Why Gender? Towards an Integrated Model of Sexual Differentiation in Human Beings
Abstract
Behind all research into Gender lies a persistent question about why it is that the social construction of sexual differentiation amongst human beings seems to entail an almost universal inequality and subordination. Arguably, however, that question, ‘Why?’, is misconceived. This paper argues that we should not be searching for a general answer for the existence of something that is not a single entity or set of processes, whether we are talking about ‘gender’, or ‘sex’. What we need instead is to replace that dichotomy with a model that integrates these two areas of investigation.References
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. London & New York: Routledge.
Cannon, Walter B. 1942. “‘Vodoo’ Death”. American Anthropologist, 44: 169–81. Cealey Harrison, Wendy & John Hood–Williams. 2002. Beyond Sex and Gender. Lon-
don: Sage Publications.
Connell, Robert. W. 1987. Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics. London: Polity Press.
Dawkins, Richard. 2004. The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.
De beauvoir, Simone. 1949. The Second Sex, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972.
Delphy, Christine. 1984. Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women’s Oppression. London: Hutchinson. Translation by Diana Leonard.
Fausto–Sterling, Anne. 1989. “Life in the XY Corral”. Women’s Studies International Forum, v.12 (n.3), pp.319–31.
Fausto–Sterling, Anne. 1992. Myths of Gender: Biological Theories about Women and Men. New York: Basic Books.
Fausto–Sterling, Anne. 2000. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books.
Foucault, Michel. 1980. Herculine Barbin, Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth–Century Hermaphrodite. Brighton: Harvester Press. Translation by Richard McDougall.
Goffman, Erving. 1979. Gender Advertisements. London: Macmillan.
Kessler, Suzanne & McKenna, Wendy. 1978. Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.
Kessler, Suzanne. 1998. Lessons from the Intersexed. New Brunswick, N. J. & London: Rutgers University Press.
Kirby, Vicki. 1997. Telling Flesh: The Substance of the Corporeal. New York & London: Routledge.
Laqueur, Thomas. 1990. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambrid- ge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press.
Martin, Emily. 1991. “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Roman- ce Based on Stereotypical Male–Female Roles”. Signs, v.16 (n.3): pp.485–501.
Oudshoorn, Nelly. 1994. Beyond the Natural Body: An Archaeology of Sex Hormones. London & New York: Routledge.
Page, David; Mosher, Rebecca; Simpson, Elizabeth M.; Fisher, Elizabeth M. C.; Mar- don, Graeme; Pollack, Jonathan; McGillivray, Barbara; de la Chapelle, Albert, and Brown, Laura G. 1987. “The Sex–Determining Region of the Human Y Chromosome Encodes a Finger Protein”. Cell, December v.24: pp.1091–1104.
Sternberg, Esther M. 2002. “Walter B. Cannon and ‘Voodoo’ Death: A Perspective from 60 Years on”. American Journal of Public Health. October, v.92 (n.10): pp.1564– 1566.
Wacquant, Loïc.2003. Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
WalkerDine, Valerie & The Girls and Mathematics Unit. 1989. Counting Girls Out. London: Virago Press.
