DR em - Sex and Social Constructionism

Guest Writing by Dr. EM., Cambridge Radical Feminist Network.
Sex and Social Constructionism
- Figures: Tweets by Professor Sally Hines, University of Leeds.
Introduction
Professor Sally Hines frequently expresses the problems surrounding sex and social
constructionism. Her arguments that sex is no longer applicable to feminism or that a feminist
can subscribe to queer theory do in fact have a grounding in philosophical traditions. Luce
Irigaray claimed that ‘sexual difference is one of the major philosophical issues, if not the issue,
of our age’.1 Science, sociology and philosophy have all grappled with the question of the
differences between males and females and feminist theory has provided an analytical
framework to challenge the subjugation of women based on these differences. Biology is the
fact, social construction around biology is the means of oppression. Linda Bellos has succinctly
explained that ‘social construction is the creation of the idea and an ideology that justifies the
domination of one group of people by another group of people’.2 Bellos claims that ‘the reason
that women are routinely paid less than men or are pushed aside in favour of less competent
1
L. Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference (London, Continuum, 2004), p. 7.
2
L. Bellos, ‘The Social Co nstruction of Gender’,Linda Bellos OBE (13 September 2018)’,
<www.lindabellos.co.uk/single-post/2018/09/13/The-Social-Construction-of-Gender>
[20 March 2019].
1
men is that of the notion of gender. Gender assigns particular characteristics to men and to
women, just as race assigns particular characteristics to White people and the Black peoples’.3
The debate around sex and social constructionism are thus of extreme importance to women.
This paper is intended as a brief introduction and summary of the positions. It shall begin with
a consideration of how we have arrived at the point that the reality of biological sex is in
question, the challenges posed by the social sciences and the parallel developments in the
discipline of philosophy. The different feminist positions shall then be summarised.
How Have We Arrived Here
The current tangled knot surrounding sex and gender is one of patriarchal reversal and a smug
‘gotcha’ by men and anti-feminist women built on feminist works ‘pre’ and post gender’s entry
as a term into feminist theory. Gender as a term wasn’t used beyond philology (la or le for
example) until the sexologist John Money utilised it during his examination of transsexualism
to describe different general behavioural traits and the social construction (dresses, make-up,
hair) between men and women.4 Robert Stoller, the psychologist focusing on sexology, then
began using the terms ‘sex’ to describe biological traits and ‘gender’ to characterise the
feminine and masculine traits exhibited by an individual.5 Feminist texts borrowed from these
works in terms of language as before the 1960s and 1970s they employed terms such as
femininity or ‘woman’ as a social construct to describe the cultural trappings and stereotypes
imposed on the female sex. As Mari Mikkola has argued, ‘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’.6 Catharine MacKinnon utilised not just the language of the
sexologists but also their focus on sexuality as the locus of gender. MacKinnon developed a
theory of gender as a theory of sexuality, that the social meaning of sex (gender) was created
by the sexual objectification of women and the eroticisation of dominance and submission.7 It
3
ibid.
4
J. Money, ‘Linguistic resources and psychodynamic theory’, British journal of Medical Psychology, vol. 28
(1955), pp. 264 – 66.
For a critique of the sexologists *content warning* please see:
<https://thesexualdevolution.blogspot.com/2018/01/alfred-kinsey-was-american-biologist.html>
5
R. Stoller, Sex and Gender: The Development of Masculinity and Femininity (New York, Science House, 1968).
Stoller argued that by two years of age children had an immutable and innate gender identity. Yes, an innate man-
made construct, and it was of course all the mother’s fault.
6
M. Mikkola, "Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender", E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopaedia of
Philosophy (Winter 2017)
<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/feminism-gender/>.
7
C. MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of State (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 113.
2
was during the backlash against feminism during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s that
‘feminist’ academics began to assert the supposed naturalness of a system of male dominance
and female submission (gender). It was building on the works of Judith Butler that one strand
of ‘feminism’ started to claim that sex was either undeterminable or unimportant and gender
was in fact supreme.
Human epistemology has come under enormous pressure in recent decades. Tandem
challenges to philosophical learning and biological science are threatening to cast human
understanding of lived reality adrift. So I must begin at the basics. The science known as
biology has established that humans are sexually dimorphic mammals normally with 23 pairs
of chromosomes per cell and sex determined at conception. In general, twenty-two autosomes
are the same in both males and females while the 23rd pair, the sex chromosomes, differ
between males and females. Usually females have two copies of the X chromosome, while
males have one X and one Y chromosome. Every person must have at least one X chromosome
but it is the Y chromosome which contains the SRY gene which determines gonadal sex in that
it is the gene that encodes the human testis-determining factor. The organisational hypothesis
was developed by biologists to explain intersex conditions.8 ‘Every year in the UK,
approximately 150 children are diagnosed with Different, diverse (or as doctors might say,
disorder) of Sex development (DSD). That means there are approximately 2,300 children living
with DSD conditions in the UK’.9 There are a variety of conditions of diverse sexual
development covered by the umbrella DSD or ‘intersex’. The intersex advocate writing under
the pseudonym ‘Mrkhtake2’ is clear on the science outlining how ‘Another important gene in
sex determination is SOX9. XX humans who have an extra copy of SOX9 develop as males,
even though they have no SRY gene’.10 She has further clarified that
even a person with XXXXY chromosomes would be male because of

the Y. Someone with only one X (XO) chromosome would still be
8
A. Soble (ed.), Sex from Plato to Paglia, Volume 2, M – Z (London, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006), p.
691.
9
‘About Us’, dsdfamilies,
https://dsdfamilies.org/charity
[Accessed 21 March 2019].
10
@Mrkhtake2, Twitter, 6:43 PM - 2 Sep 2018.
<https://twitter.com/mrkhtake2/status/1036308593182748672>
3
female and their body would begin making ovaries (although they
would not develop fully as the second X chromosome is needed).11
Indeed, there are a range of intersex/diverse sexual development conditions and genetic
combinations, however these do not suggest that sex is a spectrum in humans as all are either
male or female. Diverse sexual development occurs while the embryo is developing into a
foetus and the ‘body parts to do with being a boy or a girl are affected by chromosomes that
give the body messages about how to develop and by hormones… that come from certain
tissues in the body’.12 The intersex advocate provides an example to illustrate which looks at
the two hormones responsible for the biological combination known as AIS. She outlines how
The first of these hormones is AMH, the hormone that causes the
degeneration of the Müllerian duct. The second is the steroid
testosterone. This hormone causes the urogenital swellings to develop
into the scrotum and penis. The existence of these two independent
systems of masculinisation is demonstrated by people having AIS.
These XY individuals have the SRY gene, and thus have testes that
make testosterone and AMH. However, they lack the testosterone
receptor protein, and therefore cannot respond to the testosterone made
by their testes. Because they are able to respond to oestrogen made in
their adrenal glands, they develop the female phenotype… These
people develop as normal but sterile women, lacking a uterus and
oviducts and having testes in the abdomen.13
Intersex conditions and the people who have these different genetic combinations have been
used to push an agenda which denies science and casts their reality as socially constructed. The
leading U.K. charity advocating for people with DSD states categorically that DSD and
11
@Mrkhtake2, Twitter, 6:38 PM - 2 Sep 2018.
12
‘What is DSD?’, dsdfamilies
< https://www.dsdfamilies.org/parents/what-dsd>
13
@Mrkhtake2, Twitter, 6:44 PM - 2 Sep 2018
T. M. Wizemann & M. L. Pardue (eds.), Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health: Does Sex
Matter?, Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Understanding the Biology of Sex and Gender (Washington
DC, National Aademic Press U.S., 2001), S. F. Gilbert, Chromosomal Sex Determination in Mammals,
Developmental Biology: 6th edition (2000).
4
transgender are not the same thing.14 Accord Alliance, an organisation intended to promote
comprehensive and integrated approaches to care that enhance the health and well-being of
people and families affected by DSD, supports dsdfamilies’s claim and has argued that ‘DSD
is about physical sex development (how a person’s body formed), not about gender identity
(who a person feels himself or herself to be)’.15 Intersex Human Rights Australia is similarly
adamant and has asserted that ‘Intersex is not a part of the trans umbrella (such as transgender
or transsexual) nor is intersex a form of gender diversity, because intersex is not about gender,
or transition. Intersex is about bodies; about congenital physical differences in sex
characteristics’.16 The treatment of intersex people has been a medical scandal and they deserve
redress and practices must be changed.17 These medical conditions and peoples’ lives are being
weaponised as a poor ‘gotcha’ argument while intersex advocacy is silenced. Professor of
philosophy at MIT, Alex Byrne, has authored a critique of this exploitation of medical
conditions as ‘misguided’ and evasive.18 Nevertheless, science denial has become widespread
and the social sciences such as sociology and gender studies are usurping the place of fact and
material reality.
The social sciences and gender studies, in all its various names, began their land grab
against the discipline of biology in the early part of the twentieth century. Scholars of gender
studies such as Anne Fasto-Sterling, Professor of Biology and Gender Studies at Brown
University, used the fact that sexed bodies have been altered due to different social conditioning
to argue that biology is socially constructed. Fasto-Sterling applied the idea that females are
smaller than males because over time male and female exercise and diet has been socially
shaped to argue that if males and females had the same encouragement to the same exercises
14
‘FAQ’, dsdfamilies,
https://dsdfamilies.org/faq
15
‘F1000 Commentary: Treatment of adults with complications from previous hypospadias surgery / Is DSD the
same as transgender?’, Accord Alliance,
<http://www.accordalliance.org/faqs/is-dsd-the-same-as-transgender/>
16
‘Basic differences between intersex and trans’ (3 June 2011), Intersex Human Rights Australia,
< https://ihra.org.au/18194/differences-intersex-trans/>
17
A. Soble (ed.), Sex from Plato to Paglia: Volume 2, M-Z (London, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006), pp.
690 – 694.
F. Kirkland, ‘Intersex patients 'routinely lied to by doctors', BBC News (22 May 2017).
<www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39979186>
18
A. Byrne, ‘Is Sex Binary?’, Arc Digital (2 November 2018)
<https://arcdigital.media/is-sex-binary-16bec97d161e>
5
then bodily dimorphism would decrease.19 There is a ring of truth to this argument, however,
Fasto-Sterling over-extends it. She moves from a position that bodies are affected by cultural
ideas over time to the notion that one can exercise away sex differences. One must presume
this includes gamete production? Fasto-Sterling then attempted a different means of attack, to
claim that sex is a spectrum. She brought this to the general public in in her New York Times
article ‘How Many Sexes Are There?’20 In this article Fasto-Sterling made the extraordinary
claim that ‘if the state and the legal system have an interest in maintaining a two-party sexual
system, they are defying nature’.21 She then went on to argue that ‘biologically speaking, there
are many gradations running from female to male; along that spectrum lie at least five sexes --
perhaps even more’.22 Throughout the article and without signposting Fasto-Sterling jumped
between sex meaning biological sex, gender meaning biological sex and sex meaning desire or
practice of sexuality. A clear red flag was when Fasto-Sterling used the Bible as a source for
an intersex condition, relating that ‘Intersexuality itself is old news. Early biblical scholars
believed Adam began life as a hermaphrodite and later divided into two people -- a male and a
female -- after falling from grace’.23 Still this destabilisation of knowledge and methods for
understanding the material world continued apace. In October 2018 the formerly reliable
Nature Magazine argued that ‘A move to classify people [as male or female] on the basis of
anatomy or genetics should be abandoned’.24 The editorial writer made the bold and, I would
argue, unfounded claim that ‘The idea that science can make definitive conclusions about a
person’s sex or gender is fundamentally flawed’.25 Science investigates and explains material
reality, the physical world, not an idea based on sex role stereotypes (gender).
Alongside this challenge to the sciences there were parallel moves in philosophy to
prioritise idealism over materialism as the best means to understand the human condition and
our place in the world. Dr Jane Clare Jones has outlined a ‘rough sketch’ of how we have
reached this position philosophically. She has delineated how
19
A. Fasto-Sterling, Myths of Gender: Biological Theories about Women and Men, 2nd edn. (New York, Basic
Books, 1993), p. 218.
20
A Fasto-Sterling, ‘How Many Sexes Are There?’, The New York Times (12 March 1993)
<https://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/12/opinion/how-many-sexes-are-there.html>
21
ibid.
22
ibid.
23
ibid.
24
Anon., ‘US proposal for defining gender has no basis in science’, Nature Magazine, 30 October 2018,
<www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07238-8>
[Accessed 15 March, 2019].
25
ibid.
6
Early post-structuralism/ deconstruction argued that everything was

‘discursive’ or ‘textual’ and didn’t believe in material reality.
Postmodernism is all about the ‘play’ of signifiers and how everything
is ‘constructed’ through discourse. Then Butler comes along and
invents queer theory by arguing, in essence, that bodies are discursively
constructed, and we end up where we are now, and it’s probably, in
origin, all Jacques Derrida’s fault.26
However, as Dr Jones once scolded me: don’t blame the French. The history of the collapse of
post structuralism, post modernism and queer theory into one unholy reality denying pickle is
one of mistranslation combined with shady opportunism.27 Post structuralism, particularly
when engaged with by second-wave feminist such as Simone de Beauvoir, Hélène Cixous and
Luce Irigaray, furnished important analytical ideas about female erasure. Cixous emphasised
that women had been violently driven away from the materiality of their bodies and
characterised our epoch as being governed by phallocentric values. That this phallocentric
regime is reproduced again and again in writing and thus knowing.28 The notion that nothing
exists in isolation but that meaning is given through its relational context and that material
reality is interpreted and communicated through texts which then reproduce and reinforce
oppressive systems through their discursive construction was invaluable. This is what we are
employing when we criticise, for example, Hollywood only showing one type of woman or the
media only presenting women as superficial decoration. Cixous was adamant that she refused
‘to confuse the biological and the cultural’.29 She articulated how gender (cultural) is a road
block to the liberation of women and that it is this cultural interpretation of biology which has
oppressed women as a sex-class. From this, analysis was subsequently built which enquired
into the erasure of male violence. Contemporary (radical) feminist analysis, whether conscious
or not, engages with these ideas when we point out that, for example, male perpetrators of
crimes against women become ‘people’ in the press. Or when we critique headlines such as
‘woman ran over by Ford Fiesta’ because the car didn’t murder her, the abusive partner driving
it did. We discursively deconstruct the texts and their relational meaning.
26
J. C. Jones, ‘Post-Structuralism, Butler and Bodies’, Jane Clare Jones
<janeclarejones.com/2018/07/18/post-structuralism-butler-and-bodies/>
27
ibid.
28
H. Cixous, ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ Keith Cohen & Paula Cohen (trans.), Signs, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Summer,
1976), pp. 875 – 893.
29
ibid., p. 875.
7
Sex is real and social constructs do have a reality. When one experiences
discrimination based on one’s sex, race or disability, for example, social constructs are acutely
felt. As Sally Haslanger has posited ‘traditional efforts to justify racist and sexist institutions
have often relied on viewing women and people of colour as inferior by nature. There is an
unmistakeable pattern of projecting onto subordinated groups, as their “nature” or as “natural”,
features that are instead… the result of social forces’.30 Yet Haslanger argues that ‘to have a
race is not to have a certain appearance or ancestry, and to have a gender is not to have a certain
reproductive anatomy’.31 How then are individuals chosen to have a subordinate status imposed
on them? Is it luck? Haslander later claims that ‘sex and color have social meaning to the extent
that the interpretation of someone as male or female, white or Asian, has implications for the
social position: the roles they are expected to play’.32 This is contradictory of her previous
statement and is a prime example of the knot created when social constructionism is applied to
biological sex. Proponents of gender ideology are arguing that women’s oppression is innate
and thus natural, this is neither progressive nor correct.
The French post-structuralists were overtaken in popularity by a cluster of ideas known

as postmodernism. It is important to note that the main propellants of this change in
philosophical tastes were literary, and later sociology, departments not the academic discipline
of philosophy. This is why it appears that postmodernism and queer theory has a stranglehold
in academia, philosophy debates whereas modern sociology mandates. Stephen R. C. Hicks
has explained that ‘metaphysically, postmodernism is anti-realist, holding that it is impossible
to speak meaningfully about an independently existing reality. Postmodernism substitutes
instead a socio-linguistic, constructionist account of reality’.33 As Somer Brodbribb has
charged, ‘postmodernism is an addition to the masculinist repertoire of psychotic mind/body
splitting and the peculiar arrangement of reality as Idea: timeless essence and universal form’.34
The founding father of postmodernism, Michel Foucault, proposed that no essential or real
structures underpinned events or materials such as texts. One of Foucault’s major contributions
was a re-thinking of the triad – discourse, power and knowledge. From here in Discipline and
Punish and his History of Sexualities Foucault reconsidered resistance and transgression in
30
S. Haslanger, Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique (Oxford, Oxford University Press,
2012), p. 5
31
ibid., p. 7.
32
ibid.
33
S. R. C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Tempe,
Scholarly Publishing, 2004), p. 6.
34
S. Brodribb, Nothing Matters: A Feminist Critique of Postmodernism (Melbourne, Spinifex, 1993), p. xvi.
8
response to punishment and classification. The socio-linguistic construction of the subject

became prime and it is within this construction that a dialogue occurs between individuals and
oppressors. Following the postmodern philosophical school of thought ‘many deconstruct
reason, truth, and reality because they believe that in the name of reason, truth and reality
Western Civilisation has wrought dominance, oppression, and destruction’.35 This has caused
postmodernists to be accused of aesthetic toying rather than real challenge to power structures.
Indeed, Duke University Professor Stanley Fish stated in a revealing confession around
postmodernism that it ‘relieves me of the obligation to be right… and demands only that I be
interesting’.36 Postmodernism provides the philosophical underpinnings for the post truth-era.
However, the current state of affairs, particularly with regards to feminism, is not the
fault of postmodernism alone. Judith Butler coupled postmodernism with queer theory in her
impenetrable waffle that is Gender Trouble.37 Butler’s verbosity in her magnum opus first
published in 1990 cloaks the fact that it contains little original thought or any means to actually
challenge power other than a playful individual tinker with expression. Professor Martha
Nussbaum has assessed that Butler’s text ‘bullies the reader into granting that, since one cannot
figure out what is going on, there must be something significant going on… When the bullied
readers of Butler's books muster the daring to think… they will see that the ideas in these books
are thin’.38 On the ability of postmodernism and queer theory to neuter feminist action
Nussbaum dryly commented that ‘these symbolic gestures, it is believed, are themselves a form
of political resistance; and so one need not engage with messy things such as legislatures and
movements in order to act daringly’.39 Although I agree with Nussbaum’s critique I have,
shockingly, discovered a few sentences written by Butler that I subscribe to. For example,
Butler outlines how ‘gender is instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must
be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of
various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gender’.40 I also concur with Butler’s
argument that the ‘authors of gender become entranced by their own fictions whereby the
construction compels one's belief in its necessity and naturalness’.41 Nevertheless, this uneasy
35
S. R. C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Tempe,
Scholarly Publishing, 2004), p. 6.
36
Quoted in S. R. C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism, p. 3.
37
J. Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London, Routledge, 2007).
38
M. Nussbaum, ‘The Professor of Parody’, Cet article a été copié sur le site du magazine américain, The New
Republic Online ["TheNewRepublic.com"] (22 February 1999), p. 3.
39
ibid. p. 2.
40
J. Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist
Theory’, Theatre Journal, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Dec., 1988), p. 519.
41
ibid. p. 522.
9
truce with Butler did not last long. Butler continued to posit that ‘if gender is the cultural
significance that the sexed body assumes, and if that significance is codetermined through
various acts and their cultural perception, then it would appear that from within the terms of
culture it is not possible to know sex as distinct from gender’.42 Butler did reflect on the
implications of her theory, and commented that ‘Feminists might well worry about the political
implications of claiming that women do not exist, especially in light of the persuasive
arguments advanced by Mary Anne Warren in her book, Gendercide’.43 This is the crux of the
problem that social constructionism creates. By claiming that sex does not exists one cannot
analyse and then address sexism. Furthermore, the Butlerian ideas of performative signifiers
have been garbled, deliberately or not, to produce the argument that sex-role stereotypes which
enforce women’s oppression (gender) are innate and override biological sex as the means to
classify women. This is the contemporary philosophical clash, less a clash between Titans and
more a conflict between principled materialists and ‘quackademics’.
To add to this messy jumble of ideas there has been a departure from Butler by some
transgender activists. These activists argue that gender is not performative but an inner natural
essence which supersedes sex and should become the basis of our understanding and law. Julia
Serano is a prime example. Serano has argued that gender, i.e. women’s oppression, is natural,
just ‘something you are’. Serano has asserted that the ‘primary assumption driving most
“biological sex” myths is that there are two discrete mutually exclusive sexes that are
immutable (i.e., once born into a sex, you will always be a member of that sex)’. 44 The use of
quotation marks around the term “biological sex” should give one pause for thought. Although
Serano has claimed that ‘there are a number of sexually dimorphic traits — such as
chromosomes, gonads, external genitals, other reproductive organs, ratio of sex hormones, and
secondary sex characteristics ’, Serano is of the opinion that DSD prove that biological sex
distinctions are neither real nor useful.45 Serano uses variations within sexual dimorphism to
argue that sex is a spectrum but unimportant. A thorough critique of Serano’s ideas has been
produced by an author writing under the pseudonym ‘Logical Marcus’ who points out that
‘Serano claims sex is socially constructed, which is to say, following the Wikipedia link Serano
gives for the definition, “the natural world has a small or non-existent role” in the construction
42
ibid. p. 524.
43
ibid. p. 529.
44
J. Serano, ‘Transgender People and “Biological Sex” Myths’ (17 July 2017),
‘<https://medium.com/@juliaserano/transgender-people-and-biological-sex-myths-c2a9bcdb4f4a>
45
ibid.
10
of sex’ but ‘if biological sex is socially constructed, why has no transwoman ever given
birth?’.46 With biological sex discarded, Serano postulates that it is a love of make-up, or
wearing a dress, which makes one a female and these desires are hard wired into girls and
women like the flight or fight response to danger. In the work Excluded Serano makes the case
that ‘feminine gender expression — wearing make-up, or a dress, or crying — is not artificial,
but rather natural to her. And as a biologist, she's saying that gender isn't performance, or isn't
only performance; it's not (just) something you play at, but something you are’.47 Nevertheless,
despite attempting to make the case for a female or womanly gender identity, in a different
work Serano declared it sexist to believe that males or females had some kind of inner male or
female essence. Serano argued that ‘The “male energy” claim seems especially sexist to me, as
it implies that men have some kind of magical or mystical life force that women do not or
cannot possess’.48 Serano is consistently inconsistent and adopts a position of kitchen sink
philosophy.
What are the positions?
Directly opposed to Serano and others pushing gender ideology is feminism, or a position more
commonly distinguished as radical feminism. Radical feminism theorises that women are
oppressed as a class on the basis of their biological sex and presumed reproductive capabilities.
This structural oppression of women as a sex-class is known as patriarchy/male supremacy and
is imposed through gender. As Simone de Beauvoir argued in The Second Sex, ‘the division of
the sexes is a biological fact, not an event in human history’.49 In this seminal work de Beauvoir
traced how the concept of femininity has weakened girls and women and has been used to
oppress the female sex and Other them across history and cultures. Shelia Jeffreys has argued
that gender should be understood as a political category that signifies caste status.50 A woman
may not move out of this caste status, she may change her economic position but she will
always be a woman and thus subject to a subordinated status compared to a male. Jeffreys has
46
L. Marcus, ‘Is Julia Serano right that transwomen are female?’, Medium (26 August 2017),
<https://medium.com/@LogicalMarcus/is-julia-serano-right-that-transwomen-are-female-a989dca9d026>
47
N. Berlatsky, ‘Gender as Non-Fiction A Q&A with Julia Serano, author of Excluded: Making Feminist and
Queer Movements More Inclusive’, The Atlantic (25 September 2013),
<https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/09/gender-as-non-fiction/279962/>
48
J. Serano, ‘Debunking “Trans Women Are Not Women” Arguments’ (27 June 2017)
<https://medium.com/@juliaserano/debunking-trans-women-are-not-women-arguments-85fd5ab0e19c>
49
S. de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (London, Vintage Books, 1997), p. 19.
50
S. Jeffreys, Gender Hurts: A feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism (London, Routledge, 2014), p.
101.
11
explored how postmodern and queer theorists ‘share with transgender theorists the idea that
‘gender’ is a moveable feast that can be moved into and out of’.51 However this is not how the
system of women’s oppression operates and makes the argument that women have chosen their
subjugated status. Radical feminists reject biological determinism, the notion that we can or
cannot partake in something because of our sex or that we are hard wired to enjoy caring for
others because of our reproductive possibilities. Radical feminists argue along similar lines as
non-radical feminist academic Linda Alcoff that ‘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’.52
On the basis of this differentiation females and males will encounter a different set of social
practices and expectations (gender). Since women are socially positioned in various different
contexts, ‘there is no gender essence all women share’.53 Gender is externally imposed, on both
the macro and micro level. Individual men oppress women using gender – such as women
doing the ‘double-shift’ because ‘women are natural carers’ and the state oppresses women
using gender – examples in the U.K. include the inability to adequately prosecute rape and
achieve convictions because of notions that ‘women like it rough’ or women are likely to be
lying. Julie Bindel has reiterated the radical feminist position that ‘Genitals determine our
physical, biological sex, and indicates whether we are male or female, not whether we are
destined to like pink or blue. No one, medic or otherwise, can ‘determine’ gender because it
has no basis in material reality’.54 Gender is a socially constructed set of stereotypes foisted
onto individuals based on their biology and includes ideas of heterosexuality as the normal and
natural way of sexual orientation. As Catherine MacKinnon argued, ‘Gender and sexuality…
become two different shapes taken by the single social equation of male with dominance and
female with submission’.55
Similarly, socialist feminism recognises the reality of biological sex and women’s
oppression as a sex-class and contends that this oppression began when the class system was
implemented. This view of women’s oppression is contained within the founding texts of
51
S. Jeffreys, Gender Hurts: A feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism (London, Routledge, 2014), p.
5.
52
L. Alcoff, Visible Identities: Race, Gender and the Self (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 172.
53
ibid., pp. 147 - 148.
54
J. Bindel, ‘What does gender have to do with genitals?’, Unherd (21 December, 2018)
<unherd.com/2018/12/what-does-gender-have-to-do-with-genitals/>
55
C. A MacKinnon, Towards A Feminist Theory of State (1989), p. 143.
12
socialism. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State published in 1884
Friedrich Engels maintained that
What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations
will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production
is mainly of a negative character, limited for the most part to what will
disappear. But what will there be new? That will be answered when a
new generation has grown up…they will care precious little what
anybody today thinks they ought to do; they will make their own
practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of
each individual – and that will be the end of it.56
Marx took a similar view to women’s oppression. In On the Jewish Question, published in
1843, Marx argued that ‘the relation between man and woman… becomes an object of trade!
The woman is bought and sold’.57 Marx continued this line of argument in his Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and reasoned that ‘the general position of women in
modern society is inhuman’.58 It wasn’t until the late 1960s and 1970s that a distinct group
emerged which could be described as socialist feminism. This strand of feminism shares many
ideas with radical feminism but changes in its priorities and organisation. Whereas radical
feminists focus on the destruction of male supremacy and a rebuilding of social organisations
socialist feminists focus on the destruction of capitalism as leading to women’s liberation.
Alison Jaggar maintains that ‘Socialist feminism makes explicit commitment to the abolition
of both class and gender’.59 The structure of the sentence – class then gender – may be
illustrative of the underlying priorities of socialist feminism. Barbara Ehrenreich has asserted
that ‘there is no way to understand sexism as it acts on our lives without putting it in the
historical context of capitalism’.60 Ehrenreich points out that across history and cultures, it ‘is,
above all, women who are encouraged to be utterly passive/uncritical/dependent (i.e.
“feminine") in the face of the pervasive capitalist penetration of private life… because women
56
F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (New York, International Publishers, 1972),
p.145.
57
‘Karl Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Third Manuscript: Private Property and Labour’
<https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/epm/3rd.htm>
58
ibid.
59
A. M. Jagger, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Oxford, Rowman & Littlefield, 1984), p. 317.
60
B. Ehrenreich, ‘What is Socialist Feminism?’,
<https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/ehrenreich-barbara/socialist-feminism.htm>
13
are the culture-bearers of their class’.61 However this does not explain male violence or male
violence within the family. How can misogyny be explained in terms of capitalistic dominance?
The labelling of radical feminist and socialist feminist suggests alternate positions, two groups.
In reality this is not the case, it is more a mixed-left wing feminist alliance with both radical
and socialist feminists learning from each other and sharing analysis. Both are also clear that
women’s oppression is based on their membership of a sex-class which is subject to social
interpretation which constructs a system to exploit.
In contrast, liberal feminism is rather confused on the issue of sex and social
constructionism. This is what has led Saray Ayala and Nadya Vasilyeva to argue in Hypatia,
the academic journal of feminist philosophy, that
Current sex categorization practices according to the female/male

dichotomy are not only inaccurate and incoherent, but they also ground
moral and political pressures that harm and oppress people. We argue
that a new understanding of sex is due, an understanding that would
acknowledge the variability and, most important, the flexibility of sex
properties, as well as the moral and political meaning of sex
categorization.62
Ayala and Vasilyeva reason against understanding biological sex distinction on the basis of
gametes and reproductive potential because ‘Successful reproduction involves a wider range
of things, such as providing food, care, and stimuli, things that do not require particular
biological (chromosomal, and so on) properties on the part of the provider’.63 I think they have
missed the point. The authors then present an argument which exhibits the confusion of
biological sex and gender before alleging that ‘categorical perception of sex can create sex
differences by promoting differential treatment and punishing deviations from the
dichotomy’.64 It is not clear if the authors are claiming perceived differences in biology, such
as does the person have a penis or vulva, creates biological differences such as the penis and
vulva or if they are reiterating the argument of Beauvoir, Fasto-Sterling, and many
neuroscientists since that gendered treatment creates changes over time and brain plasticity
61
ibid.
62
S. Ayala & N. Vasilyeva, ‘Extended Sex: An Account of Sex for a More Just Society’ (Penultimate draft),
Academia.edu, p. 1, Published as: S. Ayala & N. Vasilyeva, ‘Extended Sex: An Account of Sex for a More Just
Society’, Hypatia, Vol.30, No. 4 (Fall 2015), pp. 725 – 742.
63
Academia.edu, p. 3.
64
ibid. p. 5.
14
responds to social teaching. Either way, it is clear sex role stereotypes (gender) and sex have
been blurred by the authors. This leads Ayala and Vasilyeva to assert that ‘Sex categorization
does not merely respond to natural facts of the world; it creates a morally problematic
phenomenon’.65 Following their line of argument, oppression of the female sex does not follow
by how the sexes are culturally interpreted and therefore treated, it is merely acknowledging
that males have penises and females have vulva which creates a moral problem. On top of that
biological sex distinction is presented as a phenomenon and thus defined as extraordinary.
Does pointing out that there is variation in height, that some people are taller than others, create
a moral problem? Under the subheading ‘Harms and Oppression’ the authors exhibit how they
believe that gender is actually a natural feature in biological sex – they wish to destroy/re-
interpret the sex differences rather than the cultural stereotypes imposed on them. They are
almost at a reasonable and feminist understanding when they state ‘the moral charge comes
with the prescriptive force of sex categories: once people are sex-categorized (usually as either
a female or male), they are expected to adhere to a series of sex-appropriate norms and
expectations’.66 It is not biology or the observation that males and females are biologically
different which is resulting in the oppression of women it is the social role imposed on women
because of their sex caste. Like clockwork the authors claim that they ‘talk of the oppression
of sex classification because the assigned or perceived sex is part of the explanation of certain
cases of injustice’.67 Sex is not assigned but observed. Do they think there is some kind of
biological sex tombola on maternity wards? A subjugated status is assigned based on biological
sex, women aren’t oppressed through bad luck. Ayala and Vasilyeva state that their goal is,
‘like Haslanger’s, to develop a theoretical account that can be effectively used to fight injustice.
But whereas she seems willing to keep females and males, we propose to construct
nonhierarchical sexes, focusing our intervention on the concept of sex’.68 The concept of the
social constructionism of biological sex is what has enabled Ayala and Vasilyeva to have
argued for an inclusive and extended conception of sex where sex can be altered by external
tools. To explain, just as particular tools can be seen to extend our minds beyond the limits of
our brains, such as external memory drives, the authors argue that other tools like a dildo can
extend our sex beyond our bodily boundaries. In light of this the authors propose that what
65
ibid.
66
Academia.edu, p.5, Published as: S. Ayala & N. Vasilyeva, ‘Extended Sex: An Account of Sex for a More Just
Society’, Hypatia, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Fall 2015), pp. 725 – 742.
67
Academia.edu, p. 5.
68
ibid. p. 6.
15
counts as sex should not be determined by looking inwards at genitalia or other anatomical
features. They claim that ‘Extending sex can be seen as both an individual, personal move, and
as a political action’.69One wonders how the authors propose an individual using a dildo to
extend their (biological) sex will address the global femicide which is estimated to have
claimed the lives of 87,000 women last year alone.70 Pray tell. In the next paragraph Ayala and
Vasilyeva redefine social meaning and the concept of ‘relational’ to mean nothing. They assert
that the ‘(social) meaning of an agent’s act is neither exhausted by that agent’s intentions, nor
determined by what a particular audience takes the act to be’.71This guts their argument of any
possibility of enacting social change to challenge the oppression of females, yet, they claim it
will create a better world.
This concept of biological sex being socially constructed through external signifiers
(such as clothing, make-up and mannerisms) is what has enabled liberal feminists to redefine
the categories woman and female to include males. Lorna Finlayson, Katharine Jenkins, and
Rosie Worsdale asserted that ‘Some feminists see no difficulty in reconciling a commitment to
feminism with a commitment to the rights of trans people. Feminists of this persuasion tend to
take the view that trans women are women and that, as such, they - like cis (i.e. non-trans)
women - are part of the 'constituency' that is feminism's primary concern’.72 (I shall use the
term cis in this essay but would like to note that I find it and the notion that I agree with a
system intended to oppress and exploit me highly offensive.) Social constructionism of sex has
moved to self-identifying sex and this entails a breakdown in the coherence of liberal feminist
arguments. The article written by Finlayson, Jenkins, and Worsdale illustrates the
contradictions which undermine every argument produced. They first contended that
The argument against trans-inclusivity starts from the observation that

men pose a heightened risk of violence to women, compared to other
women. We do not dispute that this is so. What we take issue with is
69
ibid. p. 8.
70
D. Cole, ‘U.N. Report: 50,000 Women A Year Are Killed By Intimate Partners, Family Members’, National
Public Radio
<https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/11/30/671872574/u-n-report-50-000-women-a-year-are-
killed-by-intimate-partners-family-members>
71
Academia.edu, p. 9.
72
L. Finlayson, K. Jenkins & R. Worsdale, “I’m not transphobic, but…”: A feminist case against the feminist case
against trans inclusivity’, Verso (17 October 2018)
<https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4090-i-m-not-transphobic-but-a-feminist-case-against-the-feminist-case-
against-trans-inclusivity>
16
the argument’s next move, which is to assert that this heightened risk is
due to features which trans women, or many of them, share with cis
men: namely, being biologically male (i.e. having a penis, testes, and
higher levels of testosterone), and having a history of male
socialisation.73
Yet they then
dispute the claim that these features - either singly or in conjunction -

are the correct basis for determining the risk that an individual poses in
terms of violence against women. Although we do have
overwhelming evidence that men commit violence against women
at much higher rates than women commit violence against either
women or men, this evidence does not establish that the basis of this
heightened risk is, as critics of self-ID claim, male biology and/or
male socialisation.74
They openly admit to denying the ‘overwhelming evidence’ of male pattern violence and then
the existence of male pattern violence as a reality. This cannot be coupled with either reason
or feminism. There were 87,000 women murdered last year by men globally, how is that to be
explained? Or, should we ask are women raping themselves? They then argue that this evidence
should be ignored because ‘trans women are different from cis men. The definitive difference
is that trans women see themselves as women or even as female, and feel most comfortable
navigating the social world with this gender presentation’.75 Men’s feelings, it is claimed,
override biological sex and gendered socialisation based on this biology. Talia Mae Bettcher
has attempted to dictate that ‘Rather than trans women having to defend their self-identifying
claims, these claims should be taken at face value right from the start’.76 Bettcher does not
offer an explanation as to why a male’s self-identifying feelings should be taken at face value
by feminists. This appears to be a dictum the authors are adhering to. Finlayson, Jenkins, and
Worsdale make the suggestion that even if male’s identifying as females are more violent they
73
ibid.
74
ibid.
75
ibid.
76
T. M. Bettcher, “Trans Women and the Meaning of ‘Woman’”, in: N. Power, R. Jalwani & A. Soble (eds.), The
Philosophy of Sex (Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2013).
17
shouldn’t be excluded from female single-sex spaces, violence against women is a price worth
paying for these self-identified ‘feminists’. They claim that
if we think of trans women [males who identify with sex stereotypes

associated with females] as one among many groups within the larger
group ‘women’, then it becomes unclear how their exclusion from
women’s spaces could be justified even if there were compelling
evidence that they were more prone to violence than cis women are.77
The authors express pure social constructionism when they posit that ‘the question of who
counts as a woman is a political or ethical question, not a scientific or ‘metaphysical’ one’.78
Why deny biology when one can just discard it? Why do they think 11 – 13 women are raped
per hour in England and Wales, is it because of what they were wearing (social constructed
signifier)?79 Mary Daly has conceptualised this anti-feminist backlash termed ‘liberal
feminism’ as ‘pseudo feminism’ which has been actively promoted by male controlled society’
in order to drive the real feminist challenge away from power.80 Certainly, it defangs feminism
by forcing arguments to become contradictory, it prioritises male feelings over women’s safety,
and claims women’s oppression is something one can rub off at night and reapply in the
morning.
Liberal feminism denies that women are structurally oppressed as a sex caste and, in
order to support its concept of female agency, has been backed into a thought corner – that bad
things just happen to individual women. This prevents liberal feminists from drawing
connections and answering important questions and brings them to the position of victim-
blaming. For example, in order to have hyper-individualised female agents that would mean
individual women didn’t succeed in the workplace because they didn’t try hard enough. Liberal
feminism has adopted the position that gender is innate. Their parroting of the mantra ‘trans
women are women’ necessitates a view of womanhood as socially constructed through sex role
stereotypes, dress and mannerisms which overrides and negates biological sex. One
consequence of this is that liberal feminists are now arguing that women are born with a socially
constructed system of oppression. It is a woke way of saying ‘she wanted it, they all do’. Butler
77
ibid.
78
ibid.
79
‘Statistics - Sexual Violence’, Rape Crisis England & Wales
<https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-informed/about-sexual-violence/statistics-sexual-violence/>
80
M. Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston, Beacan Press, 1978), p. xv.
18
purported in Gender Trouble that ‘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’.81 Here Butler collapses a social construct into a biological reality, sex
stereotypes become natural, oppression thus becomes the natural way. Butler then proposed
that conducting a feminist genealogy of the body (examining why sexed bodies are thought to
come naturally as female and male) should ground feminist practice.82 If one was being cynical
one could interpret this as redirecting women’s energies and resources from challenging their
oppression towards a fruitless enterprise akin to searching for a pot of gold at the end of a
rainbow. Sex is not assigned at birth but rather secondary sex characteristics are observed.
Alison Stone has critiqued Butler and asserted that it would be more accurate for Butler to say
that claims about sex imply gender norms.83 As a response to biological essentialism Butler
and liberal feminists ‘deny that there are real ontological kinds that correspond to the categories
“women” and “men”, however, this comes at a cost as they cannot answer whose autonomy is
denied by androcentric norms. Whose identity is irreducible to primary and secondary sexual
characteristics? Bach calls this the Representation Problem: if there is no real group “women,”
then it is incoherent to make moral claims and advance political policies on behalf of women’.84
This highlights how liberal feminism is actually the anti-feminist backlash and works to
disempower women and fracture the women’s movement.
Conclusion: Why is this important?
These arguments have moved out of the seminar rooms of universities and into policy making
and legislatures: they are having a real and dangerous impact. Firstly, the notion of the social
constructedness of sex and inability of women to be defined has defanged feminism. Liberal
[anti]feminists slur and silence women who will not bow to their ideology or men’s desires.85
81
J. Butler, Gender Trouble, 2nd ed. (London, Routledge, 1999), pp. 10 – 11.
82
ibid. pp. 28 – 29.
83
A. Stone, An Introduction to Feminist Philosophy (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2007), p. 70.
84
T. Bach, “Gender is a Natural Kind with a Historical Essence”, Ethics, Vol. 122, No. 2 (January 2012), p. 234.
85
J. Bindel, ‘No platform: my exclusion proves this is an anti-feminist crusade’, The Guardian (9 October 2015)
< https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/09/no-platform-universities-julie-bindel-exclusion-
anti-feminist-crusade>
S. Little, ‘Feminist speaker deemed ‘anti-trans’ by critics speaks at Vancouver Public Library’, Global News (11
January 2019)
<https://globalnews.ca/news/4836690/feminist-speaker-anti-trans-vancouver-public-library/>
[Accessed 19 March 2019]
Editorial: Difficult issues need open debate, New Zealand Herald (21 December 2019)
<https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12180948>
19
Our tools of analysis to comprehend and combat the subjugation of females and the epidemic
of male violence have been cast as bigotry. Unable to proffer a coherent argument liberal
[anti]feminism has become a token, a tote-bag and a fashion statement. Liberal
[anti]feminism’s stranglehold on the media and in student unions and their refusal to debate
other points of view means that a generation of young women are growing up without
feminism. All this is happening as some women cheer the removal of single sex spaces for
women and the loss of women’s resources. Liberal [anti]feminists subjugate women’s privacy,
safety and dignity to the pleasure of men. Remember menstruators, just smile and be nice!86
The notion of the social constructedness of sex and the ideology pushed by liberal
[anti]feminists poses a direct challenge to the reality of same sex attraction. If sex isn’t real or
is fluid how can one be same sex attracted? Lesbians are under particular attack as coercive
control is exerted in an attempt to force them to accept penises into their sexuality. 87 As Amy
Dyess has argued regarding the term TERF, men and liberal [anti]feminists ‘disguise their
misogyny and homophobia as social justice in order to gain support from people who are
misinformed. So-called “progressives” are openly oppressing and condemning the homosexual
community, primarily the lesbian community88. Miranda Yardley contends that
There should be a place where bad ideas go to die, and the first idea to
be shipped there on a first class, one-way express journey to abyssal
depth should be what is colloquially known as “the Cotton Ceiling.”

86
‘Why ‘Menstruator’ Should Be in Your Vocabulary’, Glad Rags (18 August 2016)
<http://blog.gladrags.com/4429/why-menstruator-should-be-in-your-vocabulary/>
‘The Guardian called women ‘menstruators’ and these are the only responses you need’, The Poke
<https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2018/10/25/guardian-called-women-menstruators-people-saw-red-favourite-
responses/>
N. Firsht, ‘I am not a walking cervix or a menstruator. I am a W‑O‑M‑A‑N’, The Times (31 October 2018)
< https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/i-am-not-a-walking-cervix-or-a-menstruator-i-am-a-woman-7q2rdp55p>
87
M. Yardley, ‘Girl Dick, the Cotton Ceiling and the Cultural War on Lesbians, Girls and Women’, After Ellen
(5 December 2018)
<www.afterellen.com/general-news/567823-girl-dick-the-cotton-ceiling-and-the-cultural-war-on-lesbians-girls-
and-women#Sh3lwOjP4QDgwmue.99>
88
A. Dyess, “TERF Is Hate Speech and It’s Time to Condemn It”, Medium (25 October 2018)
<https://medium.com/@amydyess83/terf-is-hate-speech-and-its-time-to-condemn-it-6efc897ce407>
20
The Cotton Ceiling, coined by a male “lesbian” pornographer, refers to

the barrier trans women face when denied access to sex with lesbians.89
Pink News’s reaction to lesbian protests at London Pride in 2018 is a rewording of ‘how dare
women have sexual boundaries or their own sexual tastes and sexuality’.90 More depressingly,
Pink News’s attack on women daring to draw their own sexual boundaries which excluded
penetration by a penis was led by a woman, Hazel Southwell.
The notion that lesbianism includes ‘girl d*ck’ is being taught in schools under the
guise of being trans inclusive. Indeed, that sex is socially constructed and biology is wrong is
being taught throughout the education system.91 Children are being instructed that a system
which oppresses women and positions heterosexuality as the norm (gender) is innate and
natural. Pink News and liberal [anti]feminists are leading this regressive charge. For example,
Pink News celebrated GLAAD’s 'Incredible new children’s book' in which Susan knows Jackie
is really Jack because Jackie likes to play in the mud.92 The claim that sex role stereotypes
(gender) are innate is leading to the medicalisation of children and the next big medical scandal
of our age. In America, doctors are performing mastectomies on girls as young as 13.93 In the
U.K. Dr Helen Webberley prescribed cross-sex hormones to a 12 year old child.94 Trans rights
activists and liberal [anti]feminists argue that it is worth it to sterilise children so that they
89
M. Yardley, ‘Girl Dick, the Cotton Ceiling and the Cultural War on Lesbians, Girls and Women’, After Ellen
(5 December 2018)
<www.afterellen.com/general-news/567823-girl-dick-the-cotton-ceiling-and-the-cultural-war-on-lesbians-girls-
and-women#Sh3lwOjP4QDgwmue.99>
90
H. Southwell, ‘Anti-trans group allowed to lead Pride in London march after hijack’, Pink News (7 July 2018)
<https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/07/07/anti-trans-group-allowed-to-lead-pride-in-london-march-after-
hijack/>
91
‘Teaching Transgender Doctrine In Schools – “A Bizarre Educational Experiment”, Transgender Trend (18
December 2016)
<https://www.transgendertrend.com/teaching-transgender-doctrine-in-schools-a-bizarre-educational-
experiment/>
92
N. Duffy, ‘Incredible new children’s book tells story of transgender boy’, Pink News (10 October 2018)
<https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/10/10/new-childrens-book-transgender-boy/>
Dr Em’s thread on the ‘Magical Haircut’, Twitter
<https://twitter.com/PankhurstEM/status/1050304174343299073>
93
J. Robbins, ‘U.S. Doctors Are Performing Double Mastectomies On Healthy 13-Year-Old Girls’, The Fedralist
<http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/12/u-s-doctors-performing-double-mastectomies-healthy-13-year-old-girls/>
94
‘Transgender specialist Dr Helen Webberley ran unregistered clinic’, BBC News (5 October 2018)
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-45767360>
21
conform to opposite sex role stereotypes.95 The term ‘puberty blockers’ doesn’t quite capture
the extreme nature of these drugs. Lupron, the current most popular puberty blocker, has been
banned by the FDA and class-action lawsuits are underway.96 Preventing puberty also hinders
sexual functioning. For example, the doctor ‘treating’ the celebrity transgendered child Jazz
Jennings revealed that ‘Jazz does not know what an orgasm is and it’s very important when
expressing intimacy’ and ‘although it is not something that’s going to delay surgery, it’s not
going to be any easier for her to have an orgasm after surgery’.97 Jazz Jennings will never have
an orgasm, she has been sacrificed to the idea that sex is socially constructed.
95
‘Better Sterile than Dead’, Fourth Wave Now
<https://4thwavenow.com/2016/03/31/better-sterile-than-dead-how-trans-activists-justify-destroying-the-
fertility-of-minor-children/>
96
‘Georgia woman says controversial drug led to series of health problems’, WSBTV
<https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/georgia-woman-says-drug-used-to-treat-endometriosis-led-to-series-of-
health-problems/859263892>
L. Millican, The Lupron Money Trail, Hormones Matter
<https://www.hormonesmatter.com/lupron-money-trail/>
97
N. Stone, ‘Jazz Jennings Discusses 'the Sexual Stuff' with Her Doctor Ahead of Gender Confirmation Surgery’,
People Magazine (1 January 2019)
<https://people.com/tv/jazz-jennings-talks-sexual-stuff-orgasm-libido-doctor-before-gender-confirmation-
surgery/>
22
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 E. Hungerford, A feminist critique of “cisgender”, Liberation Collective (8 June 2012)

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29

DR em - Sex and Social Constructionism

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Guest Writing by Dr. EM., Cambridge Radical Feminist Network.

Sex and Social Constructionism

- Figures: Tweets by Professor Sally Hines, University of Leeds.

How Have We Arrived Here

even a person with XXXXY chromosomes would be male because of

Early post-structuralism/ deconstruction argued that everything was

The French post-structuralists were overtaken in popularity by a cluster of ideas known

response to punishment and classification. The socio-linguistic construction of the subject

What are the positions?

Current sex categorization practices according to the female/male

The argument against trans-inclusivity starts from the observation that

Yet they then

dispute the claim that these features - either singly or in conjunction -

if we think of trans women [males who identify with sex stereotypes

Conclusion: Why is this important?

[Accessed 19 March 2019].

The Cotton Ceiling, coined by a male “lesbian” pornographer, refers to

Anon., ‘Teaching Transgender Doctrine In Schools – “A Bizarre Educational Experiment”,

[Accessed 19 March 2019].

Brodribb S., Nothing Matters: A Feminist Critique of Postmodernism (Melbourne, Spinifex,

Ehrenreich B., ‘What is Socialist Feminism?’

Gilbert S. F., Chromosomal Sex Determination in Mammals, Developmental Biology: 6th

Hicks S. R. C., Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to

Jones J. C., ‘Post-Structuralism, Butler and Bodies’, Jane Clare Jones

Wizemann T. M. & Pardue M. L. (eds.), Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human

Suggested Further Reading

 E. Hungerford, A feminist critique of “cisgender”, Liberation Collective (8 June 2012)

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