SEX AND

REPRODUCTION
Feminist/Queer Science Studies and
the Politics of Biology

April 10, 2017

Jonathan Banda
Graduate Student
Science and Technology Studies
FEMINIST & QUEER
STS
A (Very) Brief Intro
Feminist
movements
Feminist
theory/studies
& science
Questions of representation

Questions of knowledge:

How does scientific knowledge

represent dominant interests
(masculine)?

How can we make “better”

knowledge?
A “better”
science
Would reflect on its history and
politics

Would more fully account for the

various (including marginal) lived
experiences and perspectives

Would reject any notion of “pure”

objectivity and recognize the
inseparability of domains of
nature/culture, social/scientific etc.
Queer
movements

Political and social rights,

including health
Representation/equality
White/middle class
Focus on gender/sexuality

Image: Rolling Stone

Michel Foucault
HETEROSEXUAL MATRIX (JUDITH BUTLE
SEXUALITY/
BINARY SEX GENDER IDENTITY
ATTRACTED TO:

Male Masculine Women

Female Feminine Men

Construction of Scientific Knowledge
SEX ITSELF
Sex and Genomics
the history of attempts to establish the biological essence of sex difference and
the physical and mental inferiority of women follows a similar trajectory. Each
time a new research program emerges, the claim is made that at last the
difference between the sexes can be located, measured and quantified, and that
the differences…are greater than ever previously imagined (225).

Genomics is transforming social relations. It is remaking categories of identity—

concepts such as ‘blood relations’, racial or geographic ancestry, citizenship,
and subjectivity—as well as notions such as what it is to be normal and healthy,
what rights we have to privacy and to healthcare, and what responsibilities we
have to others to maintain and pursue information about our health (216).
X & Y Chromosomes
(turn of 20th Century)

X was initially labelled the ‘odd’ or

‘accessory’ chromosome

Believed sex was a continuous

(spectrum) rather than a discontinuous
(binary) trait

Sex was seen as flexible and open to

influence by the environment

Made researchers reluctant to assign

the chromosome as a genetic
determinant of sex
Chapter 4: A New Molecular Science of
Sex
What were some of the political/social drivers for the
growth of sexual science in the 1920s?
How were the X and Y chromosomes subsequently
gendered in the public and scientific consciousness?
Gender-critical science

Gender ideology is dynamic, persistent, and ever-present in genetic and genomic research
on sex and gender; it cannot be surgically or permanently excised from the science.
...The question is not “how can we get all of this gender politics out of genetics?’ but
rather “how can we enlarge and critically hone our ideas about gender, which are central
to our scientific theories of sex?” We should not seek a simple prescription for how
scientists should conceptualize sex and gender differences. Instead we should cultivate
a mode of ongoing critical and open-minded engagement, reflection, and dialogue
surrounding research on the biology of sex and gender. This is my hope for gender in a
genomic age. (227)