Linda Nicholson

Interpreting Gender

1. A postmodern argument on the question of how to interpret the meaning of "gender". The main line of argument is that of all too familiar notion of postmodernism that all meanings are historically embedded and result out of the political discourse among various interests, so that no meanings can be accepted as merely given, natural or absolute. The authors argue that the concept of gender must be conceptualized in just that fashion, arguing against what the author has called the "feminism of difference" or the "biological foundationalism", which comes rather dangerously close to resembling biological determinism.

2. What, specifically, is this "biological foundationalism" that the author is arguing against? The author notes that this doctrine tended to be the dominant strand within the second wave feminism that matured in the 60s and 70s, as well as the majority of radical feminism doctrines. The author characterizes these doctrines as basically being the social constructionist, meaning that they perceive of "gender" as a product of cultural construct rather than resulting out of innate biological differences. Yet, at the same time the author points out the existence of tacit assumption underlying these doctrines that there are "foundations" of biological differences that predispose males and females to possess certain collective differences that set each group from the other distinctively. The author notes that for the proponents of this doctrine, the social construction of gender operates only on top of this assumption of original, biological differences - hence her labelling of the doctrine as "biological foundationalism". Such diverse works in feminism as Rubin's "Traffic in Women" and Chodorow's "Reproduction of Mothering", as well as Robin Morgan's "Sisterhood is Global", and Janice Raymond's "A Passion for Friends", are identified as predominantly operating under this doctrine.

3. Now, insofar as this doctrine tends to assume that there are universal and cross-cultural traits that can be identified as the defining characteristic of female gender collectively, the author attacks it as ahistorical and ethnocentric. Once again, the author's argument is instead of using such doctrines, we would have to adopt the view that sees the meaning of words as not deriving from some specific characteristics but founded through the elaboration of complex network of characteristics. In turn, the meaning of words is derived by combining the quite arbitrary and political choices of meanings out of the possible "complex network of characteristics". Identifying the historical processes of how this social construction of the meaning of gender is the task we must do, instead of using the doctrine that assumes of the existence of cross-cultural characteristics common to women.

4. It is also interesting that the author traces the origin of biological foundationalism to what author calls the "materialist metaphysics" that developed in Europe from the 17th century onward. Briefly, instead of determining the nature of the "self" theologically, it increasingly came to be determined by the material and physical features of the body - rendering the body as the central defining characteristic of what it means to be a "man" or a "woman". This new metaphysical doctrine in turn tended to support the newly arising notion that male and female bodies are qualitatively different, rather than merely the difference in the degree of completeness or development. The body, the author says, became the explanation of the differences in the "self" men and women embody, rather than mere mere "markers" of the differences.