experiences of sexual minorities are relevant to the therapeutic process with these clients and that, therefore, mental health care providers must look for appropriate literature, training, and supervision.

However, empirical research also reveals that some therapists still pursue less appropriate clinical practices with LGBT clients. In a review of empirical research on the provision of counseling and psychotherapy to LGB clients, Bieschke et al. (2006) encountered an unexpected recent explosion of literature focused on “conversion therapy.” There are, in fact, some mental health professionals that still attempt to help lesbian, gay, and bisexual clients to become heterosexual ( Bartlett et al., 2009 ), despite the fact that a recent systematic review of the peer-reviewed journal literature on sexual orientation change efforts concluded that “efforts to change sexual orientation are unlikely to be successful and involve some risk of harm” ( American Psychological Association, 2009b , p. 1).

Moreover, there is evidence of other forms of inappropriate (while less blatant) clinical practices with LGBT clients (e.g., Garnets et al., 1991 ; Jordan and Deluty, 1995 ; Liddle, 1996 ; Hayes and Erkis, 2000 ). Even those clinicians who intend to be affirmative and supportive of LGBT individuals can reveal subtle heterosexist bias in the work with these clients ( Pachankis and Goldfried, 2004 ). Examples of such micro-aggressions ( Sue, 2010 ) might be automatically assuming that a client is heterosexual, trying to explain the etiology of the client’s homosexuality, or focusing on the sexual orientation of a LGB client despite the fact that this is not an issue at hand (e.g., Shelton and Delgado-Romero, 2011 ). Heterosexual bias in counseling and psychotherapy may manifest itself also in what Brown (2006 , p. 350) calls “sexual orientation blindness,” i.e., struggling for a supposed neutrality and dismissing the specificities related to the minority condition of non-heterosexual clients. This conceptualization of the human experience mostly in heterosexual terms, found in the therapeutic setting, does not seem to be independent of psychotherapist’s basic training and the historical heterosexist in the teaching of medicine and psychology ( Simoni, 1996 ; Alderson, 2004 ).

With regards to the intervention with trans people, for decades the mental health professionals’ job was to sort out the “true” transsexuals from all other transgender people. The former would have access to physical transition, and the later would be denied any medical intervention other than psychotherapy. By doing this, whether deliberately or not, professionals – acting as gatekeepers – pursued to ‘ensure that most people who did transition would not be “gender-ambiguous” in any way’ ( Serano, 2007 , p. 120). Research shows that currently trans people still face serious challenges in accessing health care, including those related to inappropriate gatekeeping ( Bockting et al., 2004 ; Bauer et al., 2009 ). Some mental health professionals still focus on the assessment of attributes related to identity and gender expressions, rather than on the distress with which trans people may struggle with ( Lev, 2004 ; Serano, 2007 ). Hence, trans people may feel the need to express a personal narrative consistent with what they believe the clinicians’ expectations to be, for accessing hormonal or surgical treatments ( Pinto and Moleiro, 2015 ). Thus, despite the revisions of (trans)gender diagnoses within the DSM, more recent diagnoses seem to still be used as if they were identical with the diagnosis of transsexualism – in a search for the “true transsexual” ( Cohen-Kettenis and Pfäfflin, 2010 ). It seems clear that social and cultural biases have significantly influenced – and still do – diagnostic criteria and the access to hormonal and surgical treatments for trans people.

Controversies and debates with regards to medical classification of sexual orientation and gender identity contribute to the reflection on the very concept of mental illness. The agreement that mental disorders cause subjective distress or are associated with impairment in social functioning was essential for the removal of “homosexuality” from the DSM in the 1970s ( Spitzer, 1981 ). Moreover, (trans)gender diagnoses constitute a significant dividing line both within trans related activism (e.g., Vance et al., 2010 ) and the health professionals’ communities (e.g., Ehrbar, 2010 ). The discussion has taken place between two apposite positions: (1) trans(gender) diagnoses should be removed from health classifying systems, because they promote the pathologization and stigmatization of gender diversity and enhance the medical control of trans people’s identities and lives; and (2) trans(gender) diagnoses should be retained in order to ensure access to care, since health care systems rely on diagnoses to justify medical treatment – which many trans people need. In fact, trans people often describe experiences of severe distress and argue for the need for treatments and access to medical care ( Pinto and Moleiro, 2015 ), but at the same time reject the label of mental illness for themselves ( Global Action for Trans ∗ Equality, 2011 ; TGEU, 2013 ). Thus, it may be important to understand how the debate around (trans)diagnoses may be driven also by a history of undue gatekeeping and by stigma involving mental illness.

The present paper argues that sexual orientation and gender identity have been viewed, in the history of the field of psychopathology, between two poles: gender transgression and gender variance/fluidity.

On the one hand, aligned with a position of “transgression” and/or “deviation from a norm,” people who today are described as LGBT were labeled as mentally ill. Inevitably, classification systems reflect(ed) the existing social attitudes and prejudices, as well as the historical and cultural contexts in which they were developed ( Drescher, 2012 ; Kirschner, 2013 ). In that, they often failed to differentiate between mental illness and socially non-conforming behavior or fluidity of gender expressions. This position and the historical roots of this discourse are still reflected in the practices of some clinicians, ranging from “conversion” therapies to micro-aggressions in the daily lives of LGBT people, including those experienced in the care by mental health professionals.

On the other hand, lined up with a position of gender variance and fluidity, changes in the diagnostic systems in the last few decades reflect a broader respect and value of the diversity of human sexuality and of gender expressions. This position recognizes that the discourse and practices coming from the (mental) health field may lead to changes in the broader cultural beliefs ( Drescher, 2012 ). As such, it also recognizes the power of medical classifications, health discourses and clinical practices in translating the responsibility of fighting discrimination and promoting LGBT people’s well-being.

In conclusion, it seems crucial to emphasize the role of specific training and supervision in the development of clinical competence in the work with sexual minorities. Several authors (e.g., Pachankis and Goldfried, 2004 ) have argued for the importance of continuous education and training of practitioners in individual and cultural diversity competences, across professional development. This is in line with APA’s ethical guidelines ( American Psychological Association, 2000 , 2012 ), and it is even more relevant when we acknowledge the significant and recent changes in this field. Furthermore, it is founded on the very notion that LGBT competence assumes clinicians ought to be aware of their own personal values, attitudes and beliefs regarding human sexuality and gender diversity in order to provide appropriate care. These ethical concerns, however, have not been translated into training programs in medicine and psychology in a systematic manner in most European countries, and to the mainstreaming of LGBT issues ( Goldfried, 2001 ) in psychopathology.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords : sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender, discrimination, psychopathology, mental health care

Citation: Moleiro C and Pinto N (2015) Sexual orientation and gender identity: review of concepts, controversies and their relation to psychopathology classification systems. Front. Psychol. 6:1511. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01511

Received: 29 July 2015; Accepted: 18 September 2015; Published: 01 October 2015.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2015 Moleiro and Pinto. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Carla Moleiro, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa ISCTE-IUL, CIS, Avenida das Forças Armadas, 1649-026 Lisbon, Portugal, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender

Feminism is said to be the movement to end women’s oppression (hooks 2000, 26). One possible way to understand ‘woman’ in this claim is to take it as a sex term: ‘woman’ picks out human females and being a human female depends on various biological and anatomical features (like genitalia). Historically many feminists have understood ‘woman’ differently: not as a sex term, but as a gender term that depends on social and cultural factors (like social position). In so doing, they distinguished sex (being female or male) from gender (being a woman or a man), although most ordinary language users appear to treat the two interchangeably. In feminist philosophy, this distinction has generated a lively debate. Central questions include: What does it mean for gender to be distinct from sex, if anything at all? How should we understand the claim that gender depends on social and/or cultural factors? What does it mean to be gendered woman, man, or genderqueer? This entry outlines and discusses distinctly feminist debates on sex and gender considering both historical and more contemporary positions.

1.1 Biological determinism

1.2 gender terminology, 2.1 gender socialisation, 2.2 gender as feminine and masculine personality, 2.3 gender as feminine and masculine sexuality, 3.1.1 particularity argument, 3.1.2 normativity argument, 3.2 is sex classification solely a matter of biology, 3.3 are sex and gender distinct, 3.4 is the sex/gender distinction useful, 4.1.1 gendered social series, 4.1.2 resemblance nominalism, 4.2.1 social subordination and gender, 4.2.2 gender uniessentialism, 4.2.3 gender as positionality, 5. beyond the binary, 6. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries, 1. the sex/gender distinction..

The terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ mean different things to different feminist theorists and neither are easy or straightforward to characterise. Sketching out some feminist history of the terms provides a helpful starting point.

Most people ordinarily seem to think that sex and gender are coextensive: women are human females, men are human males. Many feminists have historically disagreed and have endorsed the sex/ gender distinction. Provisionally: ‘sex’ denotes human females and males depending on biological features (chromosomes, sex organs, hormones and other physical features); ‘gender’ denotes women and men depending on social factors (social role, position, behaviour or identity). The main feminist motivation for making this distinction was to counter biological determinism or the view that biology is destiny.

A typical example of a biological determinist view is that of Geddes and Thompson who, in 1889, argued that social, psychological and behavioural traits were caused by metabolic state. Women supposedly conserve energy (being ‘anabolic’) and this makes them passive, conservative, sluggish, stable and uninterested in politics. Men expend their surplus energy (being ‘katabolic’) and this makes them eager, energetic, passionate, variable and, thereby, interested in political and social matters. These biological ‘facts’ about metabolic states were used not only to explain behavioural differences between women and men but also to justify what our social and political arrangements ought to be. More specifically, they were used to argue for withholding from women political rights accorded to men because (according to Geddes and Thompson) “what was decided among the prehistoric Protozoa cannot be annulled by Act of Parliament” (quoted from Moi 1999, 18). It would be inappropriate to grant women political rights, as they are simply not suited to have those rights; it would also be futile since women (due to their biology) would simply not be interested in exercising their political rights. To counter this kind of biological determinism, feminists have argued that behavioural and psychological differences have social, rather than biological, causes. For instance, Simone de Beauvoir famously claimed that one is not born, but rather becomes a woman, and that “social discrimination produces in women moral and intellectual effects so profound that they appear to be caused by nature” (Beauvoir 1972 [original 1949], 18; for more, see the entry on Simone de Beauvoir ). Commonly observed behavioural traits associated with women and men, then, are not caused by anatomy or chromosomes. Rather, they are culturally learned or acquired.

Although biological determinism of the kind endorsed by Geddes and Thompson is nowadays uncommon, the idea that behavioural and psychological differences between women and men have biological causes has not disappeared. In the 1970s, sex differences were used to argue that women should not become airline pilots since they will be hormonally unstable once a month and, therefore, unable to perform their duties as well as men (Rogers 1999, 11). More recently, differences in male and female brains have been said to explain behavioural differences; in particular, the anatomy of corpus callosum, a bundle of nerves that connects the right and left cerebral hemispheres, is thought to be responsible for various psychological and behavioural differences. For instance, in 1992, a Time magazine article surveyed then prominent biological explanations of differences between women and men claiming that women’s thicker corpus callosums could explain what ‘women’s intuition’ is based on and impair women’s ability to perform some specialised visual-spatial skills, like reading maps (Gorman 1992). Anne Fausto-Sterling has questioned the idea that differences in corpus callosums cause behavioural and psychological differences. First, the corpus callosum is a highly variable piece of anatomy; as a result, generalisations about its size, shape and thickness that hold for women and men in general should be viewed with caution. Second, differences in adult human corpus callosums are not found in infants; this may suggest that physical brain differences actually develop as responses to differential treatment. Third, given that visual-spatial skills (like map reading) can be improved by practice, even if women and men’s corpus callosums differ, this does not make the resulting behavioural differences immutable. (Fausto-Sterling 2000b, chapter 5).

In order to distinguish biological differences from social/psychological ones and to talk about the latter, feminists appropriated the term ‘gender’. Psychologists writing on transsexuality were the first to employ gender terminology in this sense. Until the 1960s, ‘gender’ was often used to refer to masculine and feminine words, like le and la in French. However, in order to explain why some people felt that they were ‘trapped in the wrong bodies’, the psychologist Robert Stoller (1968) began using the terms ‘sex’ to pick out biological traits and ‘gender’ to pick out the amount of femininity and masculinity a person exhibited. Although (by and large) a person’s sex and gender complemented each other, separating out these terms seemed to make theoretical sense allowing Stoller to explain the phenomenon of transsexuality: transsexuals’ sex and gender simply don’t match.

Along with psychologists like Stoller, feminists found it useful to distinguish sex and gender. This enabled them to argue that many differences between women and men were socially produced and, therefore, changeable. Gayle Rubin (for instance) uses the phrase ‘sex/gender system’ in order to describe “a set of arrangements by which the biological raw material of human sex and procreation is shaped by human, social intervention” (1975, 165). Rubin employed this system to articulate that “part of social life which is the locus of the oppression of women” (1975, 159) describing gender as the “socially imposed division of the sexes” (1975, 179). Rubin’s thought was that although biological differences are fixed, gender differences are the oppressive results of social interventions that dictate how women and men should behave. Women are oppressed as women and “by having to be women” (Rubin 1975, 204). However, since gender is social, it is thought to be mutable and alterable by political and social reform that would ultimately bring an end to women’s subordination. Feminism should aim to create a “genderless (though not sexless) society, in which one’s sexual anatomy is irrelevant to who one is, what one does, and with whom one makes love” (Rubin 1975, 204).

In some earlier interpretations, like Rubin’s, sex and gender were thought to complement one another. The slogan ‘Gender is the social interpretation of sex’ captures this view. Nicholson calls this ‘the coat-rack view’ of gender: our sexed bodies are like coat racks and “provide the site upon which gender [is] constructed” (1994, 81). Gender conceived of as masculinity and femininity is superimposed upon the ‘coat-rack’ of sex as each society imposes on sexed bodies their cultural conceptions of how males and females should behave. This socially constructs gender differences – or the amount of femininity/masculinity of a person – upon our sexed bodies. That is, according to this interpretation, all humans are either male or female; their sex is fixed. But cultures interpret sexed bodies differently and project different norms on those bodies thereby creating feminine and masculine persons. Distinguishing sex and gender, however, also enables the two to come apart: they are separable in that one can be sexed male and yet be gendered a woman, or vice versa (Haslanger 2000b; Stoljar 1995).

So, this group of feminist arguments against biological determinism suggested that gender differences result from cultural practices and social expectations. Nowadays it is more common to denote this by saying that gender is socially constructed. This means that genders (women and men) and gendered traits (like being nurturing or ambitious) are the “intended or unintended product[s] of a social practice” (Haslanger 1995, 97). But which social practices construct gender, what social construction is and what being of a certain gender amounts to are major feminist controversies. There is no consensus on these issues. (See the entry on intersections between analytic and continental feminism for more on different ways to understand gender.)

2. Gender as socially constructed

One way to interpret Beauvoir’s claim that one is not born but rather becomes a woman is to take it as a claim about gender socialisation: females become women through a process whereby they acquire feminine traits and learn feminine behaviour. Masculinity and femininity are thought to be products of nurture or how individuals are brought up. They are causally constructed (Haslanger 1995, 98): social forces either have a causal role in bringing gendered individuals into existence or (to some substantial sense) shape the way we are qua women and men. And the mechanism of construction is social learning. For instance, Kate Millett takes gender differences to have “essentially cultural, rather than biological bases” that result from differential treatment (1971, 28–9). For her, gender is “the sum total of the parents’, the peers’, and the culture’s notions of what is appropriate to each gender by way of temperament, character, interests, status, worth, gesture, and expression” (Millett 1971, 31). Feminine and masculine gender-norms, however, are problematic in that gendered behaviour conveniently fits with and reinforces women’s subordination so that women are socialised into subordinate social roles: they learn to be passive, ignorant, docile, emotional helpmeets for men (Millett 1971, 26). However, since these roles are simply learned, we can create more equal societies by ‘unlearning’ social roles. That is, feminists should aim to diminish the influence of socialisation.

Social learning theorists hold that a huge array of different influences socialise us as women and men. This being the case, it is extremely difficult to counter gender socialisation. For instance, parents often unconsciously treat their female and male children differently. When parents have been asked to describe their 24- hour old infants, they have done so using gender-stereotypic language: boys are describes as strong, alert and coordinated and girls as tiny, soft and delicate. Parents’ treatment of their infants further reflects these descriptions whether they are aware of this or not (Renzetti & Curran 1992, 32). Some socialisation is more overt: children are often dressed in gender stereotypical clothes and colours (boys are dressed in blue, girls in pink) and parents tend to buy their children gender stereotypical toys. They also (intentionally or not) tend to reinforce certain ‘appropriate’ behaviours. While the precise form of gender socialization has changed since the onset of second-wave feminism, even today girls are discouraged from playing sports like football or from playing ‘rough and tumble’ games and are more likely than boys to be given dolls or cooking toys to play with; boys are told not to ‘cry like a baby’ and are more likely to be given masculine toys like trucks and guns (for more, see Kimmel 2000, 122–126). [ 1 ]

According to social learning theorists, children are also influenced by what they observe in the world around them. This, again, makes countering gender socialisation difficult. For one, children’s books have portrayed males and females in blatantly stereotypical ways: for instance, males as adventurers and leaders, and females as helpers and followers. One way to address gender stereotyping in children’s books has been to portray females in independent roles and males as non-aggressive and nurturing (Renzetti & Curran 1992, 35). Some publishers have attempted an alternative approach by making their characters, for instance, gender-neutral animals or genderless imaginary creatures (like TV’s Teletubbies). However, parents reading books with gender-neutral or genderless characters often undermine the publishers’ efforts by reading them to their children in ways that depict the characters as either feminine or masculine. According to Renzetti and Curran, parents labelled the overwhelming majority of gender-neutral characters masculine whereas those characters that fit feminine gender stereotypes (for instance, by being helpful and caring) were labelled feminine (1992, 35). Socialising influences like these are still thought to send implicit messages regarding how females and males should act and are expected to act shaping us into feminine and masculine persons.

Nancy Chodorow (1978; 1995) has criticised social learning theory as too simplistic to explain gender differences (see also Deaux & Major 1990; Gatens 1996). Instead, she holds that gender is a matter of having feminine and masculine personalities that develop in early infancy as responses to prevalent parenting practices. In particular, gendered personalities develop because women tend to be the primary caretakers of small children. Chodorow holds that because mothers (or other prominent females) tend to care for infants, infant male and female psychic development differs. Crudely put: the mother-daughter relationship differs from the mother-son relationship because mothers are more likely to identify with their daughters than their sons. This unconsciously prompts the mother to encourage her son to psychologically individuate himself from her thereby prompting him to develop well defined and rigid ego boundaries. However, the mother unconsciously discourages the daughter from individuating herself thereby prompting the daughter to develop flexible and blurry ego boundaries. Childhood gender socialisation further builds on and reinforces these unconsciously developed ego boundaries finally producing feminine and masculine persons (1995, 202–206). This perspective has its roots in Freudian psychoanalytic theory, although Chodorow’s approach differs in many ways from Freud’s.

Gendered personalities are supposedly manifested in common gender stereotypical behaviour. Take emotional dependency. Women are stereotypically more emotional and emotionally dependent upon others around them, supposedly finding it difficult to distinguish their own interests and wellbeing from the interests and wellbeing of their children and partners. This is said to be because of their blurry and (somewhat) confused ego boundaries: women find it hard to distinguish their own needs from the needs of those around them because they cannot sufficiently individuate themselves from those close to them. By contrast, men are stereotypically emotionally detached, preferring a career where dispassionate and distanced thinking are virtues. These traits are said to result from men’s well-defined ego boundaries that enable them to prioritise their own needs and interests sometimes at the expense of others’ needs and interests.

Chodorow thinks that these gender differences should and can be changed. Feminine and masculine personalities play a crucial role in women’s oppression since they make females overly attentive to the needs of others and males emotionally deficient. In order to correct the situation, both male and female parents should be equally involved in parenting (Chodorow 1995, 214). This would help in ensuring that children develop sufficiently individuated senses of selves without becoming overly detached, which in turn helps to eradicate common gender stereotypical behaviours.

Catharine MacKinnon develops her theory of gender as a theory of sexuality. Very roughly: the social meaning of sex (gender) is created by sexual objectification of women whereby women are viewed and treated as objects for satisfying men’s desires (MacKinnon 1989). Masculinity is defined as sexual dominance, femininity as sexual submissiveness: genders are “created through the eroticization of dominance and submission. The man/woman difference and the dominance/submission dynamic define each other. This is the social meaning of sex” (MacKinnon 1989, 113). For MacKinnon, gender is constitutively constructed : in defining genders (or masculinity and femininity) we must make reference to social factors (see Haslanger 1995, 98). In particular, we must make reference to the position one occupies in the sexualised dominance/submission dynamic: men occupy the sexually dominant position, women the sexually submissive one. As a result, genders are by definition hierarchical and this hierarchy is fundamentally tied to sexualised power relations. The notion of ‘gender equality’, then, does not make sense to MacKinnon. If sexuality ceased to be a manifestation of dominance, hierarchical genders (that are defined in terms of sexuality) would cease to exist.

So, gender difference for MacKinnon is not a matter of having a particular psychological orientation or behavioural pattern; rather, it is a function of sexuality that is hierarchal in patriarchal societies. This is not to say that men are naturally disposed to sexually objectify women or that women are naturally submissive. Instead, male and female sexualities are socially conditioned: men have been conditioned to find women’s subordination sexy and women have been conditioned to find a particular male version of female sexuality as erotic – one in which it is erotic to be sexually submissive. For MacKinnon, both female and male sexual desires are defined from a male point of view that is conditioned by pornography (MacKinnon 1989, chapter 7). Bluntly put: pornography portrays a false picture of ‘what women want’ suggesting that women in actual fact are and want to be submissive. This conditions men’s sexuality so that they view women’s submission as sexy. And male dominance enforces this male version of sexuality onto women, sometimes by force. MacKinnon’s thought is not that male dominance is a result of social learning (see 2.1.); rather, socialization is an expression of power. That is, socialized differences in masculine and feminine traits, behaviour, and roles are not responsible for power inequalities. Females and males (roughly put) are socialised differently because there are underlying power inequalities. As MacKinnon puts it, ‘dominance’ (power relations) is prior to ‘difference’ (traits, behaviour and roles) (see, MacKinnon 1989, chapter 12). MacKinnon, then, sees legal restrictions on pornography as paramount to ending women’s subordinate status that stems from their gender.

3. Problems with the sex/gender distinction

3.1 is gender uniform.

The positions outlined above share an underlying metaphysical perspective on gender: gender realism . [ 2 ] That is, women as a group are assumed to share some characteristic feature, experience, common condition or criterion that defines their gender and the possession of which makes some individuals women (as opposed to, say, men). All women are thought to differ from all men in this respect (or respects). For example, MacKinnon thought that being treated in sexually objectifying ways is the common condition that defines women’s gender and what women as women share. All women differ from all men in this respect. Further, pointing out females who are not sexually objectified does not provide a counterexample to MacKinnon’s view. Being sexually objectified is constitutive of being a woman; a female who escapes sexual objectification, then, would not count as a woman.

One may want to critique the three accounts outlined by rejecting the particular details of each account. (For instance, see Spelman [1988, chapter 4] for a critique of the details of Chodorow’s view.) A more thoroughgoing critique has been levelled at the general metaphysical perspective of gender realism that underlies these positions. It has come under sustained attack on two grounds: first, that it fails to take into account racial, cultural and class differences between women (particularity argument); second, that it posits a normative ideal of womanhood (normativity argument).

Elizabeth Spelman (1988) has influentially argued against gender realism with her particularity argument. Roughly: gender realists mistakenly assume that gender is constructed independently of race, class, ethnicity and nationality. If gender were separable from, for example, race and class in this manner, all women would experience womanhood in the same way. And this is clearly false. For instance, Harris (1993) and Stone (2007) criticise MacKinnon’s view, that sexual objectification is the common condition that defines women’s gender, for failing to take into account differences in women’s backgrounds that shape their sexuality. The history of racist oppression illustrates that during slavery black women were ‘hypersexualised’ and thought to be always sexually available whereas white women were thought to be pure and sexually virtuous. In fact, the rape of a black woman was thought to be impossible (Harris 1993). So, (the argument goes) sexual objectification cannot serve as the common condition for womanhood since it varies considerably depending on one’s race and class. [ 3 ]

For Spelman, the perspective of ‘white solipsism’ underlies gender realists’ mistake. They assumed that all women share some “golden nugget of womanness” (Spelman 1988, 159) and that the features constitutive of such a nugget are the same for all women regardless of their particular cultural backgrounds. Next, white Western middle-class feminists accounted for the shared features simply by reflecting on the cultural features that condition their gender as women thus supposing that “the womanness underneath the Black woman’s skin is a white woman’s, and deep down inside the Latina woman is an Anglo woman waiting to burst through an obscuring cultural shroud” (Spelman 1988, 13). In so doing, Spelman claims, white middle-class Western feminists passed off their particular view of gender as “a metaphysical truth” (1988, 180) thereby privileging some women while marginalising others. In failing to see the importance of race and class in gender construction, white middle-class Western feminists conflated “the condition of one group of women with the condition of all” (Spelman 1988, 3).

Betty Friedan’s (1963) well-known work is a case in point of white solipsism. [ 4 ] Friedan saw domesticity as the main vehicle of gender oppression and called upon women in general to find jobs outside the home. But she failed to realize that women from less privileged backgrounds, often poor and non-white, already worked outside the home to support their families. Friedan’s suggestion, then, was applicable only to a particular sub-group of women (white middle-class Western housewives). But it was mistakenly taken to apply to all women’s lives — a mistake that was generated by Friedan’s failure to take women’s racial and class differences into account (hooks 2000, 1–3).

Spelman further holds that since social conditioning creates femininity and societies (and sub-groups) that condition it differ from one another, femininity must be differently conditioned in different societies. For her, “females become not simply women but particular kinds of women” (Spelman 1988, 113): white working-class women, black middle-class women, poor Jewish women, wealthy aristocratic European women, and so on.

This line of thought has been extremely influential in feminist philosophy. For instance, Young holds that Spelman has definitively shown that gender realism is untenable (1997, 13). Mikkola (2006) argues that this isn’t so. The arguments Spelman makes do not undermine the idea that there is some characteristic feature, experience, common condition or criterion that defines women’s gender; they simply point out that some particular ways of cashing out what defines womanhood are misguided. So, although Spelman is right to reject those accounts that falsely take the feature that conditions white middle-class Western feminists’ gender to condition women’s gender in general, this leaves open the possibility that women qua women do share something that defines their gender. (See also Haslanger [2000a] for a discussion of why gender realism is not necessarily untenable, and Stoljar [2011] for a discussion of Mikkola’s critique of Spelman.)

Judith Butler critiques the sex/gender distinction on two grounds. They critique gender realism with their normativity argument (1999 [original 1990], chapter 1); they also hold that the sex/gender distinction is unintelligible (this will be discussed in section 3.3.). Butler’s normativity argument is not straightforwardly directed at the metaphysical perspective of gender realism, but rather at its political counterpart: identity politics. This is a form of political mobilization based on membership in some group (e.g. racial, ethnic, cultural, gender) and group membership is thought to be delimited by some common experiences, conditions or features that define the group (Heyes 2000, 58; see also the entry on Identity Politics ). Feminist identity politics, then, presupposes gender realism in that feminist politics is said to be mobilized around women as a group (or category) where membership in this group is fixed by some condition, experience or feature that women supposedly share and that defines their gender.

Butler’s normativity argument makes two claims. The first is akin to Spelman’s particularity argument: unitary gender notions fail to take differences amongst women into account thus failing to recognise “the multiplicity of cultural, social, and political intersections in which the concrete array of ‘women’ are constructed” (Butler 1999, 19–20). In their attempt to undercut biologically deterministic ways of defining what it means to be a woman, feminists inadvertently created new socially constructed accounts of supposedly shared femininity. Butler’s second claim is that such false gender realist accounts are normative. That is, in their attempt to fix feminism’s subject matter, feminists unwittingly defined the term ‘woman’ in a way that implies there is some correct way to be gendered a woman (Butler 1999, 5). That the definition of the term ‘woman’ is fixed supposedly “operates as a policing force which generates and legitimizes certain practices, experiences, etc., and curtails and delegitimizes others” (Nicholson 1998, 293). Following this line of thought, one could say that, for instance, Chodorow’s view of gender suggests that ‘real’ women have feminine personalities and that these are the women feminism should be concerned about. If one does not exhibit a distinctly feminine personality, the implication is that one is not ‘really’ a member of women’s category nor does one properly qualify for feminist political representation.

Butler’s second claim is based on their view that“[i]dentity categories [like that of women] are never merely descriptive, but always normative, and as such, exclusionary” (Butler 1991, 160). That is, the mistake of those feminists Butler critiques was not that they provided the incorrect definition of ‘woman’. Rather, (the argument goes) their mistake was to attempt to define the term ‘woman’ at all. Butler’s view is that ‘woman’ can never be defined in a way that does not prescribe some “unspoken normative requirements” (like having a feminine personality) that women should conform to (Butler 1999, 9). Butler takes this to be a feature of terms like ‘woman’ that purport to pick out (what they call) ‘identity categories’. They seem to assume that ‘woman’ can never be used in a non-ideological way (Moi 1999, 43) and that it will always encode conditions that are not satisfied by everyone we think of as women. Some explanation for this comes from Butler’s view that all processes of drawing categorical distinctions involve evaluative and normative commitments; these in turn involve the exercise of power and reflect the conditions of those who are socially powerful (Witt 1995).

In order to better understand Butler’s critique, consider their account of gender performativity. For them, standard feminist accounts take gendered individuals to have some essential properties qua gendered individuals or a gender core by virtue of which one is either a man or a woman. This view assumes that women and men, qua women and men, are bearers of various essential and accidental attributes where the former secure gendered persons’ persistence through time as so gendered. But according to Butler this view is false: (i) there are no such essential properties, and (ii) gender is an illusion maintained by prevalent power structures. First, feminists are said to think that genders are socially constructed in that they have the following essential attributes (Butler 1999, 24): women are females with feminine behavioural traits, being heterosexuals whose desire is directed at men; men are males with masculine behavioural traits, being heterosexuals whose desire is directed at women. These are the attributes necessary for gendered individuals and those that enable women and men to persist through time as women and men. Individuals have “intelligible genders” (Butler 1999, 23) if they exhibit this sequence of traits in a coherent manner (where sexual desire follows from sexual orientation that in turn follows from feminine/ masculine behaviours thought to follow from biological sex). Social forces in general deem individuals who exhibit in coherent gender sequences (like lesbians) to be doing their gender ‘wrong’ and they actively discourage such sequencing of traits, for instance, via name-calling and overt homophobic discrimination. Think back to what was said above: having a certain conception of what women are like that mirrors the conditions of socially powerful (white, middle-class, heterosexual, Western) women functions to marginalize and police those who do not fit this conception.

These gender cores, supposedly encoding the above traits, however, are nothing more than illusions created by ideals and practices that seek to render gender uniform through heterosexism, the view that heterosexuality is natural and homosexuality is deviant (Butler 1999, 42). Gender cores are constructed as if they somehow naturally belong to women and men thereby creating gender dimorphism or the belief that one must be either a masculine male or a feminine female. But gender dimorphism only serves a heterosexist social order by implying that since women and men are sharply opposed, it is natural to sexually desire the opposite sex or gender.

Further, being feminine and desiring men (for instance) are standardly assumed to be expressions of one’s gender as a woman. Butler denies this and holds that gender is really performative. It is not “a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow; rather, gender is … instituted … through a stylized repetition of [habitual] acts ” (Butler 1999, 179): through wearing certain gender-coded clothing, walking and sitting in certain gender-coded ways, styling one’s hair in gender-coded manner and so on. Gender is not something one is, it is something one does; it is a sequence of acts, a doing rather than a being. And repeatedly engaging in ‘feminising’ and ‘masculinising’ acts congeals gender thereby making people falsely think of gender as something they naturally are . Gender only comes into being through these gendering acts: a female who has sex with men does not express her gender as a woman. This activity (amongst others) makes her gendered a woman.

The constitutive acts that gender individuals create genders as “compelling illusion[s]” (Butler 1990, 271). Our gendered classification scheme is a strong pragmatic construction : social factors wholly determine our use of the scheme and the scheme fails to represent accurately any ‘facts of the matter’ (Haslanger 1995, 100). People think that there are true and real genders, and those deemed to be doing their gender ‘wrong’ are not socially sanctioned. But, genders are true and real only to the extent that they are performed (Butler 1990, 278–9). It does not make sense, then, to say of a male-to-female trans person that s/he is really a man who only appears to be a woman. Instead, males dressing up and acting in ways that are associated with femininity “show that [as Butler suggests] ‘being’ feminine is just a matter of doing certain activities” (Stone 2007, 64). As a result, the trans person’s gender is just as real or true as anyone else’s who is a ‘traditionally’ feminine female or masculine male (Butler 1990, 278). [ 5 ] Without heterosexism that compels people to engage in certain gendering acts, there would not be any genders at all. And ultimately the aim should be to abolish norms that compel people to act in these gendering ways.

For Butler, given that gender is performative, the appropriate response to feminist identity politics involves two things. First, feminists should understand ‘woman’ as open-ended and “a term in process, a becoming, a constructing that cannot rightfully be said to originate or end … it is open to intervention and resignification” (Butler 1999, 43). That is, feminists should not try to define ‘woman’ at all. Second, the category of women “ought not to be the foundation of feminist politics” (Butler 1999, 9). Rather, feminists should focus on providing an account of how power functions and shapes our understandings of womanhood not only in the society at large but also within the feminist movement.

Many people, including many feminists, have ordinarily taken sex ascriptions to be solely a matter of biology with no social or cultural dimension. It is commonplace to think that there are only two sexes and that biological sex classifications are utterly unproblematic. By contrast, some feminists have argued that sex classifications are not unproblematic and that they are not solely a matter of biology. In order to make sense of this, it is helpful to distinguish object- and idea-construction (see Haslanger 2003b for more): social forces can be said to construct certain kinds of objects (e.g. sexed bodies or gendered individuals) and certain kinds of ideas (e.g. sex or gender concepts). First, take the object-construction of sexed bodies. Secondary sex characteristics, or the physiological and biological features commonly associated with males and females, are affected by social practices. In some societies, females’ lower social status has meant that they have been fed less and so, the lack of nutrition has had the effect of making them smaller in size (Jaggar 1983, 37). Uniformity in muscular shape, size and strength within sex categories is not caused entirely by biological factors, but depends heavily on exercise opportunities: if males and females were allowed the same exercise opportunities and equal encouragement to exercise, it is thought that bodily dimorphism would diminish (Fausto-Sterling 1993a, 218). A number of medical phenomena involving bones (like osteoporosis) have social causes directly related to expectations about gender, women’s diet and their exercise opportunities (Fausto-Sterling 2005). These examples suggest that physiological features thought to be sex-specific traits not affected by social and cultural factors are, after all, to some extent products of social conditioning. Social conditioning, then, shapes our biology.

Second, take the idea-construction of sex concepts. Our concept of sex is said to be a product of social forces in the sense that what counts as sex is shaped by social meanings. Standardly, those with XX-chromosomes, ovaries that produce large egg cells, female genitalia, a relatively high proportion of ‘female’ hormones, and other secondary sex characteristics (relatively small body size, less body hair) count as biologically female. Those with XY-chromosomes, testes that produce small sperm cells, male genitalia, a relatively high proportion of ‘male’ hormones and other secondary sex traits (relatively large body size, significant amounts of body hair) count as male. This understanding is fairly recent. The prevalent scientific view from Ancient Greeks until the late 18 th century, did not consider female and male sexes to be distinct categories with specific traits; instead, a ‘one-sex model’ held that males and females were members of the same sex category. Females’ genitals were thought to be the same as males’ but simply directed inside the body; ovaries and testes (for instance) were referred to by the same term and whether the term referred to the former or the latter was made clear by the context (Laqueur 1990, 4). It was not until the late 1700s that scientists began to think of female and male anatomies as radically different moving away from the ‘one-sex model’ of a single sex spectrum to the (nowadays prevalent) ‘two-sex model’ of sexual dimorphism. (For an alternative view, see King 2013.)

Fausto-Sterling has argued that this ‘two-sex model’ isn’t straightforward either (1993b; 2000a; 2000b). Based on a meta-study of empirical medical research, she estimates that 1.7% of population fail to neatly fall within the usual sex classifications possessing various combinations of different sex characteristics (Fausto-Sterling 2000a, 20). In her earlier work, she claimed that intersex individuals make up (at least) three further sex classes: ‘herms’ who possess one testis and one ovary; ‘merms’ who possess testes, some aspects of female genitalia but no ovaries; and ‘ferms’ who have ovaries, some aspects of male genitalia but no testes (Fausto-Sterling 1993b, 21). (In her [2000a], Fausto-Sterling notes that these labels were put forward tongue–in–cheek.) Recognition of intersex people suggests that feminists (and society at large) are wrong to think that humans are either female or male.

To illustrate further the idea-construction of sex, consider the case of the athlete Maria Patiño. Patiño has female genitalia, has always considered herself to be female and was considered so by others. However, she was discovered to have XY chromosomes and was barred from competing in women’s sports (Fausto-Sterling 2000b, 1–3). Patiño’s genitalia were at odds with her chromosomes and the latter were taken to determine her sex. Patiño successfully fought to be recognised as a female athlete arguing that her chromosomes alone were not sufficient to not make her female. Intersex people, like Patiño, illustrate that our understandings of sex differ and suggest that there is no immediately obvious way to settle what sex amounts to purely biologically or scientifically. Deciding what sex is involves evaluative judgements that are influenced by social factors.

Insofar as our cultural conceptions affect our understandings of sex, feminists must be much more careful about sex classifications and rethink what sex amounts to (Stone 2007, chapter 1). More specifically, intersex people illustrate that sex traits associated with females and males need not always go together and that individuals can have some mixture of these traits. This suggests to Stone that sex is a cluster concept: it is sufficient to satisfy enough of the sex features that tend to cluster together in order to count as being of a particular sex. But, one need not satisfy all of those features or some arbitrarily chosen supposedly necessary sex feature, like chromosomes (Stone 2007, 44). This makes sex a matter of degree and sex classifications should take place on a spectrum: one can be more or less female/male but there is no sharp distinction between the two. Further, intersex people (along with trans people) are located at the centre of the sex spectrum and in many cases their sex will be indeterminate (Stone 2007).

More recently, Ayala and Vasilyeva (2015) have argued for an inclusive and extended conception of sex: just as certain tools can be seen to extend our minds beyond the limits of our brains (e.g. white canes), other tools (like dildos) can extend our sex beyond our bodily boundaries. This view aims to motivate the idea that what counts as sex should not be determined by looking inwards at genitalia or other anatomical features. In a different vein, Ásta (2018) argues that sex is a conferred social property. This follows her more general conferralist framework to analyse all social properties: properties that are conferred by others thereby generating a social status that consists in contextually specific constraints and enablements on individual behaviour. The general schema for conferred properties is as follows (Ásta 2018, 8):

Conferred property: what property is conferred. Who: who the subjects are. What: what attitude, state, or action of the subjects matter. When: under what conditions the conferral takes place. Base property: what the subjects are attempting to track (consciously or not), if anything.

With being of a certain sex (e.g. male, female) in mind, Ásta holds that it is a conferred property that merely aims to track physical features. Hence sex is a social – or in fact, an institutional – property rather than a natural one. The schema for sex goes as follows (72):

Conferred property: being female, male. Who: legal authorities, drawing on the expert opinion of doctors, other medical personnel. What: “the recording of a sex in official documents ... The judgment of the doctors (and others) as to what sex role might be the most fitting, given the biological characteristics present.” When: at birth or after surgery/ hormonal treatment. Base property: “the aim is to track as many sex-stereotypical characteristics as possible, and doctors perform surgery in cases where that might help bring the physical characteristics more in line with the stereotype of male and female.”

This (among other things) offers a debunking analysis of sex: it may appear to be a natural property, but on the conferralist analysis is better understood as a conferred legal status. Ásta holds that gender too is a conferred property, but contra the discussion in the following section, she does not think that this collapses the distinction between sex and gender: sex and gender are differently conferred albeit both satisfying the general schema noted above. Nonetheless, on the conferralist framework what underlies both sex and gender is the idea of social construction as social significance: sex-stereotypical characteristics are taken to be socially significant context specifically, whereby they become the basis for conferring sex onto individuals and this brings with it various constraints and enablements on individuals and their behaviour. This fits object- and idea-constructions introduced above, although offers a different general framework to analyse the matter at hand.

In addition to arguing against identity politics and for gender performativity, Butler holds that distinguishing biological sex from social gender is unintelligible. For them, both are socially constructed:

If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all. (Butler 1999, 10–11)

(Butler is not alone in claiming that there are no tenable distinctions between nature/culture, biology/construction and sex/gender. See also: Antony 1998; Gatens 1996; Grosz 1994; Prokhovnik 1999.) Butler makes two different claims in the passage cited: that sex is a social construction, and that sex is gender. To unpack their view, consider the two claims in turn. First, the idea that sex is a social construct, for Butler, boils down to the view that our sexed bodies are also performative and, so, they have “no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute [their] reality” (1999, 173). Prima facie , this implausibly implies that female and male bodies do not have independent existence and that if gendering activities ceased, so would physical bodies. This is not Butler’s claim; rather, their position is that bodies viewed as the material foundations on which gender is constructed, are themselves constructed as if they provide such material foundations (Butler 1993). Cultural conceptions about gender figure in “the very apparatus of production whereby sexes themselves are established” (Butler 1999, 11).

For Butler, sexed bodies never exist outside social meanings and how we understand gender shapes how we understand sex (1999, 139). Sexed bodies are not empty matter on which gender is constructed and sex categories are not picked out on the basis of objective features of the world. Instead, our sexed bodies are themselves discursively constructed : they are the way they are, at least to a substantial extent, because of what is attributed to sexed bodies and how they are classified (for discursive construction, see Haslanger 1995, 99). Sex assignment (calling someone female or male) is normative (Butler 1993, 1). [ 6 ] When the doctor calls a newly born infant a girl or a boy, s/he is not making a descriptive claim, but a normative one. In fact, the doctor is performing an illocutionary speech act (see the entry on Speech Acts ). In effect, the doctor’s utterance makes infants into girls or boys. We, then, engage in activities that make it seem as if sexes naturally come in two and that being female or male is an objective feature of the world, rather than being a consequence of certain constitutive acts (that is, rather than being performative). And this is what Butler means in saying that physical bodies never exist outside cultural and social meanings, and that sex is as socially constructed as gender. They do not deny that physical bodies exist. But, they take our understanding of this existence to be a product of social conditioning: social conditioning makes the existence of physical bodies intelligible to us by discursively constructing sexed bodies through certain constitutive acts. (For a helpful introduction to Butler’s views, see Salih 2002.)

For Butler, sex assignment is always in some sense oppressive. Again, this appears to be because of Butler’s general suspicion of classification: sex classification can never be merely descriptive but always has a normative element reflecting evaluative claims of those who are powerful. Conducting a feminist genealogy of the body (or examining why sexed bodies are thought to come naturally as female and male), then, should ground feminist practice (Butler 1993, 28–9). Feminists should examine and uncover ways in which social construction and certain acts that constitute sex shape our understandings of sexed bodies, what kinds of meanings bodies acquire and which practices and illocutionary speech acts ‘make’ our bodies into sexes. Doing so enables feminists to identity how sexed bodies are socially constructed in order to resist such construction.

However, given what was said above, it is far from obvious what we should make of Butler’s claim that sex “was always already gender” (1999, 11). Stone (2007) takes this to mean that sex is gender but goes on to question it arguing that the social construction of both sex and gender does not make sex identical to gender. According to Stone, it would be more accurate for Butler to say that claims about sex imply gender norms. That is, many claims about sex traits (like ‘females are physically weaker than males’) actually carry implications about how women and men are expected to behave. To some extent the claim describes certain facts. But, it also implies that females are not expected to do much heavy lifting and that they would probably not be good at it. So, claims about sex are not identical to claims about gender; rather, they imply claims about gender norms (Stone 2007, 70).

Some feminists hold that the sex/gender distinction is not useful. For a start, it is thought to reflect politically problematic dualistic thinking that undercuts feminist aims: the distinction is taken to reflect and replicate androcentric oppositions between (for instance) mind/body, culture/nature and reason/emotion that have been used to justify women’s oppression (e.g. Grosz 1994; Prokhovnik 1999). The thought is that in oppositions like these, one term is always superior to the other and that the devalued term is usually associated with women (Lloyd 1993). For instance, human subjectivity and agency are identified with the mind but since women are usually identified with their bodies, they are devalued as human subjects and agents. The opposition between mind and body is said to further map on to other distinctions, like reason/emotion, culture/nature, rational/irrational, where one side of each distinction is devalued (one’s bodily features are usually valued less that one’s mind, rationality is usually valued more than irrationality) and women are associated with the devalued terms: they are thought to be closer to bodily features and nature than men, to be irrational, emotional and so on. This is said to be evident (for instance) in job interviews. Men are treated as gender-neutral persons and not asked whether they are planning to take time off to have a family. By contrast, that women face such queries illustrates that they are associated more closely than men with bodily features to do with procreation (Prokhovnik 1999, 126). The opposition between mind and body, then, is thought to map onto the opposition between men and women.

Now, the mind/body dualism is also said to map onto the sex/gender distinction (Grosz 1994; Prokhovnik 1999). The idea is that gender maps onto mind, sex onto body. Although not used by those endorsing this view, the basic idea can be summed by the slogan ‘Gender is between the ears, sex is between the legs’: the implication is that, while sex is immutable, gender is something individuals have control over – it is something we can alter and change through individual choices. However, since women are said to be more closely associated with biological features (and so, to map onto the body side of the mind/body distinction) and men are treated as gender-neutral persons (mapping onto the mind side), the implication is that “man equals gender, which is associated with mind and choice, freedom from body, autonomy, and with the public real; while woman equals sex, associated with the body, reproduction, ‘natural’ rhythms and the private realm” (Prokhovnik 1999, 103). This is said to render the sex/gender distinction inherently repressive and to drain it of any potential for emancipation: rather than facilitating gender role choice for women, it “actually functions to reinforce their association with body, sex, and involuntary ‘natural’ rhythms” (Prokhovnik 1999, 103). Contrary to what feminists like Rubin argued, the sex/gender distinction cannot be used as a theoretical tool that dissociates conceptions of womanhood from biological and reproductive features.

Moi has further argued that the sex/gender distinction is useless given certain theoretical goals (1999, chapter 1). This is not to say that it is utterly worthless; according to Moi, the sex/gender distinction worked well to show that the historically prevalent biological determinism was false. However, for her, the distinction does no useful work “when it comes to producing a good theory of subjectivity” (1999, 6) and “a concrete, historical understanding of what it means to be a woman (or a man) in a given society” (1999, 4–5). That is, the 1960s distinction understood sex as fixed by biology without any cultural or historical dimensions. This understanding, however, ignores lived experiences and embodiment as aspects of womanhood (and manhood) by separating sex from gender and insisting that womanhood is to do with the latter. Rather, embodiment must be included in one’s theory that tries to figure out what it is to be a woman (or a man).

Mikkola (2011) argues that the sex/gender distinction, which underlies views like Rubin’s and MacKinnon’s, has certain unintuitive and undesirable ontological commitments that render the distinction politically unhelpful. First, claiming that gender is socially constructed implies that the existence of women and men is a mind-dependent matter. This suggests that we can do away with women and men simply by altering some social practices, conventions or conditions on which gender depends (whatever those are). However, ordinary social agents find this unintuitive given that (ordinarily) sex and gender are not distinguished. Second, claiming that gender is a product of oppressive social forces suggests that doing away with women and men should be feminism’s political goal. But this harbours ontologically undesirable commitments since many ordinary social agents view their gender to be a source of positive value. So, feminism seems to want to do away with something that should not be done away with, which is unlikely to motivate social agents to act in ways that aim at gender justice. Given these problems, Mikkola argues that feminists should give up the distinction on practical political grounds.

Tomas Bogardus (2020) has argued in an even more radical sense against the sex/gender distinction: as things stand, he holds, feminist philosophers have merely assumed and asserted that the distinction exists, instead of having offered good arguments for the distinction. In other words, feminist philosophers allegedly have yet to offer good reasons to think that ‘woman’ does not simply pick out adult human females. Alex Byrne (2020) argues in a similar vein: the term ‘woman’ does not pick out a social kind as feminist philosophers have “assumed”. Instead, “women are adult human females–nothing more, and nothing less” (2020, 3801). Byrne offers six considerations to ground this AHF (adult, human, female) conception.

• It reproduces the dictionary definition of ‘woman’.
• One would expect English to have a word that picks out the category adult human female, and ‘woman’ is the only candidate.
• AHF explains how we sometimes know that an individual is a woman, despite knowing nothing else relevant about her other than the fact that she is an adult human female.
• AHF stands or falls with the analogous thesis for girls, which can be supported independently.
• AHF predicts the correct verdict in cases of gender role reversal.
• AHF is supported by the fact that ‘woman’ and ‘female’ are often appropriately used as stylistic variants of each other, even in hyperintensional contexts.

Robin Dembroff (2021) responds to Byrne and highlights various problems with Byrne’s argument. First, framing: Byrne assumes from the start that gender terms like ‘woman’ have a single invariant meaning thereby failing to discuss the possibility of terms like ‘woman’ having multiple meanings – something that is a familiar claim made by feminist theorists from various disciplines. Moreover, Byrne (according to Dembroff) assumes without argument that there is a single, universal category of woman – again, something that has been extensively discussed and critiqued by feminist philosophers and theorists. Second, Byrne’s conception of the ‘dominant’ meaning of woman is said to be cherry-picked and it ignores a wealth of contexts outside of philosophy (like the media and the law) where ‘woman’ has a meaning other than AHF . Third, Byrne’s own distinction between biological and social categories fails to establish what he intended to establish: namely, that ‘woman’ picks out a biological rather than a social kind. Hence, Dembroff holds, Byrne’s case fails by its own lights. Byrne (2021) responds to Dembroff’s critique.

Others such as ‘gender critical feminists’ also hold views about the sex/gender distinction in a spirit similar to Bogardus and Byrne. For example, Holly Lawford-Smith (2021) takes the prevalent sex/gender distinction, where ‘female’/‘male’ are used as sex terms and ‘woman’/’man’ as gender terms, not to be helpful. Instead, she takes all of these to be sex terms and holds that (the norms of) femininity/masculinity refer to gender normativity. Because much of the gender critical feminists’ discussion that philosophers have engaged in has taken place in social media, public fora, and other sources outside academic philosophy, this entry will not focus on these discussions.

4. Women as a group

The various critiques of the sex/gender distinction have called into question the viability of the category women . Feminism is the movement to end the oppression women as a group face. But, how should the category of women be understood if feminists accept the above arguments that gender construction is not uniform, that a sharp distinction between biological sex and social gender is false or (at least) not useful, and that various features associated with women play a role in what it is to be a woman, none of which are individually necessary and jointly sufficient (like a variety of social roles, positions, behaviours, traits, bodily features and experiences)? Feminists must be able to address cultural and social differences in gender construction if feminism is to be a genuinely inclusive movement and be careful not to posit commonalities that mask important ways in which women qua women differ. These concerns (among others) have generated a situation where (as Linda Alcoff puts it) feminists aim to speak and make political demands in the name of women, at the same time rejecting the idea that there is a unified category of women (2006, 152). If feminist critiques of the category women are successful, then what (if anything) binds women together, what is it to be a woman, and what kinds of demands can feminists make on behalf of women?

Many have found the fragmentation of the category of women problematic for political reasons (e.g. Alcoff 2006; Bach 2012; Benhabib 1992; Frye 1996; Haslanger 2000b; Heyes 2000; Martin 1994; Mikkola 2007; Stoljar 1995; Stone 2004; Tanesini 1996; Young 1997; Zack 2005). For instance, Young holds that accounts like Spelman’s reduce the category of women to a gerrymandered collection of individuals with nothing to bind them together (1997, 20). Black women differ from white women but members of both groups also differ from one another with respect to nationality, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation and economic position; that is, wealthy white women differ from working-class white women due to their economic and class positions. These sub-groups are themselves diverse: for instance, some working-class white women in Northern Ireland are starkly divided along religious lines. So if we accept Spelman’s position, we risk ending up with individual women and nothing to bind them together. And this is problematic: in order to respond to oppression of women in general, feminists must understand them as a category in some sense. Young writes that without doing so “it is not possible to conceptualize oppression as a systematic, structured, institutional process” (1997, 17). Some, then, take the articulation of an inclusive category of women to be the prerequisite for effective feminist politics and a rich literature has emerged that aims to conceptualise women as a group or a collective (e.g. Alcoff 2006; Ásta 2011; Frye 1996; 2011; Haslanger 2000b; Heyes 2000; Stoljar 1995, 2011; Young 1997; Zack 2005). Articulations of this category can be divided into those that are: (a) gender nominalist — positions that deny there is something women qua women share and that seek to unify women’s social kind by appealing to something external to women; and (b) gender realist — positions that take there to be something women qua women share (although these realist positions differ significantly from those outlined in Section 2). Below we will review some influential gender nominalist and gender realist positions. Before doing so, it is worth noting that not everyone is convinced that attempts to articulate an inclusive category of women can succeed or that worries about what it is to be a woman are in need of being resolved. Mikkola (2016) argues that feminist politics need not rely on overcoming (what she calls) the ‘gender controversy’: that feminists must settle the meaning of gender concepts and articulate a way to ground women’s social kind membership. As she sees it, disputes about ‘what it is to be a woman’ have become theoretically bankrupt and intractable, which has generated an analytical impasse that looks unsurpassable. Instead, Mikkola argues for giving up the quest, which in any case in her view poses no serious political obstacles.

Elizabeth Barnes (2020) responds to the need to offer an inclusive conception of gender somewhat differently, although she endorses the need for feminism to be inclusive particularly of trans people. Barnes holds that typically philosophical theories of gender aim to offer an account of what it is to be a woman (or man, genderqueer, etc.), where such an account is presumed to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for being a woman or an account of our gender terms’ extensions. But, she holds, it is a mistake to expect our theories of gender to do so. For Barnes, a project that offers a metaphysics of gender “should be understood as the project of theorizing what it is —if anything— about the social world that ultimately explains gender” (2020, 706). This project is not equivalent to one that aims to define gender terms or elucidate the application conditions for natural language gender terms though.

4.1 Gender nominalism

Iris Young argues that unless there is “some sense in which ‘woman’ is the name of a social collective [that feminism represents], there is nothing specific to feminist politics” (1997, 13). In order to make the category women intelligible, she argues that women make up a series: a particular kind of social collective “whose members are unified passively by the objects their actions are oriented around and/or by the objectified results of the material effects of the actions of the other” (Young 1997, 23). A series is distinct from a group in that, whereas members of groups are thought to self-consciously share certain goals, projects, traits and/ or self-conceptions, members of series pursue their own individual ends without necessarily having anything at all in common. Young holds that women are not bound together by a shared feature or experience (or set of features and experiences) since she takes Spelman’s particularity argument to have established definitely that no such feature exists (1997, 13; see also: Frye 1996; Heyes 2000). Instead, women’s category is unified by certain practico-inert realities or the ways in which women’s lives and their actions are oriented around certain objects and everyday realities (Young 1997, 23–4). For example, bus commuters make up a series unified through their individual actions being organised around the same practico-inert objects of the bus and the practice of public transport. Women make up a series unified through women’s lives and actions being organised around certain practico-inert objects and realities that position them as women .

Young identifies two broad groups of such practico-inert objects and realities. First, phenomena associated with female bodies (physical facts), biological processes that take place in female bodies (menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth) and social rules associated with these biological processes (social rules of menstruation, for instance). Second, gender-coded objects and practices: pronouns, verbal and visual representations of gender, gender-coded artefacts and social spaces, clothes, cosmetics, tools and furniture. So, women make up a series since their lives and actions are organised around female bodies and certain gender-coded objects. Their series is bound together passively and the unity is “not one that arises from the individuals called women” (Young 1997, 32).

Although Young’s proposal purports to be a response to Spelman’s worries, Stone has questioned whether it is, after all, susceptible to the particularity argument: ultimately, on Young’s view, something women as women share (their practico-inert realities) binds them together (Stone 2004).

Natalie Stoljar holds that unless the category of women is unified, feminist action on behalf of women cannot be justified (1995, 282). Stoljar too is persuaded by the thought that women qua women do not share anything unitary. This prompts her to argue for resemblance nominalism. This is the view that a certain kind of resemblance relation holds between entities of a particular type (for more on resemblance nominalism, see Armstrong 1989, 39–58). Stoljar is not alone in arguing for resemblance relations to make sense of women as a category; others have also done so, usually appealing to Wittgenstein’s ‘family resemblance’ relations (Alcoff 1988; Green & Radford Curry 1991; Heyes 2000; Munro 2006). Stoljar relies more on Price’s resemblance nominalism whereby x is a member of some type F only if x resembles some paradigm or exemplar of F sufficiently closely (Price 1953, 20). For instance, the type of red entities is unified by some chosen red paradigms so that only those entities that sufficiently resemble the paradigms count as red. The type (or category) of women, then, is unified by some chosen woman paradigms so that those who sufficiently resemble the woman paradigms count as women (Stoljar 1995, 284).

Semantic considerations about the concept woman suggest to Stoljar that resemblance nominalism should be endorsed (Stoljar 2000, 28). It seems unlikely that the concept is applied on the basis of some single social feature all and only women possess. By contrast, woman is a cluster concept and our attributions of womanhood pick out “different arrangements of features in different individuals” (Stoljar 2000, 27). More specifically, they pick out the following clusters of features: (a) Female sex; (b) Phenomenological features: menstruation, female sexual experience, child-birth, breast-feeding, fear of walking on the streets at night or fear of rape; (c) Certain roles: wearing typically female clothing, being oppressed on the basis of one’s sex or undertaking care-work; (d) Gender attribution: “calling oneself a woman, being called a woman” (Stoljar 1995, 283–4). For Stoljar, attributions of womanhood are to do with a variety of traits and experiences: those that feminists have historically termed ‘gender traits’ (like social, behavioural, psychological traits) and those termed ‘sex traits’. Nonetheless, she holds that since the concept woman applies to (at least some) trans persons, one can be a woman without being female (Stoljar 1995, 282).

The cluster concept woman does not, however, straightforwardly provide the criterion for picking out the category of women. Rather, the four clusters of features that the concept picks out help single out woman paradigms that in turn help single out the category of women. First, any individual who possesses a feature from at least three of the four clusters mentioned will count as an exemplar of the category. For instance, an African-American with primary and secondary female sex characteristics, who describes herself as a woman and is oppressed on the basis of her sex, along with a white European hermaphrodite brought up ‘as a girl’, who engages in female roles and has female phenomenological features despite lacking female sex characteristics, will count as woman paradigms (Stoljar 1995, 284). [ 7 ] Second, any individual who resembles “any of the paradigms sufficiently closely (on Price’s account, as closely as [the paradigms] resemble each other) will be a member of the resemblance class ‘woman’” (Stoljar 1995, 284). That is, what delimits membership in the category of women is that one resembles sufficiently a woman paradigm.

4.2 Neo-gender realism

In a series of articles collected in her 2012 book, Sally Haslanger argues for a way to define the concept woman that is politically useful, serving as a tool in feminist fights against sexism, and that shows woman to be a social (not a biological) notion. More specifically, Haslanger argues that gender is a matter of occupying either a subordinate or a privileged social position. In some articles, Haslanger is arguing for a revisionary analysis of the concept woman (2000b; 2003a; 2003b). Elsewhere she suggests that her analysis may not be that revisionary after all (2005; 2006). Consider the former argument first. Haslanger’s analysis is, in her terms, ameliorative: it aims to elucidate which gender concepts best help feminists achieve their legitimate purposes thereby elucidating those concepts feminists should be using (Haslanger 2000b, 33). [ 8 ] Now, feminists need gender terminology in order to fight sexist injustices (Haslanger 2000b, 36). In particular, they need gender terms to identify, explain and talk about persistent social inequalities between males and females. Haslanger’s analysis of gender begins with the recognition that females and males differ in two respects: physically and in their social positions. Societies in general tend to “privilege individuals with male bodies” (Haslanger 2000b, 38) so that the social positions they subsequently occupy are better than the social positions of those with female bodies. And this generates persistent sexist injustices. With this in mind, Haslanger specifies how she understands genders:

S is a woman iff [by definition] S is systematically subordinated along some dimension (economic, political, legal, social, etc.), and S is ‘marked’ as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of a female’s biological role in reproduction.

S is a man iff [by definition] S is systematically privileged along some dimension (economic, political, legal, social, etc.), and S is ‘marked’ as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of a male’s biological role in reproduction. (2003a, 6–7)

These are constitutive of being a woman and a man: what makes calling S a woman apt, is that S is oppressed on sex-marked grounds; what makes calling S a man apt, is that S is privileged on sex-marked grounds.

Haslanger’s ameliorative analysis is counterintuitive in that females who are not sex-marked for oppression, do not count as women. At least arguably, the Queen of England is not oppressed on sex-marked grounds and so, would not count as a woman on Haslanger’s definition. And, similarly, all males who are not privileged would not count as men. This might suggest that Haslanger’s analysis should be rejected in that it does not capture what language users have in mind when applying gender terms. However, Haslanger argues that this is not a reason to reject the definitions, which she takes to be revisionary: they are not meant to capture our intuitive gender terms. In response, Mikkola (2009) has argued that revisionary analyses of gender concepts, like Haslanger’s, are both politically unhelpful and philosophically unnecessary.

Note also that Haslanger’s proposal is eliminativist: gender justice would eradicate gender, since it would abolish those sexist social structures responsible for sex-marked oppression and privilege. If sexist oppression were to cease, women and men would no longer exist (although there would still be males and females). Not all feminists endorse such an eliminativist view though. Stone holds that Haslanger does not leave any room for positively revaluing what it is to be a woman: since Haslanger defines woman in terms of subordination,

any woman who challenges her subordinate status must by definition be challenging her status as a woman, even if she does not intend to … positive change to our gender norms would involve getting rid of the (necessarily subordinate) feminine gender. (Stone 2007, 160)

But according to Stone this is not only undesirable – one should be able to challenge subordination without having to challenge one’s status as a woman. It is also false: “because norms of femininity can be and constantly are being revised, women can be women without thereby being subordinate” (Stone 2007, 162; Mikkola [2016] too argues that Haslanger’s eliminativism is troublesome).

Theodore Bach holds that Haslanger’s eliminativism is undesirable on other grounds, and that Haslanger’s position faces another more serious problem. Feminism faces the following worries (among others):

Representation problem : “if there is no real group of ‘women’, then it is incoherent to make moral claims and advance political policies on behalf of women” (Bach 2012, 234). Commonality problems : (1) There is no feature that all women cross-culturally and transhistorically share. (2) Delimiting women’s social kind with the help of some essential property privileges those who possess it, and marginalizes those who do not (Bach 2012, 235).

According to Bach, Haslanger’s strategy to resolve these problems appeals to ‘social objectivism’. First, we define women “according to a suitably abstract relational property” (Bach 2012, 236), which avoids the commonality problems. Second, Haslanger employs “an ontologically thin notion of ‘objectivity’” (Bach 2012, 236) that answers the representation problem. Haslanger’s solution (Bach holds) is specifically to argue that women make up an objective type because women are objectively similar to one another, and not simply classified together given our background conceptual schemes. Bach claims though that Haslanger’s account is not objective enough, and we should on political grounds “provide a stronger ontological characterization of the genders men and women according to which they are natural kinds with explanatory essences” (Bach 2012, 238). He thus proposes that women make up a natural kind with a historical essence:

The essential property of women, in virtue of which an individual is a member of the kind ‘women,’ is participation in a lineage of women. In order to exemplify this relational property, an individual must be a reproduction of ancestral women, in which case she must have undergone the ontogenetic processes through which a historical gender system replicates women. (Bach 2012, 271)

In short, one is not a woman due to shared surface properties with other women (like occupying a subordinate social position). Rather, one is a woman because one has the right history: one has undergone the ubiquitous ontogenetic process of gender socialization. Thinking about gender in this way supposedly provides a stronger kind unity than Haslanger’s that simply appeals to shared surface properties.

Not everyone agrees; Mikkola (2020) argues that Bach’s metaphysical picture has internal tensions that render it puzzling and that Bach’s metaphysics does not provide good responses to the commonality and presentation problems. The historically essentialist view also has anti-trans implications. After all, trans women who have not undergone female gender socialization won’t count as women on his view (Mikkola [2016, 2020] develops this line of critique in more detail). More worryingly, trans women will count as men contrary to their self-identification. Both Bettcher (2013) and Jenkins (2016) consider the importance of gender self-identification. Bettcher argues that there is more than one ‘correct’ way to understand womanhood: at the very least, the dominant (mainstream), and the resistant (trans) conceptions. Dominant views like that of Bach’s tend to erase trans people’s experiences and to marginalize trans women within feminist movements. Rather than trans women having to defend their self-identifying claims, these claims should be taken at face value right from the start. And so, Bettcher holds, “in analyzing the meaning of terms such as ‘woman,’ it is inappropriate to dismiss alternative ways in which those terms are actually used in trans subcultures; such usage needs to be taken into consideration as part of the analysis” (2013, 235).

Specifically with Haslanger in mind and in a similar vein, Jenkins (2016) discusses how Haslanger’s revisionary approach unduly excludes some trans women from women’s social kind. On Jenkins’s view, Haslanger’s ameliorative methodology in fact yields more than one satisfying target concept: one that “corresponds to Haslanger’s proposed concept and captures the sense of gender as an imposed social class”; another that “captures the sense of gender as a lived identity” (Jenkins 2016, 397). The latter of these allows us to include trans women into women’s social kind, who on Haslanger’s social class approach to gender would inappropriately have been excluded. (See Andler 2017 for the view that Jenkins’s purportedly inclusive conception of gender is still not fully inclusive. Jenkins 2018 responds to this charge and develops the notion of gender identity still further.)

In addition to her revisionary argument, Haslanger has suggested that her ameliorative analysis of woman may not be as revisionary as it first seems (2005, 2006). Although successful in their reference fixing, ordinary language users do not always know precisely what they are talking about. Our language use may be skewed by oppressive ideologies that can “mislead us about the content of our own thoughts” (Haslanger 2005, 12). Although her gender terminology is not intuitive, this could simply be because oppressive ideologies mislead us about the meanings of our gender terms. Our everyday gender terminology might mean something utterly different from what we think it means; and we could be entirely ignorant of this. Perhaps Haslanger’s analysis, then, has captured our everyday gender vocabulary revealing to us the terms that we actually employ: we may be applying ‘woman’ in our everyday language on the basis of sex-marked subordination whether we take ourselves to be doing so or not. If this is so, Haslanger’s gender terminology is not radically revisionist.

Saul (2006) argues that, despite it being possible that we unknowingly apply ‘woman’ on the basis of social subordination, it is extremely difficult to show that this is the case. This would require showing that the gender terminology we in fact employ is Haslanger’s proposed gender terminology. But discovering the grounds on which we apply everyday gender terms is extremely difficult precisely because they are applied in various and idiosyncratic ways (Saul 2006, 129). Haslanger, then, needs to do more in order to show that her analysis is non-revisionary.

Charlotte Witt (2011a; 2011b) argues for a particular sort of gender essentialism, which Witt terms ‘uniessentialism’. Her motivation and starting point is the following: many ordinary social agents report gender being essential to them and claim that they would be a different person were they of a different sex/gender. Uniessentialism attempts to understand and articulate this. However, Witt’s work departs in important respects from the earlier (so-called) essentialist or gender realist positions discussed in Section 2: Witt does not posit some essential property of womanhood of the kind discussed above, which failed to take women’s differences into account. Further, uniessentialism differs significantly from those position developed in response to the problem of how we should conceive of women’s social kind. It is not about solving the standard dispute between gender nominalists and gender realists, or about articulating some supposedly shared property that binds women together and provides a theoretical ground for feminist political solidarity. Rather, uniessentialism aims to make good the widely held belief that gender is constitutive of who we are. [ 9 ]

Uniessentialism is a sort of individual essentialism. Traditionally philosophers distinguish between kind and individual essentialisms: the former examines what binds members of a kind together and what do all members of some kind have in common qua members of that kind. The latter asks: what makes an individual the individual it is. We can further distinguish two sorts of individual essentialisms: Kripkean identity essentialism and Aristotelian uniessentialism. The former asks: what makes an individual that individual? The latter, however, asks a slightly different question: what explains the unity of individuals? What explains that an individual entity exists over and above the sum total of its constituent parts? (The standard feminist debate over gender nominalism and gender realism has largely been about kind essentialism. Being about individual essentialism, Witt’s uniessentialism departs in an important way from the standard debate.) From the two individual essentialisms, Witt endorses the Aristotelian one. On this view, certain functional essences have a unifying role: these essences are responsible for the fact that material parts constitute a new individual, rather than just a lump of stuff or a collection of particles. Witt’s example is of a house: the essential house-functional property (what the entity is for, what its purpose is) unifies the different material parts of a house so that there is a house, and not just a collection of house-constituting particles (2011a, 6). Gender (being a woman/a man) functions in a similar fashion and provides “the principle of normative unity” that organizes, unifies and determines the roles of social individuals (Witt 2011a, 73). Due to this, gender is a uniessential property of social individuals.

It is important to clarify the notions of gender and social individuality that Witt employs. First, gender is a social position that “cluster[s] around the engendering function … women conceive and bear … men beget” (Witt 2011a, 40). These are women and men’s socially mediated reproductive functions (Witt 2011a, 29) and they differ from the biological function of reproduction, which roughly corresponds to sex on the standard sex/gender distinction. Witt writes: “to be a woman is to be recognized to have a particular function in engendering, to be a man is to be recognized to have a different function in engendering” (2011a, 39). Second, Witt distinguishes persons (those who possess self-consciousness), human beings (those who are biologically human) and social individuals (those who occupy social positions synchronically and diachronically). These ontological categories are not equivalent in that they possess different persistence and identity conditions. Social individuals are bound by social normativity, human beings by biological normativity. These normativities differ in two respects: first, social norms differ from one culture to the next whereas biological norms do not; second, unlike biological normativity, social normativity requires “the recognition by others that an agent is both responsive to and evaluable under a social norm” (Witt 2011a, 19). Thus, being a social individual is not equivalent to being a human being. Further, Witt takes personhood to be defined in terms of intrinsic psychological states of self-awareness and self-consciousness. However, social individuality is defined in terms of the extrinsic feature of occupying a social position, which depends for its existence on a social world. So, the two are not equivalent: personhood is essentially about intrinsic features and could exist without a social world, whereas social individuality is essentially about extrinsic features that could not exist without a social world.

Witt’s gender essentialist argument crucially pertains to social individuals , not to persons or human beings: saying that persons or human beings are gendered would be a category mistake. But why is gender essential to social individuals? For Witt, social individuals are those who occupy positions in social reality. Further, “social positions have norms or social roles associated with them; a social role is what an individual who occupies a given social position is responsive to and evaluable under” (Witt 2011a, 59). However, qua social individuals, we occupy multiple social positions at once and over time: we can be women, mothers, immigrants, sisters, academics, wives, community organisers and team-sport coaches synchronically and diachronically. Now, the issue for Witt is what unifies these positions so that a social individual is constituted. After all, a bundle of social position occupancies does not make for an individual (just as a bundle of properties like being white , cube-shaped and sweet do not make for a sugar cube). For Witt, this unifying role is undertaken by gender (being a woman or a man): it is

a pervasive and fundamental social position that unifies and determines all other social positions both synchronically and diachronically. It unifies them not physically, but by providing a principle of normative unity. (2011a, 19–20)

By ‘normative unity’, Witt means the following: given our social roles and social position occupancies, we are responsive to various sets of social norms. These norms are “complex patterns of behaviour and practices that constitute what one ought to do in a situation given one’s social position(s) and one’s social context” (Witt 2011a, 82). The sets of norms can conflict: the norms of motherhood can (and do) conflict with the norms of being an academic philosopher. However, in order for this conflict to exist, the norms must be binding on a single social individual. Witt, then, asks: what explains the existence and unity of the social individual who is subject to conflicting social norms? The answer is gender.

Gender is not just a social role that unifies social individuals. Witt takes it to be the social role — as she puts it, it is the mega social role that unifies social agents. First, gender is a mega social role if it satisfies two conditions (and Witt claims that it does): (1) if it provides the principle of synchronic and diachronic unity of social individuals, and (2) if it inflects and defines a broad range of other social roles. Gender satisfies the first in usually being a life-long social position: a social individual persists just as long as their gendered social position persists. Further, Witt maintains, trans people are not counterexamples to this claim: transitioning entails that the old social individual has ceased to exist and a new one has come into being. And this is consistent with the same person persisting and undergoing social individual change via transitioning. Gender satisfies the second condition too. It inflects other social roles, like being a parent or a professional. The expectations attached to these social roles differ depending on the agent’s gender, since gender imposes different social norms to govern the execution of the further social roles. Now, gender — as opposed to some other social category, like race — is not just a mega social role; it is the unifying mega social role. Cross-cultural and trans-historical considerations support this view. Witt claims that patriarchy is a social universal (2011a, 98). By contrast, racial categorisation varies historically and cross-culturally, and racial oppression is not a universal feature of human cultures. Thus, gender has a better claim to being the social role that is uniessential to social individuals. This account of gender essentialism not only explains social agents’ connectedness to their gender, but it also provides a helpful way to conceive of women’s agency — something that is central to feminist politics.

Linda Alcoff holds that feminism faces an identity crisis: the category of women is feminism’s starting point, but various critiques about gender have fragmented the category and it is not clear how feminists should understand what it is to be a woman (2006, chapter 5). In response, Alcoff develops an account of gender as positionality whereby “gender is, among other things, a position one occupies and from which one can act politically” (2006, 148). In particular, she takes one’s social position to foster the development of specifically gendered identities (or self-conceptions): “The very subjectivity (or subjective experience of being a woman) and the very identity of women are constituted by women’s position” (Alcoff 2006, 148). Alcoff holds that there is an objective basis for distinguishing individuals on the grounds of (actual or expected) reproductive roles:

Women and men are differentiated by virtue of their different relationship of possibility to biological reproduction, with biological reproduction referring to conceiving, giving birth, and breast-feeding, involving one’s body . (Alcoff 2006, 172, italics in original)

The thought is that those standardly classified as biologically female, although they may not actually be able to reproduce, will encounter “a different set of practices, expectations, and feelings in regard to reproduction” than those standardly classified as male (Alcoff 2006, 172). Further, this differential relation to the possibility of reproduction is used as the basis for many cultural and social phenomena that position women and men: it can be

the basis of a variety of social segregations, it can engender the development of differential forms of embodiment experienced throughout life, and it can generate a wide variety of affective responses, from pride, delight, shame, guilt, regret, or great relief from having successfully avoided reproduction. (Alcoff 2006, 172)

Reproduction, then, is an objective basis for distinguishing individuals that takes on a cultural dimension in that it positions women and men differently: depending on the kind of body one has, one’s lived experience will differ. And this fosters the construction of gendered social identities: one’s role in reproduction helps configure how one is socially positioned and this conditions the development of specifically gendered social identities.

Since women are socially positioned in various different contexts, “there is no gender essence all women share” (Alcoff 2006, 147–8). Nonetheless, Alcoff acknowledges that her account is akin to the original 1960s sex/gender distinction insofar as sex difference (understood in terms of the objective division of reproductive labour) provides the foundation for certain cultural arrangements (the development of a gendered social identity). But, with the benefit of hindsight

we can see that maintaining a distinction between the objective category of sexed identity and the varied and culturally contingent practices of gender does not presume an absolute distinction of the old-fashioned sort between culture and a reified nature. (Alcoff 2006, 175)

That is, her view avoids the implausible claim that sex is exclusively to do with nature and gender with culture. Rather, the distinction on the basis of reproductive possibilities shapes and is shaped by the sorts of cultural and social phenomena (like varieties of social segregation) these possibilities gives rise to. For instance, technological interventions can alter sex differences illustrating that this is the case (Alcoff 2006, 175). Women’s specifically gendered social identities that are constituted by their context dependent positions, then, provide the starting point for feminist politics.

Recently Robin Dembroff (2020) has argued that existing metaphysical accounts of gender fail to address non-binary gender identities. This generates two concerns. First, metaphysical accounts of gender (like the ones outlined in previous sections) are insufficient for capturing those who reject binary gender categorisation where people are either men or women. In so doing, these accounts are not satisfying as explanations of gender understood in a more expansive sense that goes beyond the binary. Second, the failure to understand non-binary gender identities contributes to a form of epistemic injustice called ‘hermeneutical injustice’: it feeds into a collective failure to comprehend and analyse concepts and practices that undergird non-binary classification schemes, thereby impeding on one’s ability to fully understand themselves. To overcome these problems, Dembroff suggests an account of genderqueer that they call ‘critical gender kind’:

a kind whose members collectively destabilize one or more elements of dominant gender ideology. Genderqueer, on my proposed model, is a category whose members collectively destabilize the binary axis, or the idea that the only possible genders are the exclusive and exhaustive kinds men and women. (2020, 2)

Note that Dembroff’s position is not to be confused with ‘gender critical feminist’ positions like those noted above, which are critical of the prevalent feminist focus on gender, as opposed to sex, kinds. Dembroff understands genderqueer as a gender kind, but one that is critical of dominant binary understandings of gender.

Dembroff identifies two modes of destabilising the gender binary: principled and existential. Principled destabilising “stems from or otherwise expresses individuals’ social or political commitments regarding gender norms, practices, and structures”, while existential destabilising “stems from or otherwise expresses individuals’ felt or desired gender roles, embodiment, and/or categorization” (2020, 13). These modes are not mutually exclusive, and they can help us understand the difference between allies and members of genderqueer kinds: “While both resist dominant gender ideology, members of [genderqueer] kinds resist (at least in part) due to felt or desired gender categorization that deviates from dominant expectations, norms, and assumptions” (2020, 14). These modes of destabilisation also enable us to formulate an understanding of non-critical gender kinds that binary understandings of women and men’s kinds exemplify. Dembroff defines these kinds as follows:

For a given kind X , X is a non-critical gender kind relative to a given society iff X ’s members collectively restabilize one or more elements of the dominant gender ideology in that society. (2020, 14)

Dembroff’s understanding of critical and non-critical gender kinds importantly makes gender kind membership something more and other than a mere psychological phenomenon. To engage in collectively destabilising or restabilising dominant gender normativity and ideology, we need more than mere attitudes or mental states – resisting or maintaining such normativity requires action as well. In so doing, Dembroff puts their position forward as an alternative to two existing internalist positions about gender. First, to Jennifer McKitrick’s (2015) view whereby gender is dispositional: in a context where someone is disposed to behave in ways that would be taken by others to be indicative of (e.g.) womanhood, the person has a woman’s gender identity. Second, to Jenkin’s (2016, 2018) position that takes an individual’s gender identity to be dependent on which gender-specific norms the person experiences as being relevant to them. On this view, someone is a woman if the person experiences norms associated with women to be relevant to the person in the particular social context that they are in. Neither of these positions well-captures non-binary identities, Dembroff argues, which motivates the account of genderqueer identities as critical gender kinds.

As Dembroff acknowledges, substantive philosophical work on non-binary gender identities is still developing. However, it is important to note that analytic philosophers are beginning to engage in gender metaphysics that goes beyond the binary.

This entry first looked at feminist objections to biological determinism and the claim that gender is socially constructed. Next, it examined feminist critiques of prevalent understandings of gender and sex, and the distinction itself. In response to these concerns, the entry looked at how a unified women’s category could be articulated for feminist political purposes. This illustrated that gender metaphysics — or what it is to be a woman or a man or a genderqueer person — is still very much a live issue. And although contemporary feminist philosophical debates have questioned some of the tenets and details of the original 1960s sex/gender distinction, most still hold onto the view that gender is about social factors and that it is (in some sense) distinct from biological sex. The jury is still out on what the best, the most useful, or (even) the correct definition of gender is.

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Beauvoir, Simone de | feminist philosophy, approaches: intersections between analytic and continental philosophy | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on reproduction and the family | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on the self | homosexuality | identity politics | speech acts

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to Tuukka Asplund, Jenny Saul, Alison Stone and Nancy Tuana for their extremely helpful and detailed comments when writing this entry.

Copyright © 2022 by Mari Mikkola < m . mikkola @ uva . nl >

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Exploring Gender Identity, Argumentation and Rhetorical Appeals Uses within EFL Students' Writing

2021, International Journal of Education and Language Studies

Persuasive language influences college students dramatically by providing possibilities of presenting their self. The current study examined how EFL college students embodied their gender identity, employed argumentation, and incorporated rhetorical appeals (logos, ethos, and pathos) in their EFL writing. The study utilized a mixed-method approach. Using simple and random sampling, the authors selected eight argumentative essays that the EFL students submitted as an academic writing course requirement. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) is used to measure linguistic properties of the texts, and coding quantitatively is used to analyze the qualitative data collected by interview. The results revealed that the participants did not include the qualifier and counterarguments, and they incorporated rhetorical appeals across gender differently. The study unveiled various underlying constraints sanctioning the EFL students' gender identity presentation within their writing in the Afghan context. The study offered several pedagogical implications to support EFL students to develop as successful writers.

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Academic writing is not just about presenting a set of ideas, but through the act of writing, the authors position themselves as individuals having particular identities which mostly reflect the dominant sociocultural values and practices of the discourse communities in which they are living and performing. The present study, using a mixed method approach, attempted to explore the evidences of voice and subject positioning, as reflections of authorial identity, in the argumentative writings of 41 advanced Iranian EFL learners. At first, the relationship between voice intensity and overall writing quality of the participants was assessed and the results indicated a positive relationship between the constructs. The multiple regression analysis conducted also revealed that assertiveness, as one of the main subcomponents of voice in writing, had the highest level of contribution in accounting for the writing competence of the learners. Afterwards, some representative instances of subjec...

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This study investigated and analyzed the use of rhetorical appeals, and the presence of hedges, and boosters in the argumentative essays of ESL learners. It is aimed at exploring the linguistic differences between male and female writers in terms of how they put forward their claims in an argument and how they appeal to their audience. The study found that male ESL learners prevalently use logical appeal in the development of their argumentative essays while the female learners use emotional appeal. On the other hand, the female learners use more hedging and boosting devices in their argumentative essays than male learners do. The results

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This study identifies and compares the gender-preferential language features present in the argumentative writing of L1 Indonesian and Indonesian L2 English learners. The data is comprised of 80 English argumentative essays sampled from the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE, Ishikawa, 2011) and a comparative corpus of 80 L1 Indonesian argumentative essays collected online from Indonesian university students, both equally divided by gender. Comparison of the data was performed through quantitative analysis of three supposed 'male-preferential' features and seventeen 'female-preferential' features between the male-and female-produced corpora in L1 and L2 writing. This study investigated (1) the extent of variation in the use of 'gendered language features' between male and female-produced L1 and L2 texts; (2) whether the use of male/female 'gendered-language features' across male/female produced L1/L2 texts match their suggested gender preference, and (3) to what extent L1's preference for 'gender language features' affects male and female learners' use of such language in L2. The results suggest the majority of supposed gender-preferential features were not significantly different across male/female produced texts, indicating that argumentative essays may be gender-neutral to a certain extent. This study also revealed that L1 preference of gendered language forms does not determine their preferences in the L2. In conclusion, male and female students adopt similar linguistic features to express their arguments. We may claim that gender language forms are not fixed and absolute in academic discourse because instructive texts tend to have a set model to fulfil the pedagogical criteria.

Randwick International of Education and Linguistics Science (RIELS) Journal

Morteza Bakhtiarvand , Parastoo Alizadeh Oghyanous

The current mixed methods study was an attempt to approach genre-based instruction from a fourfold perspective. As for the quantitative phase, first, it was aimed to examine the effect of genre-based instruction (GBI) on EFL learners’ argumentative essay writing performance. Second, the study investigated the overall organizational structure of learners’ argumentative essays in control and experimental groups. The participants of the study were 71 learners selected out of an initial number of 95 chosen based on convenience sampling. The selected 71 learners were divided into two groups of 35 and 36 who were assigned to the control and experimental group, respectively. Then, a writing pretest was administered to the two groups. After the treatment, the participants in both groups were given a writing posttest. The quantitative findings indicated that GBI was significantly effective on learners’ argumentative writing performance. Additionally, the quantitative structure analysis showed that the number of the argumentative essay elements in the essays of the experimental group was higher than those of the control group. Afterwards, ten participants in the experimental group were interviewed to seek their perceptions towards the efficacy of GBI in teaching argumentative essay writing and their authorial identity construction. The qualitative analysis of the interviews pointed to the learners’ positive attitudes towards GBI and the usefulness of this type of instruction for improving their argumentative writing performance. Finally, the ten participants in the experimental group reported their positive perceptions with regard to their authorial identity construction.

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences

Abbas Zare-ee

JEELS (Journal of English Education and Linguistics Studies)

While considered elusive and abstract, authorial voice is paramount in English writing. Unfortunately, many of Indonesian EFL learners found it is highly challeging to show their voice in their writing. The importance of voice is even exaggerated in argumentative writing, since this kind of writing needs obvious stance of the writer. This study investigates the authorial voice students made in their argumentative writing. The purpose of this study is to gain the picture of students " writing ability especially in authorial voice to map the road in guiding the next writing classes. The object of the study is the argumentative writing made by English department students at one Indonesian State College of Islamic Studies in their writing III course. Using Hyland " s interactional model of voice (2008) the data analysis results the authorial presence in the essays is in position 2 at 0 – 4 scale which means the reader feels somehow weak presence of the authorial voice in the essay. This result confirms the findings of some previous studies that EFL learners especially from " interdependent " cultural background tend to find this authorial voice difficult in writing English essay.

International Education Studies

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Research on gender and writing strategies in English as a foreign language (EFL) is scarce. This study investigates whether Moroccan male and female undergraduates use similar or different writing strategies when composing essays in the narrative and expository genres. Using think-aloud as a main research tool, a questionnaire, and retrospective interviews, the researcher collected data pertaining to male and female students&rsquo; strategy use and cognitive processes while writing in EFL. The analysis of 64 think-aloud protocols revealed Moroccan undergraduates&rsquo; use of a variety of writing strategies in terms of type and frequency. Both main types and subtypes of writing strategies emerged. Two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) revealed that each gender group used some writing strategies more frequently than the other group; however, this difference in frequency of use was not statistically significant. In addition, the interaction of gender, writing strategy use, and discours...

Abdelrahman A B D A L L A Salih

Students at the tertiary level need arguments because they are expected to use analytical and critical thinking skills. The present study is situated in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context in an Omani University and reports the experience of (N=46) undergraduate EFL writers in argumentative essays and persuasive posters. Using rhetorical strategies, and drawing on the principles of persuasive writing, the participants prepared posters and essays on two separate topics. Data were collected from the 46 participants' responses to a semi-structured online survey questionnaire. Analysis of the data obtained indicates that the participants preferred designing posters to writing persuasive essays while reporting varieties of rhetorical difficulties in building an argument for persuasion. The participants also perceived establishing evidence and facts as the most challenging element in persuasive writing and arousing the audience's feelings and emotions as the most challenging rhetorical appeal in posters. Some pedagogical implications were reported as well.

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Mental Health of Transgender Youth Following Gender Identity Milestones by Level of Family Support

• 1 Department of Economics, Southern Oregon University, Ashland, Oregon
• 2 RAND Corporation, Arlington, Virginia
• 3 Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey
• 4 Division of Health Policy and Administration, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
• Viewpoint Moving Beyond Statements to Protect Transgender Youth Melissa Santos, PhD; William T. Zempsky, MD, MPH; Jim Shmerling, DHA JAMA

Question   How are gender identity milestones, such as first feeling one’s gender was different or first telling someone that they are transgender, associated with the mental health of transgender youth and how does the level of family support moderate these associations?

Findings   In this study, initiating a gender identity milestone was associated with a higher risk of suicide attempt and running away from home among transgender youth who live in unsupportive families, whereas supportive family environments mitigate these risks.

Meaning   These findings highlight the critical role of family support in maintaining healthy family environments and reducing the likelihood of transgender youth attempting suicide or leaving their homes during identity development.

Importance   Transgender youth are at an elevated risk for adverse mental health outcomes compared with their cisgender peers. Identifying opportunities for intervention is a priority.

Objective   To estimate differences in the association between gender identity milestones and mental health outcomes among transgender youth, stratified by level of family support.

Design, Settings, and Participants   This retrospective cohort study compares changes in mental health outcomes among transgender youth who initiate gender identity milestones compared with those who initiate the same milestones 1 year later, stratified by level of family support, using the 2015 US Transgender Survey. The analytic samples included 18 303 transgender adults aged 18 and older who had initiated at least 1 gender identity milestone between ages 4 and 18 years.

Exposure   Four gender identity milestones: feeling one’s gender was different, thinking of oneself as transgender, telling another that one is transgender, and living full-time in one’s gender identity, stratified by 3 levels of family support: supportive, neutral, and adverse.

Main Outcomes   Age at first suicide attempt and at running away.

Results   Study participants included 18 303 transgender adults (10 288 [56.2%] assigned female at birth; 14 777 [80.7%] White). Initiating a gender identity milestone was associated with a higher risk of suicide attempt and running away from home among transgender youth. This finding was driven by children who live in unsupportive families. For example, thinking of oneself as transgender was associated with a meaningful increase in the overall probability of attempting suicide among those in either adverse families (estimate = 1.75 percentage points; 95% CI, 0.47-3.03) or neutral families (estimate = 1.39 percentage points; 95% CI, 0.72-2.05). Among youth living with supportive families, there were no statistically significant associations between gender identity milestones and adverse mental health outcomes and 95% CIs generally ruled out any meaningful associations.

Conclusion   These results demonstrate that without a supportive family environment, gender identity development increases the risk of transgender youth attempting suicide or running away from home. Social services and community resources to establish supportive relationships between transgender children and their parents are essential.

Read More About

Campbell T , Mann S , Rodgers YVDM , Tran NM. Mental Health of Transgender Youth Following Gender Identity Milestones by Level of Family Support. JAMA Pediatr. Published online July 15, 2024. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2024.2035

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