What Gender Are You?

The gender/sex category cannot be considered solely as a representation, an absence (in some languages this grammatical category does not exist) or as a linguistic opacity. If we were to refer to the means of information that is chiefly concerned with usage the dictionary- the first definition of the word gender (< lat. genus) is that of: kind, sort, class; race, stock, family; rank, order, species; manner. Michel Foucault offers a modality of rethinking the history of gender related to sex in a modern and Eurocentric context.1 Coming out of the heterosexual paradigm, and thus, rejecting the coherent and unitary concepts of meaning, the gender is not the social and cultural equivalent of the biological sex, but an independent topos determined historically and anthropologically as a system of relations between the subjects comprised by a certain context. In other words, gender is not inherited; it is not a fixed structure, but a variable pendent on time. Foucaults theory states that factual grammar of gender imposes a binary relationship between sexes, as well as an internal artificial coherence within every term of the pair masculine-feminine. The binary regularisation of the sexuality suppresses the subversive multiplicity of a sexuality that shatters the heterosexual, reproductive and medical and legal hegemonies.2 In her highly controversial work, Genul, un mr al discordiei. Feminismul i subversiunea identitii,3 asserts that the identity of each of us is a show played and directed by ourselves, in conformity with a number of criteria and norms which we receive or accept from the society we carry our existence in. However, we are not compelled to adhere to those standards. The true making of a gender, the plenary manifestation of identity requires subversion, mockery of trends and of already established norms and contempt of dogmas. Nevertheless, the act of subversion remains a personal issue instead of a group issue. We decide what we are (as far as gender is concerned), not what others are.

FOUCAULT, Michel, Drept de moarte i putere asupra vieii i a morii n Istoria sexualitii, Timioara, Editura de Vest, 1995, pp. 100/121 2 ibidem 3 BUTLER, Judith. Genul, un mr al discordiei. Feminismul i subversiunea identitii. Bucureti, Ed. Univers, 2002.

Considering that she fully masters the intersexuality of philosophy, of anthropology, of literary theory and of psychoanalysis, Judith Butler examines the issue of gender from an existentialist perspective, and thus, her theory develops a critique of ethic philosophy of gender (Later, Butler returned to the theory exposed in Gender Trouble4, protesting against its forced assimilation within theatricality, and travesty is one of the means of expression disliked by the author). Judith Butler analyses the traditional discourse concerning gender which always starts with an epistemic/ontological regime in support of the binary frame in which gender, hierarchy, and normative heterosexuality are conceived and are considered artificial by the author. The binary relation man/woman, as well as the internal stability of these terms, only raises issues to the extent that it does not comply with a heterosexual pattern, viewed as a general premise which conceptualises gender. The interpretation of gender destabilises the very distinctions between natural and artificial, depth and surface, interior and exterior. Is there one gender that people assume they have or is it an essential attribute about which, one can say about a person that is, as the question suggests: What gender are you?.5 Judith Butler continues by invoking some theories concerning gender: gender is the cultural interpretation of gender; gender is constructed culturally. In such a case, it is not biology that becomes destiny, but culture. While supporting a similar theory, Simone de Beauvoir brings up an overtone over the existing ones and says that gender is constructed; however, the formulation implies an agent, a cogito that somehow assumes the gender and could, theoretically, choose it. Beauvoir affirms that women become under an impulse of cultural nature and this clearly does not derive from sex. The body, as environment, is allotted a set of cultural meanings from the outside. We are not born; we become women - a process that has no beginning and no end. The term gender is open for interventions and reconsiderations.6 The way in which Beauvoir analyses the masculine Subject and the feminine Other, clearly situates it on the grounds of Hegelian dialectics and its reformulation by

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Ibidem. Ibidem. 6 BEAUVOIR, Simone de. Al doilea sex. Bucuresti, Ed. Univers, 1998

J.P. Sartre in Fiina i neantul. Beauvoir insists upon the fact that the body can be the instrument and the location of freedom; on the other hand, the sex is a hypostasis of gender that exists in order to represent a means towards freedom. Should we listen to Aretha Franklins song, written by Carole King, we are able to intercept the same idea: it disputes the naturalization of gender. Like a Natural Woman is a phrase suggesting that the natural is only obtained through analogy and metaphor. Thus, from You make me feel like a natural woman, without the pronoun you a denaturalised substrate would emerge. This fulfilment implies a differentiation between the two genders, invoking the Other to play a defining role. Hence, one belongs to one of the genders to the extent that one does not belong to the other, a formulation that assumes and establishes a certain restriction within the limits of the polarity mentioned above, comments Butler.7 Although, it would seem that to be a given anatomical structure is not a problematic issue. The experience of a cultural identity, or of a psychological disposition marked by gender, is considered a fulfilment. Social sciences refer to gender also in relation to the body, as a label of the biological, linguistic and/or cultural differentiation. In these last hypostases, gender may be viewed as a meaning assumed by a body (already) sexually differentiated, nonetheless, that specific meaning only exists if directly opposed to another meaning. The feminist theories invoke gender as a relationship or, to be more specific, a set of relationships as opposed to an individual attribute. Only the feminine gender owns specific marks; the universal person and the masculine gender are indiscernible, embodiments of some universal personhoods that transcend the physical body. The feminist-humanists may conceive gender as attribute of the person characterised as substance or core that denotes a universal capacity to reason, to deliberate in terms of morality and to use articulate language. In Irigarys8 opinion, the nominal grammar of gender as a binary relationship between two terms men and women and their attributes masculine and feminine is a sample of doublet which in reality, enshrouds the univocal and hegemonic discourse of the masculine reducing the feminine to silence. The intelligible genders are the

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BUTLER, Judith. op.cit. p. 40 IRIGARY, Luce. Speculum of the Other Woman, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1985, p. 66-73101103

ones that in a certain direction establish and maintain coherent and continuous relationships of sex, gender, sexual practice and desire. Discontinuity and incoherence are constantly produced and subjected by the very theories trying to establish causal and expressive bridges between the biological sex, the culturally appointed gender and the effect of both in manifesting desire through sexual practice.9 Monique Wittig revises the restriction imposed by the binary system on the sex that serves the reproductive purposes of a system belonging to the normative heterosexuality; the inversion of the aforementioned restriction would initiate a true humanism of the person freed from the restrictive chains of the sex.10 The annihilation of the erroneous perceptions of sex, gender and identity allows the Lesbian element to enter into discussion. Lesbian appears as a third sex which promises to surpass the restrictions imposed by the hetero-normative systems. The cognitive subject appears: the rehabilitation of the agent of the existential option as lesbian the only concept that exists beyond the sex categories they know.11 In his On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche defines gender as an identity which it is destined to represent. Gender is neither a noun nor a set of self-standing attributes. Gender is always a realisation and not a subject that could be considered as pre-existent to deed. The challenge to consider its categories outside the metaphysics of substance will have to take into account Nietzsches statement according to which, there is no accomplisher prior to accomplishment, will or becoming. In other words, there is no gender identity behind its expressions; this identity is built by the very expressions deemed to be its results.12 In an attempt to overcome the binary and unitary, gender represents as it is shown by the research on the concept a physical and/or cultural designation of the self, a complexity whose wholeness is permanently delayed; it never reaches its absolute of what it is in any given moment in time. Gender is approached as an open coalition, as an open ensemble that allows multiple convergences and divergences, without the blind submission to a normative telos of the closed definition. What being a woman or man means is not yet clarified by a phenomenological description (J. Butler).

Idem, Ce sexe qui nest pas un, Paris, Editions de Menuit, 1977, p. 131. WITTIG, Monique. The Mark of Gender, Feminist Issues, vol. 5, no. 2, 1985. 11 Idem, The Lesbian Body, Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1973 (New York, Avon, 1976) 12 NIETZSCHE, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals, New York, Vintage, ?
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The entity that possesses the gender is an effect, the object of a genealogical investigation that only draws the parameters of its ontological construction. From one point of view, it is better to say what gender is not in the present analysis: gender is not a construct; it does not have an illusory or artificial character; it is not opposed to real or authentic; it is not a binary plausible structure; it does not suggest that certain cultural considerations of gender replace reality. In reality, gender strengthens and expands its hegemony through a self examination.