IB Philosophy 8.3.1 Nature of Gender Notes

The Distinction Between Sex and Gender

1. The Unit 8 overarching question, "Are the constructs of masculinity and femininity inherently oppressive?," requires first understanding what gender is. This topic examines whether gender is a natural fact about human beings or a social construction that could be organised differently.
2. The distinction between sex and gender is one of the most important conceptual tools in contemporary philosophy. Sex refers to biological characteristics (chromosomes, hormones, reproductive organs), while gender refers to the social meanings attached to those characteristics: the roles, behaviours, and identities associated with being masculine or feminine.
   1. This distinction was articulated by Ann Oakley in Sex, Gender and Society (1972), building on earlier work by psychologist Robert Stoller. The core claim is that biology does not determine the social roles assigned to men and women.
   2. The fact that women bear children (sex) does not logically entail that women should be primary caregivers or confined to the domestic sphere (gender). In some cultures men are the primary weavers while in others this is considered exclusively women's work, showing that the social role assigned to a physical capacity varies entirely by cultural context.
3. The sex/gender distinction serves a critical function: it strips away the illusion that gender roles are natural, showing that what feels like a biological necessity is actually a social arrangement that could be otherwise. If gender is constructed rather than given by nature, then the inequalities built into gender roles are not inevitable but open to challenge and transformation.

Biological Essentialism and Its Critics

1. Biological essentialism is the view that sex determines gender: that masculine and feminine characteristics are natural expressions of biological differences. On this view, gender roles reflect inherent differences between male and female natures.
   1. Men are held to be naturally more aggressive, competitive, and suited to public life. Women are held to be naturally more nurturing, cooperative, and suited to domestic roles.
2. Critics of biological essentialism point to the enormous variation in gender roles across cultures and historical periods. If gender were determined by biology, we would expect to find the same roles everywhere.
   1. Instead, what counts as masculine or feminine varies dramatically across the world, suggesting that gender is shaped by cultural forces rather than built-in biological drives.

The Complexity of Biological Sex

1. Even the category of biological sex is more complex than a simple binary. Intersex conditions affect approximately 1.7% of the population.
   1. The existence of intersex people challenges the assumption that sex itself is a clear, binary, and unambiguous biological fact.
2. Anne Fausto-Sterling argued in Sexing the Body (2000) that even our understanding of biological sex is shaped by social assumptions about gender. Scientists decide which biological features count as defining someone's sex, and those decisions reflect social beliefs about gender, not just neutral facts about the body.
   1. When intersex infants are born, medical teams routinely assign them to one sex category through surgical intervention. These decisions reveal that what counts as "male" or "female" is not simply read off the body but determined by social assumptions about what bodies should look like.

Beauvoir and the Social Construction of Gender

1. Simone de Beauvoir made the foundational argument for gender constructionism (the view that gender is not a biological given but something shaped by society) in The Second Sex (1949): "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." This claim, explored in detail as a prescribed text in 10.11, means that femininity is not an innate condition but a social achievement: something imposed on female-bodied individuals through upbringing, education, and cultural expectation.
2. Beauvoir argued that throughout history, men have positioned themselves as the Subject (the default human, the norm) while women are cast as the Other (the deviation, the secondary, the one defined in relation to man). This gap is not natural; it reflects a power structure maintained through social institutions, religion, law, and cultural representation.
3. The process of "becoming" a woman involves internalising a set of expectations about how to behave, what to desire, and who to be. Girls learn femininity through family, schooling, media, and peer interaction.
   1. They are taught to be passive, accommodating, and attentive to appearance in ways that boys are not. This socialisation is so thorough that it comes to feel natural.