Charlee reads 

“Believing is Seeing: 
Biology as Ideology” 
Today I will be reading Judith Lorber’s “Biology 
as Ideology” (1992). In lieu of a biography 
attached to the essay, I have again grabbed one 
from Wikipedia: 

Judith Lorber is Professor Emerita of Sociology and 

Women’s Studies at The CUNY Graduate Center and 
Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She 
is a foundational theorist of social construction of 
gender difference and has played a vital role in the 
formation and transformation of gender studies. She 
has more recently called for a de-gendering of the social 
world. 

I was hoping to read a trans author this week, but 

decided to address more a foundational work in 
gender studies before I attempt to tackle more 
recent work. This essay follows a theme which I 
am (perhaps obviously) very interested in: the 
social construction of biological sex. 

Summary of Main Points:  

● Before the 1700s, women were considered 

inferior because of “god-given” natural 
laws, not because of biological difference; 
as culture became more secular, a new 
justification was needed 
 ● Bodily functions such as menstruation do 
not determine the social category 
“woman” (e.g. trans women are socially 
women), nor does it determine its 
anatomical counterpart, “female” (e.g. 
post-menopausal cis women are still 
“biologically” female) 
● Among “males” and “females” there are 
more in-group physiological differences 
than between-group physiological 
differences 
● “Sports … construct men’s bodies to be 
powerful; women’s bodies to be sexual” 
(573). Technology, on the other hand, 
“constructs gendered skills” (574) 
● “Male bodies” and “female bodies” do 
have physical differences, but “these 
differences are socially meaningless until 
social practices transform them into social 
facts” (576) 
● Feminist analysis should focus on 
uncovering social categories organically, 
rather than assuming “male/female” or 
“man/woman” dichotomies 

  

Gender and Biological Sex 

Lorber, in agreement with modern biology, 

claims that the “male/female” binary is a false 
one. If you are unfamiliar with this idea, I suggest 
you take a moment to peruse the ​ISAN website​. 

In the late 1800s, whether or not an intersex child 

had ovaries was the deciding factor in gender 
assignment; a woman who could not procreate 
was not a woman at all. Nowadays, t​ he length of 
the penis/clitoral tissue is the determining factor​. 
So it is clear that, historically, biological sex has 
been a fluid idea. Sex categories are formed in 
part by cultural beliefs about gender.  

Lorber goes on to illustrate the arbitrariness of 

these categories using the rigid gender divide in 
sports competitions. 

Gender and Sports 

For men, sports are both a “way [to construct] 

masculine identity” and a “legitimated outlet for 
violence and aggression” (571). Successful 
female athletes are often derided as 
“unfeminine” due to these masculine 
connotations. Attempts by woman athletes to 
rebrand fitness as “feminine” and “sexy” have 
been largely unsuccessful… but male approval 
shouldn’t be the goal in the first place. 

Social ideas about what men and women ​should 

be physically capable of result in diminished 
expectations for female athletes, e.g., “[in] the 
1992 Winter Olympics, men figure skaters were 
required to complete three triple jumps in their 
required program; women figure skaters were 
forbidden to do more than one” (572). As late as 
the 1970s, women were advised against 
competing by fear-mongering “doctors” who 
warned that excessive physical activity could 
negatively affect fertility. This becomes a 
self-fulfilling prophecy: of course women won’t 
 perform as well as men when they are actively 
discouraged from doing so. 

Professional sports is an even more hostile 

environment for those who blur the male/female 
divide. Invasive chromosome and genital tests 
have been used to police intersex and transgender 
athletes; ​these tests still persist today​ and are 
exclusively applied to those competing as women. 
Some cis women discover they are intersex for 
the first time because of this mandatory 
“testing.” One can only imagine how traumatic 
this is, especially since these “gender tests” are 
often “accidentally” leaked to the media. This 
humiliating treatment of trans and intersex 
women clearly stems from the misogynistic belief 
that a competent athlete cannot possibly be a 
“real” woman. 

Gender and Technology 

Lorber begins her section on technology by citing 

a relatively well-known sociological fact: 

[S]tudies of gender differences in spatial and 

mathematical ability have found that men have a large 
advantage in ability to mentally rotate an image, a 
moderate advantage in a visual perception of 
horizontality and verticality and in mathematical 
performance, and a small advantage in ability to pick a 
figure out of a field. (Hyde 1990) 

Is it possible that socialization plays a role in 

creating this difference? Boys are encouraged to 
play with legos and other “construction-type” 
toys, which could enhance spacial skills; girls, on 
 the other hand, are encouraged to play with dolls, 
which could enhance social/emotional skills. 
Unwilling to accept a “biological” justification at 
face value, Lorber seeks out an alternative 
explanation for this phenomena. 

In the 1940s, computer programming was 

considered “simple” and “clerical” work, and 
thus suitable for women. Women therefore 
constituted majority of computer specialists 
during this time period. As the “intellectually 
demanding” nature of the work became apparent, 
however, more men began to take interest in 
computer science; women were either pushed out 
of the field or into lower-paying jobs. It seems 
cultural ideas about what is “suitable” for women 
have a lot more to do with women’s absence from 
technical fields than any supposed lack of skill. 

Gender and Bathroom Use 

To my surprise, Lorber’s section on bathroom use 

did not even mention trans people. I suppose this 
essay was written long before we became visible 
in mainstream culture. Still, she mentions trans 
people in the “sports” section of her essay, so 
you’d think we’d warrant mentioning here…but I 
digress. 

Lorber describes her “bathroom problem” as one 

example of “the social transformation of male 
and female physiology into a condition of 
inequality” (577). The problem is as follows: 

Most buildings that have gender-segregated bathrooms 

have an equal number for women and for men. Where 
there are crowds, there are always long lines in front of 
women’s bathrooms but rarely in front of men’s 
bathrooms. The cultural, physiological, and 
demographic combinations of clothing, frequency of 
urination, menstruation, and child care add up to 
generally greater bathroom use by women than men. 
Thus, although an equal number of bathrooms seems 
fair, equity would mean more women’s bathrooms or 
allowing women to use men’s bathrooms for a certain 
amount of time. (Molotch 1988) 

Another obvious solution is abandoning gendered 

restrooms altogether, but Lorber does not 
mention this explicitly. 

She goes on to say that the “bathroom problem” 

is just one consequence of treating men’s bodies 
as the default; ask people to visualize a generic 
human being and they will likely picture a (white, 
able-bodied) man. Women can never just be 
“human” because (unlike men’s experiences) 
women’s experiences are not “universal.” 

Gender and Human Nature 

In this last section, Lorber reiterates her 

conclusion: gender is a consequence of culture, 
not biological sex. Invoking Butler, she goes so 
far as to say that “‘human nature’ is […] a ​ lways 
(emphasis original) a manifestation of cultural 
meanings, social relationships, and power 
politics”, never a biological inevitability (578). 

Lorber calls on others to stop using the 

male/female binary as the end-all-be-all of 
feminist analysis. Social categories should 
 develop organically from observation, not from 
cultural preconceptions about what categories 
should​ exist. She goes on to describe the potential 
benefits of such a method: 

[The] process of discovering categories from similarities 

and differences in people’s behavior or responses can be 
more meaningful for feminist research than discovering 
similarities and differences between “females” and 
“males” or “women” and “men” because the social 
construction of the conventional sex and gender 
categories already assumes differences between them 
and similarities among them. (578) 

When you’re looking for differences between 

“males” and “females” you’ll find them; when 
you’re looking for similarities, you’ll find those, 
too. The gender/sex binary has outlived its 
usefulness as a tool of feminist analysis. It’s time 
to start looking beyond. 

End Note 

I find it disappointing (or should I say 

cisappointing…​) that despite Lorber’s claim that 
trans women are “socially women,” she 
misgenders Renee Richards, a trans woman who 
sued the IAAF for its unfair “chromosome test.” 
Other than that, I enjoyed this essay. It was an 
easy read with a straightforward argument.