Sexing the Body (Parts)

**UPDATE** 3/12/11 Based on a terrific, challenging, important conversation I had tonight at FogCon, I’m going to amend this blog post to include some insights, caveats, and new opinions.  I’m putting this update on now before I go in, just so you know to expect some changes.  I won’t delete any of the original post, but plan to add my own commentary on it where it’s relevant.  I very much welcome comments on this post, acknowledging it could be considered somewhat incendiary depending on where you’re coming from.  Some of my positions I’ve since changed (what a difference a day makes!) and some are the same, though I’ll try to be clearer in my explanation.  Expect an update on Monday, if I have the energy after hanging out with SF/F geeks in a hotel for three days. . .  ****

Dean Spade‘s written an interesting essay called About Purportedly Gendered Body Parts (pdf).

While I appreciate the spirit and clarity of Spade’s argument, I disagree a bit.  Below is my response.

I’d like to thank His Most Excellent Sex-Geekiness, Charlie Glickman, for setting my antenna on this essay and Mx. Spade. Dean Spade, I like your brain.

And, for the record, I became inspired to write this at 1:30am, so please forgive any typos, non sequiturs, or really dumb jokes.

Our language and means of discernment derive from difference.

“This jacket?” “No, the denim one.”

“Sam from accounting?” “No, Sam from PR”

We will never stop categorizing people by their differences, nor should we. Otherwise we wouldn’t know if we needed to get a Pap Smear or a prostate exam (or both) (or neither).

I think we’re at the point where we need to rein in the deconstruction of our language. I realize the importance of the practice, and I think it’s gotten us to a really good point. I appreciate Spade breaking down some of the more pervasive language issues we have, particularly around bodies, those frustratingly uncategorizable bits of fleshy whatnot we all tote around.

I do, however, take exception with Spade’s argument that a phrase like “male body parts” asserts a biological gender. It doesn’t assert a biological gender. It asserts a biological sex.

Male and Female are not genders. We know that sex and gender aren’t the same thing. The latter is a construct based on a set of socially-sanctioned behaviors that theoretically, and often tenuously, conincide with our sex organs. The former is a discernment usually made by a doctor based on the configuration of our sex organs at birth. A lot of the time, sex is fairly clear cut. Sometimes, it’s really not.

Pretending that a binary doesn’t exist doesn’t do anyone any good.

Many things fall into binaries, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. By definition, binaries represent differences at their most stark. Right and Left, North and South, Day and Night.

These binaries represent the plantonic ideal (a phrase loaded with value judgements of its own, clearly) of “it-ness,” whatever that is. Despite the existence of these binaries, the fact is, it’s only noon and midnight for a very small fraction of the day (one could even argue that it’s noon for the same amount of time it’s midnight or 9:06 or 4:17). Most of the time it’s afternoon, or twilight, or dawn, or brunch.

The trick is understanding that just like night and day, most individuals don’t live on the extremes of gender, either.

All sorts of people- men women, bois, transwomen, genderqueers, intersexed folks- can have male sex organs. That doesn’t change the fact that a penis is male, just as you can’t say that 3pm isn’t “day” no matter whether you’re in Iceland in December or Ethiopia in July. Testicles, and vas deferens, and seminal vesicles are male. You could refer to them as Type A organs or “testosterone prominent glands” or something in Latin or Boogledaboops. That’s not going to change what they are, and that they’re different from female Booglabips. It’s society, not science, that suggests male bits must belong to men.

Why are we reconflating “male” with “man” and “female” with “woman?” We know that’s not the case, so why are we recreating it in our language by ceasing to use male and female in hopes of destroying ideas of masculinity and femininity?

Male ≠ Man ≠ Masculine   and     Female ≠ Woman ≠ Feminine

It’s not the binary that’s evil. It’s the value-judgements applied thereto.

Misogyny doesn’t exist because there are women and men in the world. It exists because there’s an added value statement attached to that difference, establishing a hierarchy of worth. Should we be attacking the idea that there are differences between people, based on sex organs along with loads of other things? Or should we be focused on why the value judgements exist, and work to eradicate those?

But while we’re talking about opposites. . .

If we’re going to eradicate “male” and “female,” then why not “cis?” After all, am I really the “opposite” of a transwoman? (Cis- means “same,” in contrast to Trans- meaning “across or on the other side of”) Doesn’t Trans suggest “other” therefore asserting a norm? Doesn’t that sound a little loaded and clunky, too?

This goes back to an ongoing discussion I’ve had with one of the most wickedly awesome gender queer folks I know. We’ve disagreed on my gender identity because I see myself as cis, and they see me as genderqueer. I’m happy with either, to be honest. (Genderqueer is the new queer, right?) They say I’m genderqueer because in my gender, I don’t present (even close) to the Platonic ideal of “woman,” to which I must say, “Who the hell does?” Not 96.5% of the women I know, at least.

What about the term reproductive organs?  If I’m sterile, isn’t it kind of inaccurate to refer to my uterus as a reproductive organ, if I’m never going to reproduce?  I’m not saying this to be snarky.  I want to illustrate that this plea for accuracy doesn’t get us very far in the scheme of things.

I may not win any style points for this one, but

Saying “bodies with uteruses” isn’t necessarily always more specific. As in, “Hello Dr. Smith, I have a body with a uterus, and some fallopian tubes, and a cervix, and a vagina, and ovaries, and labia, and I would like to have them examined, please, particularly the cervix, with that swabby thing, if you don’t mind.”

Why is that more accurate than saying, “I have some female sex organs, despite the fact that I’m a dude. So let’s get with the Pap-smearin, please.” ?

No matter how much distance you put between people and their body parts in our languaging, you’re never going to erase the fact that they’re just squishy bits. And that for a lot of people they tend to come in (ahem) packages. A lot of people that have uteruses have fallopian tubes and vaginas and g-spots and clitorises, too. A lot of them are women. Some of them aren’t. Some of them are sometimes. What does the gender of the uterus-bearer have to do with the fact that a uterus is female? Female doesn’t equal woman.

Why can’t we assert our differences and have that make sense? Instead of attacking feminists and queers for their attempts and approaching a language that includes everyone, why can’t we focus on removing the stigma from our perceptions of vaginas and prostates as symbols of value in themselves? We don’t have to erase the vagina – female link to assert the fact that anyone can have one. In fact, I suggest it’s more sexist and transphobic to erase the female / male terminology in asserting that transmen can’t have female parts or transwomen can’t have male parts.

I appreciate our attempts at erasing the societal influences on our language that support systematic oppression. There is a point, however, where we’re spinning our wheels. I think we’ve gotten there, and I hope we have the balls to use our deconstructing skills on more pernicious issues.