Apologies for the misspelling, Kenn.

The gender/sex question is a tricky one for two reasons:
First a little background - the prevalent logic of thoughtful people is that gender and sex are two distinctly different things - essentially that one is social (and therefore willful) and the other biological (determined).
The two problems with this are questions concerning changes in biological understanding.
The understanding of what makes a man and what makes a woman is not as cut and dry as we might imagine - in fact it has changed. At one point in history it has to do with body parts. At another point it has to do with what those parts do. Thomas Laqueur's "Making Sex" does a good job of covering the history of these changes. What DOESN'T change is the taxonomy of male/female. Why? Well the reason obviously isn't biological. All of a sudden "sex" is more about language than it is biology.

The next point starts off with transgender/transexual identity and looks into the future. The rapid advance of genetics research is going to lead to an entirely new era of body modification. Remember when piercings were an oddity? Now imagine having your brain linked to the internet. Yes, many scientists foresee the near future as the moment we will gain the ability to easily and safely modify our bodies in as of yet unthought ways. And that process will get cheaper and cheaper with time. So what will male be then when it is a choice made by the parents or even the individual him/herself? And could we not imagine a total diversification of sexes - where male and female may be more common than others, but certainly not the only options?

So my reason for trailing off earlier in my thinking about gender and sex is simply that sex is not the 'hard' science we often think it is. It is actually both historically and futuristically, a construction of choices. And if it is such a matter of choice, would that choice not carry with it personality characteristics? And what might we call these personality characteristics if not gender?

Here's a smart article forwarded to me by SHOBAK (shobak@yahoogroups.com)

LIP
If Women Ruled The World: Nothing Would Change
by Lisa Jervis
09.15.05

he biggest problem with American feminism today is its obsession with
women.

Yes, you heard me: It's time for those of us who care deeply about
eliminating sexism within the context of social justice struggles to
stop caring so damn much about what women, as a group, are doing.
Because a useful, idealistic, transformative progressive feminism is
not about women. It's about gender, and all the legal and cultural
rules that govern it, and power—who has it and what they do with it.

A transformative progressive feminism envisions a world that is
different from the one we currently inhabit in two major and related
ways. Most obviously, this world would be one in which gender doesn't
determine social roles or expected behavior. More broadly, it would
also be one in which people are not sacrificed on the altar of
profit—which would mean universal health care, living wages,
drastically reduced consumption, and an end to the voracious marketing
machine that fuels it. The link between these two elements is clear:
Both gender and race, as they currently exist, are socially enforced
categories that shore up a consumer capitalist system by providing
opportunities for both marketing and exploitation.
But much of the contemporary American feminist movement is preoccupied
with the mistaken belief—call it femmenism—that female leadership is
inherently different from male; that having more women in positions of
power, authority, or visibility will automatically lead to, or can be
equated with, feminist social change; that women are uniquely equipped
as a force for action on a given issue; and that isolating feminist
work as solely pertaining to women is necessary or even useful.

The influence of femmenist thinking is broadly in evidence today, from
casual conversations in which arrogant know-it-alls are described in
shorthand terms like "typically male" and "how very boy" to nonprofit
groups that exist to promote the leadership of women—any women—in
business and politics. It manifests itself in the topics that are
considered most central to feminism. The problems feminism should be
trying to solve are not caused primarily by a dearth of women with
power. The overwhelming maleness of the American population of
congressional representatives and physics professors, CEOs and
major-newspaper op-ed columnists, is a symptom, sure, of a confluence
of economic, political, and cultural forces that devalue women's work,
denigrate our ideas as less important than men's, and discourage us
from aiming high. Would more women in high places signify a change in
that? Yeah. And that would be nice.

But any changes would likely be superficial: More women in high-paying
corporate jobs might mean that women would finally be making more, on
average, than 76 cents to the male dollar, but it would do nothing
about the 35.8 million people under the poverty line—and it's
definitely not going to transform the values of profit maximization
that keep them there. It wouldn't even necessarily mean that large
numbers of women were being paid wages closer to their male
counterparts'. Like the wage gap itself, it would be a symptom of
power at work, a signal that women are being allowed more access to
the benefits of a destructive value system. If we're fighting just for
that access on behalf of women, without mounting a challenge to it,
then feminism is, to borrow a phrase from Barbara Smith, nothing more
than female self-aggrandizement.

Furthermore, the most pressing issues facing women worldwide—slave
wages, inadequate health care systems, environmental degradation, the
endless war and surveillance society of Bush-era neo-conservatism, and
rampant corporate profiteering involved in all of the above—are a) no
less important to feminists just because they also happen to be the
most pressing issues facing men and b) directly related to the
particularly ruthless brand of global capitalism we're currently
living under.

This vulture capitalism would not magically disappear if women were in
charge of more stuff. Racism would not go away. Hell, sexism itself
would probably be alive and kicking. God knows the gender binary would
be stronger than ever. In short: The actual workings of power will not
change with more chromosomal diversity among the powerful.

Even if, to stick with our example, the wage gap were eliminated
through genuine equal pay for equal work, without a radical challenge
to the economic system that structures all of our lives, it would most
likely mean that men are now being paid as badly as women. (In fact,
the narrowing of the wage gap since 1979 can be largely attributed to
decreases in men's wages.) And while that certainly seems fair on its
face—if we all have to live under a shitty system, the burdens of shit
should at least be shared as equally as possible—as a political goal
it's an admission of defeat.

Let's take a quick look at some history. Femmenism is an outgrowth of
the deeply flawed and largely debunked philosophy of gender
essentialism: the belief that biology is destiny and that men and
women's bodily differences translate into universal and
unchanging/unchangeable gender roles and traits. Essentialist thought
dates back at least to the ancient Greeks, who saw men (of a certain
class) as smart, strong, noble citizens and women as unfit to take
part in intellectual exchange. Eighteenth-century philosophers laid
down the natural law, which dictated that women's childbearing bodies
rendered them natural caretakers and little else. To this effort,
scientists at the time contributed their data on things like skull
size to confirm women's lack of intellectual capacity. Similar modes
of data interpretation were also useful in "proving" that black people
were fit only for the hard physical labor of slavery and that poor
immigrant folks' criminal tendencies were evident in the shapes of
their heads. Today's version of this argument—with the same flaws in
evidence and interpretation—comes from the evolutionary psychologists
and brain researchers who assert all kinds of neurobiological
explanations for supposed gender differences in everything from verbal
skills to the propensity to cheat on a partner.

The first feminist activists, the suffragists and temperance women of
the 19th and early 20th centuries, sought to use essentialist thinking
to their benefit: Women, as the raisers of children and caretakers of
home and hearth, had a natural morality that could be brought to bear
in politics and against the social ills caused by excessive drinking.
Feminist essentialism grew up along with the movement as a whole, as
thinkers and activists in the '60s and '70s sought much-needed
recognition for undervalued "feminine" attributes like cooperation and
caretaking and as part of the struggle for gender equality. Feminist
essentialism reached full flower in the backlash-laden '80s, as
rigorous intellectual work exploring the behavioral effects of
gendered socialization—most famously, Carol Gilligan's In a Different
Voice—was broadly popularized, misinterpreted, and oversimplified as
nothing more than a call to reverse the cultural values placed on
essential male and female natures. Thus certain political and
intellectual circles came to valorize women as inherently nurturing,
peaceful, connected to nature, and noncompetitive, and to demonize men
as bellicose, unfeeling, and destructive.

It's important for me to pause for a minute and make a few things
crystal clear. First of all: Yes, gender difference exists. Of course
men and women often behave differently, see the world differently, and
have different political views—when you've been raised with
sugar-and-spice-and-everything-nice expectations and the knowledge
that (if you choose to sleep with men) you're just a broken condom
away from a lifelong responsibility, it tends to make you both more
empathetic and more likely to favor safe, legal, accessible abortion.
Duh. But such differences are neither automatic (as the evolutionary
biologists would have us believe) nor universal (as the cultural
essentialists assert).
Second of all, the forces I'm referring to as those that have led to
the problem of femmenism have been essential to both concrete feminist
political gains and to feminism's intellectual development. I am not
at all suggesting it's unimportant to call attention to the fact that
the Senate is only 13% female, to encourage society to recognize the
value of women's unpaid childcare labor, or even to rescue politically
neutral traditionally female pursuits like knitting from the pink ghetto.

Acknowledgement and discussion of culturally produced gender
differences is essential to dismantling sexism—but the line between
acknowledging cultural differences that demand examination and
allowing them to persist unchallenged is a fine one indeed. Femmenism
crosses it constantly.

And some of those alleged gender differences are easily disproved. If
women's maternal instincts and natural compassion will bring about a
kinder, more peaceful world, what's up with Condoleezza Rice? (It's
also worth noting that Madeleine Albright didn't exactly transform the
Clinton administration's foreign policy into a bastion of benevolence,
either.) If women were truly sympathetic to and cooperative with each
other, Ann Coulter's journalistic achievements would have made the
media less misogynist, not more. A woman was in charge of Abu Ghraib
when Iraqi prisoners were tortured by American soldiers; three of the
seven charged with perpetrating the abuse are female. Inherently
nurturing? Sisterly? Yeah. Sure.

More important, however, is that femmenist thinking threatens to drain
feminism of progressive politics—and, in many cases, of any politics
at all.
Take, for example, a 2004 book called If Women Ruled the World. The
changes this slim volume predicts would result from such ruling are
both serious ("we would all have health care") and silly ("business
would be more fun!"). A few might even be accurate ("equal parenting
would be the norm, not the exception"). But they are all assumptions
based on a fallacy: that (as the book's foreword asserts) "empathy,
inclusion across lines of authority, relational skills, [and]
community focus" are "values that women uniquely bring to the table."
This line of reasoning urges us to forget about forging the argument
that our current healthcare system is inhumane, profit-driven, and
inefficient. It gives us a pass on making the case for universal
healthcare as the best solution to skyrocketing costs and 44 million
of us without insurance. We won't need to do that if we can just get
more women in on that ruling-the-world game.

This tactic is taken up by quite a few feminist groups seeking to
influence the political landscape. One of these is the White House
Project, "a national, non-partisan organization dedicated to advancing
women's leadership across sectors and fostering the entry of women
into all positions of leadership, including the U.S. presidency." A
female president is a tempting goal to pursue, an important symbol of
gender equality, and, yes, someone whose inauguration will surely make
me kvell even if I find her policies repugnant. But having a woman in
the White House won't necessarily do a damn thing for progressive
feminism. Though the dearth of women in electoral politics is so dire
as to make supporting a woman—any woman—an attractive proposition,
even if it's just so she can serve as a role model for others who'll
do the job better eventually, it's ultimately a trap. Women who do
nothing to enact feminist policies will be elected and backlash will
flourish. I can hear the refrain now: "They've finally gotten a woman
in the White House, so why are feminists still whining about equal pay?"

Other groups carry the "if only women ruled the world" belief to a
wistful, apolitical extreme. Take the organization (and I use that
term loosely) Gather the Women. GTW is "a gathering place for women
and women's organizations who share a belief that the time is now to
activate the incredible power of women's wisdom on a planetary scale."
One of its purported goals is to "celebrate women as global
peacemakers." However, they "seek not to change minds but to connect
hearts." Just how anyone is supposed to be a global peacemaker without
trying to change anyone's mind is never articulated. Then again,
neither is anything these folks do, except have an annual conference
with panels such as "Divine Goddess and Leadership."

If the problem were confined to fringe, mushy-thinking
non-organizations, it wouldn't even be worth writing about. But even
groups doing effective, important, progressive feminist work often
fall prey to essentialist thinking. Code Pink's Call to Action
contradictorily declares that women organize for peace "not because we
are better or purer or more innately nurturing than men but because
the men have busied themselves making war. Because…we understand the
love of a mother in Iraq for her children and the driving desire of
that child for life." Translation: It's not that women are naturally
more nurturing and peaceful than men—it's that women are naturally
more nurturing and peaceful than men.

This covert embrace of essentialist thinking (and the intellectual
dishonesty that it requires) manifests in many of Code Pink's central
tactics. One of the group's major activities has been sending
delegations of parents and others close to either 9/11 victims or
enlisted folks to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran. The delegations have
brought humanitarian aid and drawn attention to horrific conditions
caused by American military activities. But their very premise—that
being a mother of a soldier is the best platform from which to speak
out against the war—ensures that the resulting arguments are a plea
not to cause unhappiness by sending a kid off to die rather than a
principled stance against unjust and corrupt use of force. The former
isn't even a compelling moral argument, much less any kind of a
political analysis. And when real political analysis is slipped into a
femmenist framework, it's easily neutered: In a keynote speech at the
2005 Center for New Words Women and Media Conference, Code Pink
cofounder Medea Benjamin detailed the ways in which their peace
delegates' comments to the media were edited to remove commentary
critical of the war and of the Bush administration so that only worry
over their children remained.

Women's eNews, a news service that, in the words of its mission
statement, "cover[s] issues of particular concern to women and
provide[s] women's perspectives on public policy," is yet another
promising project that would be far more effective if it weren't
thoroughly mired in femmenism. While it is indeed imperative for the
news media to recognize women as sources, experts, and commentators
more than they currently do, an approach like Women's eNews' is
patently unhelpful. Its May 9, 2005, cover story is indicative.
Headlined "Mothering From Afar Extracts Heavy Price," and accompanied
by introductory text noting that "as a growing number of Latin
American women migrate to the US, many of these women will spend the
[Mother's Day] holiday far from their children—some of whom have
forgotten them," the piece does little more than tug at readers'
heartstrings. When Women's
eNews defines "women's concerns" as Ana and her plans to migrate north
to better support her and 8- and 10-year-old sons, but not the
underlying political economy that determines her decision to seek work
in the US, it actually works to shore up the "feminine" realm of home,
hearth, and kids.

Likewise, stories like "Female Dems Say Social Security Is Their
Fight," "Women Pioneer Biofuel to Save Mother Earth," and "Record
Number of Female Soldiers Fall" tightly circumscribe what women are
supposed to care about. If Social Security were gender neutral, it
would hardly be any less of a women's issue. It's not because "we've
got kids and we are thinking generations ahead of ourselves," as one
of the sources in the biofuels article asserts, that feminists bring
an important perspective to the environmental movement. And it's damn
sure not primarily because female soldiers are dying that we should be
paying attention to the war.

But the problem with femmenism goes even deeper than these strategic
missteps. Because it's founded on gender difference, it retains a
strong investment in gender divisions. Not only will we never
dismantle gender discrimination as long as gender divisions are
philosophically important to feminism, but we'll end up reproducing
the gendered oppression we're supposedly fighting against.

Femmenism seeks a circumscribed set of qualities for womanhood the
same way that conservative, gender-traditional patriarchy does. Gender
conservatives see motherhood as women's natural role; femmenists see
motherhood (or the capacity for it) as the ultimate political
motivator. Gender conservatives prefer to see women in the role of
helpmate ; femmenists see women as uniquely equipped with superior
relational skills. Gender conservatives justify male aggressive
behavior by virtue of its being an inherently male character trait;
femmenists criticize male aggressive behavior for the same reason. But
what about those women (and there are many) who have no interest in
parenting, who have crappy communication skills, who would rather
compete than cooperate? Are they not women? More to the point, are
they bad feminists?

This sort of gender essentialism can be particularly divisive when it
comes to women's and feminist activism, because it polices the
boundaries of womanhood; implicitly or overtly, femmenist
organizations, groups, and events require a certain degree of
"femininity" for participation. Nowhere is this problem more apparent
than in the tension between certain corners of the feminist world and
trans and genderqueer movements. Femmenist thinking practically
demands distrust of and even hostility toward gender-variant people.
There's simply no room in a movement overinvested in cherished notions
of who women are and how they behave for the myriad gender identities
that exist in our world: transsexual women who know they were born as
women even if their genitals said otherwise; biologicially butch dykes
who prefer male pronouns; intersex folks who choose not to pick a
side; and many, many others.

But it's the obliteration of rigid gender categories themselves, not
any kind of elevation of the feminine, that is our best hope for an
end to gender discrimination. And the fragmentation of gender that
trans and genderqueer folks embody is our best hope for that
obliteration. It's exactly this challenge—the way that transgender and
genderqueer movements are forcing us to ask deeper questions about
what woman- and manhood are, how femininity and masculinity are
defined and determined—that stands to enrich feminist thought and
action immeasurably.

In spite of my generalizations, femmenism as I've been discussing it
here is far from monolithic, and, like feminism as a whole,
encompasses people and ideas with disagreement and contradictions
aplenty. It includes folks as wide-ranging as liberal feminist
organizations such as the White House Project and separatist crowds
like those who attend the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. There are
valuable aspects of each of these branches of feminism, and critiquing
their femmenist tendencies does not have to mean rejecting everything
about them. But it's equally important to recognize that those
femmenist tendencies are deeply antithetical to where feminism needs
to go in order to stay effective and vibrant, to eliminate gender
discrimination at its core, and to fight for a world where human
rights are more important than profit.

If we continue to believe, hope, or even suspect that women, simply
because they are women, will bring pro-feminist policies with them
into the corridors of power, we will be rewarded with more powerful
women in the mold of our aforementioned warmongering secretary of
state; anti-choice, anti–civil rights, anti–minimum wage DC Circuit
Court of Appeals nominee Janice Rogers Brown; and business-as-usual
corporate execs like the women occupying top slots at Avon, Xerox,
Citigroup, ChevronTexaco, Pfizer, MTV, Procter & Gamble, Genentech,
the New York Times Company, and more. If we allow the fact of our
femaleness to motivate our objection to, say, the war on Iraq, we are
forced into asserting that a feminist position is one of simple
concern for the deaths of civilian women and children. We will have to
abandon opposition to the war on more substantively feminist grounds:
because it involves killing people in order to support an
unsustainable way of life for overentitled Americans and secure
profits for the corporations that depend on our energy-guzzling,
buy-crazy ways for their revenues.

If we cling to any gender categories at all, we lose out on tremendous
liberatory potential. In other words, the half-witted, sentimental
obsession with women that is femmenism causes sloppy thinking,
intellectual dishonesty, and massive strategic errors. Thanks to the
tremendous feminist work of the last century, we have the opportunity
to leave that obsession behind. If vital feminist work is going to
continue, we need to seize it.

insurance auto