Nicole-Claude Mathieu

Masculinity~Femininity

Un fauteuil, une chaise an armchair, a chair ~

Un bureau, une table a desk, a table
Un livre, une revue a book, a magazine
Un journal, une feuille a newspaper, a page
Un bol, une tasse a bowl, a cup
Un lit, une couchette a bed, a bunk
Un bouquet, une fleur a bouquet, a flower
Un tout, une partie a whole, a part

Un homme, une femme a man, a woman

Un "grand homme," une "petite femme" a "great man," a "little woman"
Le Pantheon, la prostitution The Pantheon, 2 prostitution

W h y start with this French language exercise? Because every d a y we

(French) use a language where everything, absolutely everything, is compulsorily
rendered masculine or feminine, a language that can truly be said to be obsessed
with sex, where no word can be p r o n o u n c e d , no concept expressed, without
having an article, an adjective, etc., appended to it which marks its "gender," that
is, its grammatical sex. If I have voluntarily chosen to place in opposition
masculine and feminine terms which designate things or notions having a certain
categorizing relationship, whereby the more important, larger, and more
totalizing terms are masculine, and the smaller, m o r e fragmenting terms are
feminine, it is not, of course, unrelated to the rest of this article, which will try to
52 Feminist Issues/Summer 1980

show that in many societies, but particularly in French society, the idea of
masculinity carries a value of "more" and that of femininity a value of "less."
But let us focus for the moment on the relation which could possibly exist
between sex (gender) attributed to things by grammar and their intrinsic quality,
their "essence," in a sense. We are forced to establish that this relationship does
not exist. If you take a table in France and you move this same table to Germany,
it changes sex! In France, we have "/a table" and "lejournal, "in Germany "'le
table"and "lajournal'(der Tisch and die Zeitung), while a book, masculine in
French, becomes neuter (das Buch).
We start with these obvious matters of fact, 3 but it is useful to keep these in
mind when taking up the case of gender applied not any more to things, but to
people. Because, ultimately, one will say that, for people, it appears to be
completely different: if a French man travels to Germany, he will certainly be
recognized as a man and the qualifiers (adjectives, pronouns, etc.) applied to him
in German will be of the masculine gender, as in his own language. Apparently,
.~
there is no problem, since it is certain that the distinction between man and
woman exists within every culture 4 (and it may have been the starting point in
some languages for extending to things the masculine and feminine genders). The
problem begins if one is willing to consider the words "masculine" and
"feminine" as not only designating a grammatical gender, but as having, like all
terms, their own meaning and content: they are qualifiers, derived from
substantives (in Latin: masculus, the male, andfemina, the female). They are thus
supposed to be adjectivally expressing a substance, here that which is specific to it
and permanent in it, that which somehow defines man and woman in their
essence.
Are we then authorized to think that there is a relation of essence between
what the term "masculine" qualifies and the biological reality of "man" on the
one hand, and what the term "feminine" qualifies and the biological reality of
"woman" on the other? In other words, do we have the right to think that the
behavior or capacity which is commonly thought of as masculine or, on the
contrary, as feminine, has any relation whatever to the biological sex of the
individual?
The simple fact that is currently acknowledged that a man can be said to be
somewhat feminine and a woman somewhat masculine should be sufficient
logically (because each of these judgements contains a contradiction in terms) to
give us the feeling that there is no intrinsic relation between the substantive
"woman" and the adjective "feminine" or "womanly", for example - - briefly,
that the "psychological traits" or the behaviors designated as masculine or
feminine are applied to the biological sexes just as arbitrarily as they are
attributed in French, the masculine gender being given to a desk or the feminine
gender to a table. We must then tly to understand that each society uses the
biological sexes to construct a "sexual g r a m m a r " - - or, as Kate Millet would say,
Mathieu 53

a "sexual politics" - - as arbitrary as the grammatical genders of language.

It is in fact the term "gender" that Robert J. Stoller chose to establish the
distinction between, on the one hand, psychological masculinity and femininity
(gender identity) and, on the other hand, the biological sexes (for which he
reserves the word "sex"). The noncorrespondence between biological sex and
psycho-social sex is particularly striking in the case of children who at birth
presented anomalous external genitalia which caused them to be defined as a
certain sex, but who later, in the course of development, were revealed to be
constitutionally of the other sex. 5
The consideration of clinical data, of the corrective treatments sometimes
undertaken and of their psychological results on the intersexual, pseudo-
hermaphrodite individuals, etc., reveals in a striking way the practically
irreversible determination of social factors (having been raised "as a boy" or"as a
girl') on the fixing of psychological sexual (or rather, gender) identity. Stoller
affirms: "In fact, almost always, such psychological forces can prevail over
biological forces. "6
At the risk of simplifying a very complex problem, it seems, however,
interesting to cite here two examples presented in the same article. In the two
cases, the assignment of sex at birth was later revealed to be false, but in Case 1
the treatment undertaken was to confirm this biologically "false" sex, which had
become the "real sex," the psychological gender; while in the other case (Case 4)
they tried to "restore" the real biological sex thus going against the psychological
gender.
Case 1: The diagnosis of sex was not correctly established at birth and
was not to be established until the latency period. Two children,
chromosomically male, endowed with the normal internal apparatus
and normal testicles were born with aryntorchid testicles; the penis
was the size of a clitoris, the urethral passage was situated as in a girl
and the scrotum, bifid, had the appearance of labia. The external
genital organs appeared as normally female and the two children
were assigned the female sex; they were raised as girls. Then the
diagnosis of masculinity was established for each of them (suspicions
having been raised by "inguinal tumors" which in reality were the
cryptorchid testicles) the children did not question their belonging to
the female sex, or their femininity. The diagnosis was communicated
to the parents and it was decided that the children would continue to
be considered girls. The surgical and hormonal treatment destined to
create a female anatomy was undertaken. The diagnosis was made six
years ago; no psychological problem has posed itself since then.

Case 4: The diagnosis of belonging to the male sex was made at birth;
the child was raised as a boy, though he was biologically female,
because he showed hyperadrenalism . . . the clitoris was a normal
54 Feminist I s s u e s / S u m m e r 1980

penis with a penis-like urethra and labia externally fused like a male
scrotum; the induration tissue was such that the labia had the
appearance of a scrotum with nondescended testicles. That is why it
was thought that the child was a boy. Unfortunately at the age of six
years, a precocious puberty (characteristic of these cases) provoked
the beginning of menstruation. The vaginal orifice being blocked by
the penis and scrotum, an acute abdominal crisis (peritonitis) was
produced by the amassing of menstrual blood in the abdominal
cavity. Finally, the correct diagnosis of sex was made. The pediatri-
cian counseled the parents to have the sex and gender of the child
changed, told them to buy the child girl's clothes and cut his hair like a
girl. The subsequent consultations revealed that the child was
incapable of progressing in school, had a major speech defect, and
had no friends. He was awkward and ridiculous in his girl's clothes. 7
Without completely sharing the optimism concluding Case 1 (because in
fact psychological problems will ensue when these biological boys, transformed
externally into girls to adapt their anatomy to their identity as girls, realize that
they cannot bear children), what interests us here is the social dimension of sex,
which these cases demonstrate, since the problem seems to be expressed in terms
of whether "to educate them as girls or boys."
As there is not in the majority of cases any difficulty in identifying the sex of
a child, the social decision to create an opposition, through education, between
boys and girls, in other words, later between men and women, generally goes on
unperceived. Or rather, it is the socialarbitrariness of this decision which remains
unperceived, and parents and educators believe that the different orientation that
they give to the education of a child whether it is a boy or a girl exists only to
"confirm the nature" of his/her sex, his/her biology, or in a slightly more
complex reasoning, already sociological, "so that he/she does not become
homosexual" (the feminine man or the masculine woman mentioned above).
But after all, isn't all this strange? We live within this obsession of
reinforcing at any price the natural dichotomy of the sexes, of confirming a child
in its sex by constantly opposing it to the other, and to what does it correspond? If
the difference betweeen the sexes were so "natural," why would we need to
construct it by education?
Contemporary science (like a number of mythologies) has forged the idea
of the fundamental "bisexuality" of the human being to explain psychological
problems that the difference of the sexes poses. Thus, each being from the
beginning biologically a n d / o r psychologically (not entering into the quarrels of
the psychoanalytic schools) 8 endowed with the potentialities of the two sexes, it
would be a difficult task to make "psychological" sex and somatic sex correspond
definitively and in the best way possible. We say the "best." The best for the
individual, of course but - - a question to which psychologists pay too little
Mat hieu 55

attention - - the best is always only that which his~her society decides is the best
for him or her; that is, for the society: for the maintenance of its order.
Apparently, in our western society, the maintenance of this order still requires
the psychological opposition of the sexes. We will return to this.
First let us look at several societies which perhaps will allow us to see our
own culture in a surprising light. The ethnologist Margaret Mead studied three
populations in New Guinea which were neighboring but very different regarding
their social interpretation of sex. As for the "personality" of each sex, she
concludes:
Neither the Arapesh nor the M u n d u g u m o r profit by a contrast
between the sexes; the Arapesh ideal is the mild, responsive man
married to the mild, responsive woman; the M u n d u g u m o r ideal is the
violent aggressive man married to the violent aggressive woman. In
the third tribe, the Chambuli, we found a genuine reversal of the sex
attitudes of our own culture, with the w o m a n the dominant,
impersonal managing partner, the man the less responsible and the
emotionally dependent person. These three situations suggest, then, a
very definite conclusion. If those temperamental attitudes which we
have traditionally regarded as feminine - - such as passivity, respon-
siveness, and a willingness to cherish children - - can so easily be set
up as the masculine pattern in one tribe, and in another be outlawed
for the majority of women as well as for the majority of men, we no
longer have any basis for regarding such aspects of behavior as sex-
linked. 9
Generally, the ethnological data teaches us that the content of the physical
or psychological qualities respectively attributed to each sex varies considerably
(and often is absolutely the contrary) from one society to another, as do the
masculine and feminine roles and economic tasks that men and women perform,
as Margaret Mead noticed:
• the conventional view of a tribe in the Phillippines that no man
. .

can keep a secret, or the Manus' allegation that only men like to play
with children, or the fact that most domestic work is decreed to be too
sacred for women by the Toda, or the Arapesh belief that women's
heads are more robust than those of men, etc. t0
The example of the Chambuli cited above is particularly striking for us
since the behavior, the economic and ritual roles, and the mental attitudes of men
and women there are almost term for term the contrary of ours.
But the Arapesh and M u n d u g u m o r teach us something more: that there
exist human societies where - - while the daily tasks of men and women are
different - - it does not occur to anyone to relate the qualities or defects of a given
individual to his/her sex. If a M u n d u g u m o r child is violent, it is not "because he
is a boy," since in this culture, it is expected that any individual might be violent.
56 Feminist Issues/Summer 1980

If an Arapesh child gets angry, the question of her sex is not raised; they do not
say "a little girl must be good," but "one must not do that." Thus, in these
societies, an individual is never questioned in one of the most fundamental
aspects: his/her sexual identity, "gender" - - the contrary of what constantly
happens with us, where a girl who whistles in the street or a boy who is interested
in knitting will meet violent disapproval or uneasiness, which cannot be ignored,
a reaction related to their belonging to a certain sex, and, more specifically, as
questioning the "normality" of their future sexual behavior.
It appears as though an extreme social and psychological opposition
between the sexes in a given society is also accompanied by an equally extreme
fear of homosexuality, and that homosexuality is an institution, socially and
often officially recognized as a certain particular type of behavior. This
"officialness" can be shown in the existence of repressive laws against "the"
homosexuals and lesbians as well as the recognition of homosexuality through
periodic rites. The two exist in our western societies, and Margaret Mead
describes the importance of sexual transvestism and parodies of homosexual
behavior by. men and women in ceremonies of the Chambuli culture, where the
sexes are seen as possessing contrasting personality types, similar to us except
with the content inverted. 11
Another absolutely essential point that characterizes the relation of
opposition between the sexes in our society, and thus the notions of"masculine"
and "feminine," is that it does not consist (as is often pretended or advocated) of a
simple relation of"complementarity" (equality in difference), but of a relation of
hierarchical opposition (difference supporting inequality). The following com-
mentaries, recently heard in relation to children of two to three years of age, are
clear on this subject:
1. Of willful or headstrong children (self-affirmation): Of a boy:
"He is beginning to become unmanageable." (intonation of dread
mixed with respect); "He's a real boy!" Of a girl: "She's beginning to
have an awful character." (intonation of strong disapproval).
2. Of naked children at the beach (physical identity): Of a boy:
"This one, at least we can see that he's a boy." To a girl: "Hide
yourself, or the little boys will make fun of your"
We can grasp here in the most banal everyday activities, the notion
valorization/devalorization, o f " m o r e " and of"less," respectively attached to the
masculine sex and feminine sex (and mentioned earlier in relation to our
"exercise in French"). Thus less is permitted to the girl - - under the pretext of her
biological sex - - for instance, the assertion of her will, her independence (a
limitation which will become an integral part of her psycho-social sex), but she is
also made ashamed of her genitals under the pretext that they are not as
"obvious" as a boy's. The genitals of the girl (and thus of the woman) are
somehow denied existence. It is said both that they should be hidden, and that
Mathieu 57

they are hidden (which is false, especially in little girls!) Looking through a recent
encyclopedia of sex education, divided into volumes according to the age of
children, you could see anatomical engravings where next to the complete
masculine sexual organs is represented the whole of the internal organs of the
woman, but where the vagina ends in a simple gap in the outline without
representation of the clitoris and labia (which are however essential organs in
sexual sensation). What fantasies of our culture this type of engraving expresses!
See on this subject all western sculpture, where the exterior sexual organs of the
woman are never represented (even when the position of the statues demands it),
and see, in contrast African statuary!
We have been given examples on the level of moral norms of education or
on the aesthetic level of the culture, but it cannot be forgotten that facts
correspond to all this. The fact that women are made inferior in relation to men is
not only the result of a "hierarchy of values." It is a hierarchy of fact, which is
expressed very clearly in the employment statistics or in the access to professional
training. Not only do we find practically no women in the professions which
wield political power, high positions in political parties, unions, government,
etc., or having the financial power of bankers, lawyers, etc., while they constitute
almost the totality of "service employees personnel," but also inside each
profession the more a category is devalorized (in comparison with "superior
responsibilities") or badly paid (the two usually go together), the more you find
women there. And in almost all the couples where the man and woman work, she
makes less money even if she spends the same amount of time at work and is
equally qualified. What can be said, in a monetary economy like ours, where
whoever has the power is the one who has the money, of the couples where the
woman is "at home" (unpaid labor) in a situation of total dependence which only
reveals itself harshly when the woman becomes a widow or divorcee, t2 "obliged"
to work (and, in general, with the responsibility for the children).
Thus the relationship between the sexes in our society is a relationship of
power as much on the level of values as on the economic and legal levels, a
relationship of power which expresses itself in the hierarchical idea of the
prevalence and the authority of the male sex over the female sex.
An economic and ideological power relation certainly does not affect only
relations between the sexes, but it is regularly denied in the relationship between
men and women. Each renewal of feminist analysis finds itself opposed by:
1. The great fear of a lack of distinction between the sexes, by
some people (especially the Right).
2. The assertion of the primacy of the class relations, or
sometimes the generational or race relations, by others (especially the
Left).
To reply to the second point first, consider the fact that a bourgeois woman can
be called a slut by a worker who is displeased by her behavior; the fact that a
58 Feminist Issues/Summer 1980

youngster of twelve years of age can pinch the bottom of a woman of twenty-two
pretending to ask her the time; the fact that in the United States (where the
intensity of racial antagonism is well known) when little white boys were asked if
they would prefer to be white girls or black boys, they replied "black boys"; ~3the
fact that in France an advertisement showing a young man naked, though in
shadows, brought forth a public outcry for "decency" while there is a quasi-
general silence about the posters manipulating women in all sorts of positions,
nude or variously dressed up or undressed; the fact that the vast majority of
prostitutes are women (and that men prostitute themselves to men also) while
there is no equivalent institution (and it is an institution) for women: all these,
like hundreds of other possible examples, show that to speak of the social
hierarchy of the sexes is not to use an empty phrase.
On the level of daily life as of social norms, social masculinity is the
unquestioned possibility of undertaking action, o f " d o i n g . " I t is "responsibility,"
the Pantheon. Social femininity is to be limited even before any action is
undertaken, and to turn to men if any difficulty presents itself. Social masculinity
is to "know" how to explain better, to speak better, to think better, to change tires
better, to know why the machine does not work, to extend a hand to women
when they run after a bus in narrow skirts and four inch heels. In the "'Belle
Epoque," the young female textile workers worked twelve hours a day in corsets
with steel ribs which when they broke (which was often) dug into their abdomens
every time they bent down to put the balls of wool into the cases (hundreds of
times a day). At least these unfortunate women were sure of being feminine.
Social femininity is also especially the pregnancies which "fall" to you because in
France they still leave the initiative of birth control to the man (a great number of
women still do not use female contraceptives), because you risk going on trial for
abortion although you have been refused ways to avoid this tribulation, ~4 in a
time when the power of science is so fantastic that man has reached the moon and
done heart transplants. Social masculinity, on the contrary, is the liberty to make
children, but to not "know how" to raise them, feed them, wash them, etc.; and it
is also the ability in divorce to not even pay for their upkeep. Social masculinity is
the naive and deadly cowardice of the man (otherwise "nice") who told me about
his driving exploits: "So I cut in on her, as it was a woman I knew there was no
risk of her getting out and breaking my jaw!" Social femininity is also
prostitution because for social masculinity it is normal to pay to have what you
want, even a human being. Male prostitutes are part of social femininity, because
femininity and masculinity have no sex, or rather they only have a statistical
relationship with biological sex; in addition, this relation is arbitrary, as we have
said, and thus is provisional in a historical society.
Today the best way to establish a social power and a hierarchy is to present
them as having a natural foundation. ~5 But the hypothesis of the biological
difference as the "cause" of social hierarchy between men and women is not
Mathieu 59

always easy to hold openly, because, even without returning to ethnological data,
a very short historical memory would suffice to topple it. We can suppose that the
physiology of our mothers who, in France, were excluded from the right to vote
before 1945 (and it was as biological women, because the fact that they were rich
or poor, unmarried or married, etc., changed nothing) had not varied in 1946, no
more than the physiological "difference" between men and women of yesterday
and today have changed. It must be recognized that the (slow) attainments in the
law and the facts which move towards equality (still to arrive) between men and
women do not affect the sexes, but social masculinity and femininity.
Some people panic when faced with the present tendency towards the
blurring of the sexes in exterior aspects (men with long hair are called "pansies"
and women in flat shoes and pants are called "ugly"and "sexually frustrated,"in
a word, "feminists," who it is claimed, are "all lesbians.") Briefly, according to
them, men would make themselves feminine and women would make themselves
masculine. They are perfectly right basically; where they are wrong is in
pretending to believe that they are speaking in biological terms; in reality, they
are talking about social sexes and are only projecting onto the biological their
apprehension over social change, their fear of the destruction of the power
relationship which still today makes masculinity and femininity contrary and
irreducible entities. What all these fears denote are the refusal of a sociological
imagination, vertigo in front of the infinity of possible social constructions.
This is why the "biologizing" assertions do not lose their foothold. The
theory of "the little difference" indeed possesses a major asset which is less the
possession of the penis by the man, than it is the possession of the child by the
woman (Freud, who in fact described the results of the social conditioning of the
sexes, but without recognizing it, equated the penis and child.) After all, if it has
become difficult today to hold that a penis authorizes you to vote while a vagina
makes you incapable of choosing a political orientation; on the other hand, there
is one thing (very important for society) that only a female genital apparatus can
do: carry and bear children. Without lingering on the psychoanalytical theories
which want to see in the desire for a child jealousy in regard to women and the
reason for men taking power, it seems to be more interesting to consider how
society uses this biological given of childbirth to particularize woman socially, to
say that woman has something specific, something which is her own, to
accomplish in society; to make (and raise - - here is the first slide into the
sociological) children. And therefore this becomes the essence of her definition: a
woman, that is, someone who will have, who has, or who has had children.
The present medico-pedagogic vulgarization ("up to two years at least a
child absolutely needs the presence of its mother"), which has caused havoc
especially in the middle classes, quietly and impudently ignores not only
ethnology, but also history, and its own sociological conditioning and its own
contradictions. Ethnology: because western societies are practically the only
60 Feminist Issues/Summer 1980

ones to leave the entire charge of young children to a single person, their mother.
History: because this situation is in fact recent in our societies, even without
looking back on the Ancien regime, 16it is sufficient to think of the working class
of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, when there could be
no question whether any able-bodied person would work: children were rapidly
given over to nurses. (Contrary to current thought, the nurses did not always
breastfeed the children: they often took in several children and were generally
old. They fulfilled more the role of contemporary day care centers.) Sociological
conditioning: because this psycho-pedagogic vulgarization serves in a society
with unemployment to prevent women, the cushion of labor, from further
"crowding" the labor market (which is a cause for pessimism about the
realization of electoral promises for day care centers.) The contradictions of
psychology: because psychology, on the one hand, measures well the sometimes
disastrous influence that the behavior and phantasms of the parent (generally,
the mother) who takes care of it can have on a very young child, ~7 while at the
same time continuing to insist that the mother is needed above all others by the
infant.
But, society has made of this woman a dependent being, devalorized by
being a woman, divided, and in addition, exhausted. We easily speak today of the
"double shift" of the woman. But few men can have any idea what the load of
young children represents for a woman (if she is a housewife or salaried, if she is
with a man or not). She has to stand the noise (because the pedagogical
vulgarization orders also that children be allowed to "express themselves"); to
drag them with her when already tottering under the weight of the shopping, or
trying desperately to "park" them with a neighbor or her mother for the time to
go to the city hall or social security, etc.; to rush to the day care center or baby
sitter to get to work on time, and rush back as quickly to retrieve them and
prepare dinner; to search for another woman when the day care center refuses the
children because they have a little fever; to wash them, rewash them, feed them,
refeed them, clean up after them, take care, carry, comfort, listen to - - this
endless constraint, day and night, this dispossession of self to which no
professional difficulty is comparable, men are not prepared to share) 8 They
simply ignore it.
Society thus abandons the children to women and binds women to
children, and through the children, wives to their husbands. By virtue of this it
decrees: there are two sorts of women, the virtuous wives-and-mothers and the
whores. The whores are not only the prostitutes, but also the young girls who
would like, by using contraceptives, to obtain the right to the sexual life which is
given to their brothers, mothers who have abortions, divorcees, and the
unmarried. There are several kinds of "femininity" between which "the woman"
must choose. But in any case, whatever choice she makes (or which she has the
impression of making) it will never be as good as being a man.
Mat hieu 61

There is in fact a serious identity problem for women. 19Every woman is at

the same time: (1) obliged, as biological woman, to recognize herself in the social
image and reality of femininity because it is presented to her as deriving from her
biological sex (this is equally true of masculinity for the man); but (2) also,
obliged, as a human being, to refuse this disintegrated and destructive image of
which the fundamental significance is that"it is less good to be a woman than it is
to be a man." (On the other hand, the model of masculinity is at the same time
integrated and valorized.)
It is so shameful to be a woman in our society that it is no surprise that
women are so often misogynist, because whether one is a man or a woman, to be
misogynist is to say, consciously or not: " I am not one of them, I am not part of
that." A misogynist woman is someone who says: "No, I am not a 'bad thing.' I
am a person, then: not woman, outside of all specification by sex." At an
individual level (but for sociological reasons of which she is unaware) she makes
herself separate from the "bad" which is her sex, and turns solely to the major
reference, the power holder, he who has the good fortune to represent humanity,
to which she aspires. It is not the penis that she envies, but humanity which is
presented to her as embodied in masculinity. How can this break, this
fragmentation he resolved, how can this broken mirror of herself be put back
together? How to live as "woman" and as Self at the same time?
There are two solutions. The first is to close one's eyes and ears, and think
only of one's work, of housekeeping, washing, cooking, in a moral self-
justification absolutely necessary for living. Above all, to use to the maximum
what society presents to you as at the same time biologically belonging to
"women" and socially (finally!) valorized: children. To play the game of the
social opposition between masculinity and femininity, but at the same time, with
a vague feeling that "something is not right," to develop a hidden subculture (the
culture of our mothers, which is transmitted between women, generally ignored
by men), which, reflecting back on man the dreadful image of femininity,
attributes all the ills of humanity, all the defects to "men" as such: "Men are self-
indulgent, always whining, childish; they are disgusting; they think of only one
thing..."
The other solution is - - for man or woman - - to realize that masculinity
and femininity as we live them today are not eternal categories because they are
not biological, hut historical. Some people, of course, do not want things to
change (but are things going so well as that?). Others can envisage a day when
perhaps masculinity and femininity would be, paradoxically, only simple
biological categories on which there would be no need to elaborate any nonsense.
Simple biological categories - - that is, that man and woman both attend to the
reproduction of the species, and the greatness of human society would he
precisely that it does not make one sex carry its whole weight. A society where
each person would have an equal share of training, work, leisure-- and children.
62 Feminist I s s u e s / S u m m e r 1980

Utopia? Utopia is part of reality-- as is proven by the biological utopias based on

social notions of "masculinity/femininity."

This text was written at the end of 1974, at the request of a widely
distributed medical weekly newspaper. (You will see, after reading the following
exchange, that an agreement could not be made about publication.) This was to
my mind a chance to slip to the medical profession (we know the influence it
exerts) and to summarize for possible women readers certain basic sociological
facts (analyses which, for certain women, are already accepted knowledge), but
also to show directions for research concerning the definition of"sex" by dealing
with everyday facts of the lives of everyone, male and female, because it is mostly
from our most ordinary daily practice that our "theories" are elaborated.
It is interesting to observe once more that much more than abstract
statements which, however, treat the same thing, it is the open evocation, in its
very banality, of the vulgarity and the violence suffered by women which
"shocks" the most and carries denial with it - - because nothing is more "delicate"
than established power.

Dear Miss Mathieu, Some Comments However

Your article: Masculinity/Feminin-
ity. "I think that it certainly has a
place in our newspaper, but I must
tell you o f a certain number o f re-
marks by our editorial committee:
1. The length. You can easily un- (Text too long in relation to request.
derstand that in the present condi- Suggestions for reductions.)
tions under which newspapers work,
in relation to the serious crisis in
printing...
" . . . first paragraph o f p. 12, I will
point out some things to you:

(a) that in artistic expression o f There do not exist cultures, which,

cultures which do not know sexual
repression, the female sexual anat-
omy is not usually represented, in so
far as it is not visible, when the
woman is standing.
(b) that the presentation o f this
sexual anatomy necessitates putting
the woman into a quasi-gynecologi-
cal position.
in one form or another, do not know
"sexual repression" but its expres-
sion is, depending on the culture,
very unequally divided between the
sexes.
In addition, speaking of artistic
works, we are talking about the sym-
bolization of sexual organs (as much
as for the men as for the women) and
Mathieu
(c) that finally it is extremely diffi-
cult to represent it otherwise than in
an anatomical engraving.
"'All this, in my opinion; takes
nothing away f r o m women, and I will
gladly ask you to remove this para-
graph which ends with the words
'African s t a t u a r y ' . . . "
2. I certainly have objections to
make to p. 13. Very honestly I think
that you gain nothing by adopting a
vocabulary which is close to invec-
tive, neither by defending Michel
Polnareff, who in an act o f generosity
I do not question offered his buttocks
to France, nor by trying to enumerate
the women prostitutes used by men
or men prostitutes used by men or
women. After all, I have been told
that there actually are male houses
for ladies.
3. Page 14 is certainly much too
heterogeneous. Perhaps it is not use-
f u l to go back to the Belle Epoque in
so far as at that time men also worked
twelve hours a day, while children
had the right to work "only" ten
hours a day. You are putting society
on trial perfectly justifiably, but in
63
not of anatomical engravings. (In any
case, in the engravings, the sexual
organs of the woman are not repre-
sented.)
Finally, if it is necessary to take up
the technical problem of sculpture,
the female sexual organs are not in
any way more "difficult" to represent
than an eye, hand, or hair. I hardly
dare to add that, neither in sculp-
ture nor in life, is "woman" always
standing.
(p. 58: "To reply to the second
point....)
(a) This vocabulary is invective,
indeed. I do not "adopt" it, I cite it. It
is what is applied to us, women, every
moment; to speak politely of what is
not polite is a falsification.
(b) It was in fact an advertisement
for men's underpants in the May
1967 issue of Le Nouvel Obser-
vateur. It is significant that this was
perceived as personal publicity for a
singer (decided by him) and not as the
use of an anonymous male body by
the advertising industry.
(c) The opposition to counting, to
"statistics," is one of the means of
denial. If male "houses" for women
exist (?) their exceptional character is
only a sign of the institution of
prostitution for the use of men.
(p. 58: "On the level of daily life
• . . ")
Rather a compact presentation of
a system perfectly homogeneous in
its multiplicity: the invasion of all
aspects of everyday life by the "dif-
ference between the sexes."
Twelve hours a day, yes, but men
64
this case y o u s o m e h o w go too f a r
away f r o m our topics.
4. l approve o f y o u r question about
abortion, but I would like it if y o u
would speak o f it in a less "populist'"
way: because man has reached the
m o o n and because unfortunately we
have spent millions on heart trans-
plants, this does not make the prob-
lem o f abortion easy to resolve.
5. I now come to the next state-
ment: y o u seem to me to be unjust
towards men, because a certain num-
ber o f them are actually involved
Feminist I s s u e s / S u m m e r 1980
did not have corsets with metal in-
serts and - - a supplementary detail
(?) - - the male worker earned twice as
much as the female worker.
Society on trial, yes; entirely with-
in "our topics": that of the sexes, and
not of social classes only.
"Populism": a literary school which
a t t e m p t s . . , to depict realistically the
life of the people" (French diction-
ary). The people, that is, the women,
who watch television, where Human-
ity is shown to the people by men:
scientific progress, medical progress,
they are told about. How to express
the suffocation of a woman, pregnant
against her will, before the display of
this "science" which is refused to
women? I am speaking of the politics
of science, and particularly of medi-
cine: that which punishes women
a) by refusing them the existing
techniques for the free disposal of
their bodies, but also
(b) by granting less money for
research into new techniques (of di-
agnosis and care) for women's ill-
nesses than for the class of men of the
ruling class; because the totality of
women is part of the human group
that is evaluated as less important
economically (see on this subject An-
toinette Chauvenet, "Biologie et ges-
tion des corps," in Discours biolo-
gique et ordre social, [Paris: Seuil,
1977]).
(p. 58) Oh those nasty statistics
which are unjust to men! It is esti-
mated that at present 20% of alimo-
nies are regularly paid (2 in 10 again a
Mathieu
with children, others pay alimony
and sometimes in very dramatic con-
ditions. I could cite you the case o f a
young boy with whom I am con-
cerned who was a clerk, and was
divorced f r o m a young bourgeois
w o m a n . . , and who pays her about
300/0 o f his already very meager salary.
I also think that f o r the propriety
o f your article you can easily exclude
the anecdote at the bottom o f p. 14
about the driver who cut in on a
woman.
6. I continue on p. 15. It is my wish
that you will suppress the second
paragraph which begins with the
words: "Today the best way to esta-
blish social p o w e r . . . "'
You refer there to a racist position
which is not generalized, and in every
way, in m y opinion, you depart here
f r o m your subject.
7. I also ask you to suppress the last
three lines which in m y opinion add
nothing.
65
detail, right?). And since in 85% of
the circumstances, it is the divorced
woman who has the charge of the
children, one does not wonder any-
more for whom the conditions are
dramatic.
Oh, the bourgeois women who
exploit their husbands! (Cf. Christine
Delphy, "Nos Amis et Nous," Ques-
tions Fbministes 1, which will appear
in a forthcoming number of Femi-
nist Issues).
(p. 58) Where is the lack of pro-
priety? In my article or in the male
sex? Moreover, the latter persuades
itself, and persuades us, that vio-
lence against women is "anecdotal."
(cf. Jalna Hammer, "Violence et con-
trole social des femmes," Questions
Fbministes 1, which will appear in
Feminist Issues 2). I have spoken of
deadly cowardice, because it is afact.
(p. 58)
1. Yes, it consists of a racist posi-
tion.
2. Yes, it is "generalized."
3. The ideology of the biological
nature of women is, alas, completely
"within the subject." If it was up to us
to get out of it, we would do it
willingly.
(p. 59: " . . . men with long hair are
called p a n s i e s . . . ) These words of ill
repute always shock our refined intel-
lectuals! But we know that it doesn't
take much for even "refined" men to
shower us with these terms. And I
speak here of words, but what about
blows (even from "comrades" of "the
66
8. I would make the same sugges-
tion concerning the paragraph on
p. 16 which deals with the possession
o f the penis and its assimilation to the
infant. All this Freudian phraseology
is in my opinion of little u s e . . .
9. p. 17, the statement devoted to
the present medico-pedagogical vul-
garization appears to me (to tell you
the truth) poorly founded, and I
wonder up to what point you've had
the opportunity to personally study
this problem, which I have done
twenty years ago. It is indisputable
that the child benefits much more
from a family milieu: I would also
add that there are women who have
(you will explode perhaps) a mater-
nal instinct which moreover appears
Feminist Issues/Summer 1980
Left" against feminists and homo-
sexuals)?
(p. 59)
1. Perhaps not veryuseful Freudian
phraseology, but how effective,
alas.
2. Phraseology which I precisely
try to oppose by recalling that there is
in ideology a more significant biolo-
gical fact than the question of the
penis: it is the fact of childbirth,
which, by a sleight of hand, is
equated with reproduction, permit-
ting woman to be thought of as the
only support of the species. Because
the equation between penis and in-
fant is based not only on the negation
of the sex of the woman, but especial-
ly on the merging of the concept of
childbirth and that of reproduction
(cf. Nicole-Claude Mathieu, "Pater-
nit~ biologique, maternit~ sociale
• . ." in A Michel, ed., Femmes, Sex-
isme, Socibtbs [Paris: Presses Univer-
sitaires de France, 1977]; to appear in
English as a Sociological Review
Monograph).
(p. 59)
1. Every woman has had the op-
portunity to "personally study" - -
because it concerns her - - the pro-
blem of this so-called scientific state-
ment (the necessary presence of the
mother with the young child) which is
more than anything else a moralizing
norm destined to make only woman
bear this constraint.
Notice that this "personally" with-
out a doubt follows from the "Miss"
in the beginning of the letter. Because
Mathieu
very early in certain little girls, and
perhaps there would be good grounds
for moderating your excessive posi-
tions.
10. At the bottom of p. 18, I think
one can oppose the virtuous wives
and mothers to mistresses, but not
use the word whore. Your opinion of
present society and notably of the
male consensus is in my opinion
perfectly unjust.
11. Finally, I have no objection to
keeping your ending, but I continue
to think that biology plays a role
which you tend to minimize.
12. I want to make it precise that I
am for total equality between men
and women, for freedom of concep-
tion, freedom to terminate undesir-
able pregnancies, that I understand
perfectly the motivation which pushes
67
while any man, especially a "doctor,"
feels capable of judging the need for
mothering, no woman has the right
to unless she can push forward at
least three kids!
2. Notice also how the exclusively
maternal care of which I speak in this
paper is turned into the "family mil-
ieu." If there was any need of confir-
mation, there it is.
3. As for the maternal instinct of
little girls, all the same there are many
things written on the differential so-
cialization of the two sexes in this
regard - - since the doctor studied the
problem, twenty years ago.
p. 60; "Society thus a b a n d o n s . . . "
Where is the consensus of present
society? In the cocoon of elegance
(and of bad faith) or in the street, in
bed, in these words about "women"
by which men vent their hatred or
drunkenness? We live it, but we are
mistaken, said the doctor. Cover your
faces, brothers, in front of our "un-
just opinions." Apparently only the
solemn psychoanalysts and porno-
graphic novels have the right to
"show" these words.
N-C.M.
68 Feminist Issues/Summer 1980

you to write at certain moments as

a pamphleteer, but as scientific di-
rector o f this newspaper, I can only
envisage the publication (that I do
wanO o f your text ifyou judge the sug-
gested modifications to be legitimate
and acceptable.
"'Please accept, dear Miss Mathieu,
the assurance o f my devoted senti-
ments.
Doctor K . . . . '"

Notes

i. In French all the terms in the left-hand column are masculine, and the terms in the right-
hand column are feminine. (Tr.)
2. The Pantheon is a monument in Paris where national heroes are buried. (Tr.)
3. The absence of relationship between language and designated reality has been widely
demonstrated by linguistic research.
4. Nevertheless, when a foreigner arrives somewhere, it is not inevitably his/her sex which will
first be identified. When an anthropologist arrives among a very isolated population he or she can at
first be classified as "dead" (a ghost) or as "nonhuman."
5. Such cases are mentioned notably in Robert J. Stoller, Gender: On the Development o f
Masculinity and Femininity (New York: Aronson, 1968).
6. Robert J. Stoller, "Fails et hypotheses. Un examen du concept freudien de bisexualitY,"
Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse 7 (1973).
7. Robert J. Stoller, op. cit.
8. Not to mention the biologists themselves who are discovering more and more about the
extraordinary complexity of the mechanisms and factors (genetic, neuro-hormonal, etc.) of sexual
differentiation.
9. Margaret Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (New York: Dell
Publishing Co., 1971), p. 259.
10. Ibid, p. 259.
11. Mead also notes that, on the other hand, with the Arapesh and the Mundugumor (societies
where personality is not principally defined in terms of sex), she did not find homosexuality. One can
propose here two interpretations, which are not contradictory: on the one hand, that the statistical
increase of homosexual behavior is a direct result of the sexual politics of a society (when the sexes are
socially so ~contrary," they cannot meet); on the other hand, that in a society which does not,
contrary to ours, pay desperate attention to the difference between the sexes, a behavior defined by us
as homosexual, even if it exists, is simply not "seen," because not socially visible, not essential in the
categories of knowledge and morality.
12. On the fact that divorce is only, for women, the continuation of the state of marriage, see
the article by Christine Delphy, "Continuities and Discontinuities in Marriage and Divorce"in D.M.
Leonard Barker and S. Allen, eds., Sexual Divisions in Society: Process and Change (London:
Tavistock, 1976).
13. Margaret Mead and James Baldwin, A Rap on Race (Philadelphia and New York: J.B.
Lippincott Company, 1971).
14. Today the distinction between "legal" and "illegal" abortion, with the charges it involves,
like the material and moral complications imposed on women who want to abort, allows things to be
such that this could be written in 1974: "The Well law of January 17, 1975, allows some abortions in
hospitals: 24,000 legal abortions in six months, while there were 800,000 abortions a year when it was
Mathieu 69

banned! What are the other women doing?" (Questions pratiques sur la conception et I'avortement
[La Crime (MarseiUe), 1976, supplement to #49]).
15. In previous centuries one spoke of God's law; since the nineteenth century one speaks of
biology whether it concerns sex, class, or race. Thus the ruling class has justified the lesser access of
workers' children to education by the ideology of ~natural aptitudes ~(See No~lle Bisseret, Education,
Class Language and Ideology [London, Boston and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979],
chapter 1). It is also how racist ideology uses the physical characteristics of the minority as a "mark"
guaranteeing the permanence of a socially founded difference (see Colette Guillaumin, L'idbologie
raciste. Genbse et langage actuel [Paris and the Hague- Mouton, 1972]).
16. One should however read the book by Philippe Ari~s, Centuries of Childhood(New York:
Penguin, 1973); and his article, "Le role nouveau de la m~re et de l'enfant dans la famille moderne,
"Les Carnets de l'Enfance/Assignment Children" no. 10 (UNICEF, 1969).
17. See, for example, Maud Mannoni, L'enfant arribrb et sa mbre (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1961) and Bruno Bettelheim, The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the
Birth of the Se/f (New York: Free Press, 1967).
18. Even in socialist societies, where the equality of the sexes is theoretically part of the official
norms (and where undeniably progress has been made in this direction), the sharing of domestic and
child rearing tasks remains a major stumbling block, as is shown in the article by Andr~e Michel,
"Relations pr6maritales et conjugales dans la famille urbaine en Pologne, Russie, et Bi~lorussie," Les
Temps Modernes (1974) 337-338.
19. We should not count on psychology textbooks to enlighten us on this matter; the chapters
on "identity" are silent on the incidence of socially imposed sex. The same is true of a number of social
psychology textbooks.