EDIT: This is super old. I didn't know much about transgender people or intersex people when I wrote this. Trigger warning for using the term "her******dite" and referring to trans* people as "transsexuals."
One thing I want to make clear in my essay, that I didn't go into because doing so thoroughly would require another essay, is the fact I am not basing my assertions on essentialist claims regarding the sexes. My aim in this note is not to persuade anyone of these nonessentialist ideas (which would, as I said, require another essay!) but simply to let fellow nonessentialists know where I stand. (If you have no opinion on "female"/"male" categories being based in nature, you don't have to read this note. I also wouldn't recommend reading this note before reading the essay).
Everything I talk about: pornography, men, women, yaoi, romance novels—these are all abstractions humans have invented, they don't exist as things in the real world. They are constructions to describe things in the real world. Porn, for example, is a abstraction we use to talk about many different pictures, moves and books. These abstractions are useful for talking about these issues, but we need remember that they are nothing more than that: abstractions.
I have very progressive ideas concerning sex and gender. I don't think “female” and “male” exist somewhere in nature—I don't there is an essence of either of these somewhere out there in nature. People distinguish sex from gender, stating the former is based on biology while the latter is one's identity—but in my opinion both are constructed. For example, we have imposed categories like “mammal” or “reptilian” on living organisms, but these are just methods we have organizing animals: we could use other means. There are people (her******dites, transsexuals) who do not neatly fit into the categories of the sexes. Just like there are animals that don't neatly fit into the categories we've made for them (platypus that has fur but lays eggs).
When I talk about “men” and “women" in my essay, I am talking about constructions in society. Eve Sedguick, a well-respected queer and feminist literary critic once stated, “the lines between gender are variable, but not arbitrary.” I work on this principle. Every society has its different constructions surrounding "male” and “female” and “feminine” and “masculine.” But these constructions are not arbitrary. Race, a similar construction that has no basis in genetics or nature, is another construction that has had very real material consequences for many people. We can't ignore these consequences. We can't ignore the asymmetrical market of bodies, the fact 70% of murdered women were killed by their male partners, that rape, violence, reproductive rights, and equal pay are things the people constructed as “women” still fight for. I do not argue anywhere in my paper anything based in the biology of men and women: I did use a quote from a study conducted about men's physiological responses to women, but one could still argue that due the plasticity of the brain, and the way people constructed as female are constantly portrayed in media, people labeled men (who are associated with the subjective point of view of patriarchy) have adapted to perceiving the other or women as tools in this way, as women have been reduced to commodities.
I recommend reading Nietzsche's “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” here, from which I derive my beliefs about language and abstraction.
You don't have to agree with me about the inessentiality of gender to agree with my essay; however, you don't have to be an essentialist to agree with my essay, either. My aim in this addition is not to convince anyone of these ideas, it's merely to let nonessentialists know that my claims do not rely on essentialism, and to remind them not to dismiss constructions and abstractions that influence our lives.
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