Revisiting Anne Fausto-Sterling's 'Sexing The Body'

I read this book a couple of years ago, but recently some of her writing has come up in various discussions I've been having. I'll admit that when I reviewed my notes from a few years ago that I didn't entirely agree with her arguments when I read Sexing the Body at the time.

However, it was in reading this response to the book, I found myself re-examining my notes and re-evaluating things in the light of what I know and understand today.

At the time I read "Sexing the Body" a couple of years ago, I was well immersed in reading a bunch of somewhat unrelated work by Judith Butler, and my disagreements with Butler appear to have significantly coloured my understanding of Fausto-Sterling's work at the time.

However, looking at it today, I find myself thinking that there's a fundamental point that I agree with Fausto-Sterling on - namely that the current models for describing physical gender are far too limited for the realities that we are gradually, but persistently uncovering. Gender is about the only part of medicine which is absolute - we are categorized as "male" or "female" at birth and so it must remain for all time.

The clinician's response is to suggest that a model of gender that is a continuum removes any meaning from the term Intersex, rendering it unusable for diagnostic purposes. I agree that this will be a significant problem for clinicians - when an entire spectrum of variation arguably describes the notion of Intersex, the term Intersex ceases to be terribly meaningful.

But, this is hardly a new phenomenon in the world of diagnostics. The concept of gender identity has changed dramatically in the psychiatric literature since Harry Benjamin started researching transsexuality in the 1940s. Over 3 editions of the DSM, we have seen the concept evolve from describing fetishistic crossdressing, eventually to include transsexuals, and in the DSM IV, the GID diagnosis is surprisingly broad - providing diagnosis covering a wide range of cross-gender experiences.

However, Fausto-Sterling is not entirely arguing from a clinical, or biological standpoint. She is integrating in significant amounts of social and political discourse into her position. While the clinical categorization of someone's gender may become significantly complicated by a model which describes physical gender as a spectrum, we must also recognize the social and political aspects of gender, and that is where a spectrum is a much more important and powerful tool.

What a spectrum model does to clinicians is force the use of objectively correct language for each individual case. Someone who has Klinefelter's Syndrome, and someone who has Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia cannot simply be categorized as "Intersex". This means that a more precise level of diagnosis and tracking will have to be undertaken - not a bad thing in the least.

Socially, however, this presents a much stronger foundation upon which to rest the conversations about the social and political aspects of gender that are ongoing parts of our cultural evolution. First of all, it takes the notion of biological determinism out of the picture. It removes the weapons of exclusion from all of the interested parties in gender discussion. The radical feminist that argues that MtF transsexuals aren't really women because they cannot bear children (I'm vastly oversimplifying the argument here, but I do find it ironic that the RadFem argument against transwomen boils down to the same biological determinism that feminism has fought for decades) Fundamentally, biology is then recognized as sufficiently plastic to accommodate a wide range of gender experiences and behaviours - and none of those should be seen as erasing anyone else's experience.

By taking biology somewhat out of the discussion, we can then move into a world of discussion social gender in its own right without the noise in the background of the internecine warfare that goes on between the various factions. It has always been clear to me that Feminist theory is on very solid ground when it is working from the context of the social constructs that are a significant part of our gendered life experiences - it has typically fallen apart quite badly when it has attempted to describe the underpinnings of gender at the level of biology and identity.

The real issues with gender in our society today exist as social issues - whether it is roles, expectations or demands placed on members of either sex. Feminism as a movement was born out of the recognition that our society had developed along patriarchal lines for centuries, and how that evolution was marginalizing half the population.

The treatment of both Intersex and transgender people in our society has arisen in part on the heels of feminism, and in part out of a recognition that there are groups where the imposition of "normal" as it applies to most of the population doesn't work so well. Marginalization and discrimination are rampant, and ill-informed treatment at the hands of medical professionals is all too common for both of these groups.

Appropriate treatment remains a problem for both IS and Trans communities. A more precise sense of diagnosis and classification will in fact work to the advantage of both groups. A more broadly based model of gender should permit greater individual autonomy with respect to treatment decisions, since each case must be examined individually. Hopefully, this will also have the benefit of making it easier for parents to move beyond the often panic/worry related treatment decisions that are so often made before an IS child is ready to make their own decisions.

I've argued before that when we are talking about humanity, it is important to view our attributes along the lines of spectrums - primarily because absolutes inevitably seem to encounter problems with exceptions. Where I disagree with Fausto-Sterling is in the interaction between mind and body. I am not at all convinced by the two constitute an "indivisible whole", which implies that they are distinct, but intertwined entities. Somehow, I'd rather leave this particular conversation open ended until we have a better understanding of how DNA and the complex chemistry that we all carry within us interact - to assume that mind is distinct from body feels a little too "pat" an answer, especially in light of the growing body of evidence that has raised the whole notion of transsexualism as being a subset of IS - a concept that a mere few years in the past would have seemed quite laughable. Then again, I haven't seen the bulk of neuroscience in the last decade or two that might lead towards a clearer understanding of the interaction of the body and the mind (or the intersection of). There is no doubt in my own experience that the chemistry of the body influences our minds in surprising and unique ways that should not be overlooked.

A Transgender Critique of Butler's Notion of Gender

[Preface Note September 2025]:  This essay is about Butler's conceptualization of gender as expressed in her book "Gender Trouble".  Since that time, Judith Butler has substantially changed her position and understandings of the subject.  What follows is relevant in the context of what Butler wrote in the past, but does not reflect where they are today.  

This essay is a response to the the following question raised here:

I think I might grasp what you're alluding to here -- especially with regard to the social dimension of gender, and the interaction between biochemical input and gender realization -- but I'd very much like to hear what I assume will be your much more articulate assessment of what the Butlerian gender model leaves out.

I draw my understanding of Butler's view of gender primarily from her book "Gender Trouble" (available as an e-book), and "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution". (and yes, I have read her more recent book "Undoing Gender" as well)

In Performative Acts and Gender Constitution, Butler argues as follows:

Further, gender is instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self.

(* an aside - this will not be a detailed dissection of Butler's paper *)

This is significant to me because it foreshadows Butler's view of gender as primarily existing as a social construct, to some extent influenced by biology.

Significantly, if gender is instituted through acts which are internally discontinuous, then the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief. If the ground of gender identity is the stylized repetition of acts through time, and not a seemingly seamless identity, then the possibilities of gender transformation are to be found in the arbitrary relation between such acts, in the possibility of a different sort of repeating, in the breaking or subversive repetition of that style.

There is a surprising irony in Butler's position. On the one hand, she dances around the concept of Gender Identity as having an individual reality, and then settles in a place where she ultimately ends up rejecting the concept, subsuming it under the social and biological aspects of gender.

Because there is neither an “essence” that gender expresses or externalizes nor an objective ideal to which gender aspires; because gender is not a fact, the various acts of gender create the idea of gender, and without those acts, there would be no gender at all. Gender is, thus, a construction that regularly conceals its genesis.

The problem I have with Butler's model is that it fails to successfully encompass a few key aspects of cross-gender (and in particular transsexual narratives).

First, there is a common dimension to many transsexual narratives (not all, but enough to be significant) that includes an awareness of being "built wrong" from an exceedingly early age - often before any socialization or 'gendered behaviour' is evident.

Second, is the dyssonance that transsexuals express with regard to their lives in their pre-transition gender roles. If gender were solely a matter of social construct informed by physical biology to some degree, it becomes extremely difficult to square the model with the expressed dyssonance. In Butler's model, there is no room for dyssonance. In some respects, Butler appears to try addressing the issue as one of 'discontinuity', but she fails to appreciate that while a transsexual's pre-transition identity may be externally continuous, that is not the internal experience.

Third is the situation of David Reimer. I do not claim that Reimer was a transsexual - such was unquestionably not the case, but his case is important and revealing of some key aspects of transsexual narrative.

It is very significant that when John was being raised as Brenda, he fought against being treated as a girl at every turn. Physically, and to the best of his knowledge, John had always been Brenda - and yet refused to be Brenda - not just in respect to social aspects of gender, but was also horrified by what puberty would bring. (artificially induced or not)

From a transsexual's perspective, Reimer's narrative is undeniably consistent with the 'built wrong' narrative so common among the transsexual population. There is no doubt in my mind that this should be seen as independently validating the notion that gender identity may exist and is not fully informed by either social or physical cues. (as an aside, I suspect that where there are some interesting phenotype variations that are being identified among transsexuals in more recent years.

If, as Butler proposes, gender is defined primarily in the context of social and physical cues, then one might imagine that the John Reimer story would have had a much different outcome. As it is, eventually Brenda learned the truth of her history and chose quite consciously to transition to living as John. A train of events that substantially calls into question a model of gender which is based solely upon social and physical factors. (* Butler attempts to address John Reimer's story in Undoing Gender, however my reading of her on that matter leads me to believe that she fails to understand some key aspects of the situation. *)

Similarly, I do not believe that Butler's model explains the dissonance that so many transsexuals describe as overwhelming their pre-transition lives. Butler's model suggests strongly that if one's body is physically of one gender, and the social signals received are consistent with that gender, then everything should be good, right? So why is that transsexuals so consistently report something dramatically different? Further, why is it that therapists have found that transsexuals are generally not responsive to the kinds of corrective therapy techniques that work well in other situations where cognitive dissonance is reported?

Where I fundamentally disagree with Butler is in her rejection of the notion of an abstract, but essential attribute of 'gender identity' as distinct from our physical and social gender behaviours. The problem that Butler's model faces is in the narratives of thousands of transsexuals - and those narratives reveal a significant incompleteness which leads many radical feminist thinkers to engage in tactics such as erasure in order to sustain the perceived validity of Butler's model in the dimensions where it has greater strengths - namely in the understanding of the socially constructed aspects of gender.

Dan Brown, Meet Leonard Stern

In yet another case of writers blathering on without actually bothering to do real research into what they are saying, we have Leonard Stern from the Ottawa Citizen (a CanWest publication, so the stupidity really isn't a major surprise).

Mr. Stern is off on a tirade about Caster Semenya (as if the poor girl's privacy hasn't been violated enough lately) ... and he gets the facts and reality of things wrong in so many ways.

He starts off with the following attempt at a partisan swipe by trying to dismiss the questions around the complexities of gender testing by complaining about "postmodernism" in social sciences:

A scientist, Sokal was fed up with the nonsense that passed for "cultural studies." He wanted to test the leftist intellectuals who edited Social Text by seeing if they could recognize an extreme parody of the sort of thing they regularly published. So he penned a ridiculous article, making it deliberately indecipherable, save for the passages where he pandered to the postmodern view that there is no objective truth and everything is culture-bound.

Social Text published the piece -- whereupon Sokal revealed his hoax, the editors were humiliated, and the relativist Left began its retreat into irrelevance.

Having done that, he then attempts to go on to dismiss an article critical of the whole hulabaloo over Semenya by writing:

But the postmodern monster likes to emerge from its crypt every so often, as it did this week in an article in the Nation, the foremost magazine of the American left.

The article is about Caster Semenya, the 18-year-old South African runner who won the women's 800-metre race at the world track and field championships in August. For a variety of reasons -- her muscled physique, masculine jawline and the ease with which she beat the competition -- there was speculation that Semenya might not be a woman.

(Here's the article from "The Nation": Caster Semenya: The Idiocy of Sex Testing)

Up to this point, besides being a little snide, Stern hasn't done too badly - then his argument proceeds off the rails.

The Nation article denounced the medical effort to classify Semenya. Authors Dave Zirin and Sherry Wolf say sex testing is not just "puritanical" but "idiotic," because gender is "socially constructed." Semenya's physiology is her "private business." As for the concern Semenya, who is black, has masculine features -- well, that's just the "racism of Western standards of appearance."

Ummm...that's not really what the writers in The Nation were getting at Leonard. The article is really recounting the amazing degree of sexism that women in sports have been subjected to - not just in recent history, but throughout the 20th century. They are also setting the stage to explain to you just why our handling of Intersex conditions in society is so badly broken:

When Martina Navratilova dominated women's tennis and proudly exposed her chiseled biceps years before Hollywood gave its imprimatur to gals with "guns," players complained that she "must have a chromosome loose somewhere."

This minefield of sexism and homophobia has long pushed female athletes into magazines like Maxim to prove their "hotness"--and implicitly their heterosexuality. Track and field in particular has always had this preoccupation with gender, particularly when it crosses paths with racism. Fifty years ago, Olympic official Norman Cox proposed that in the case of black women, "the International Olympic Committee should create a special category of competition for them--the unfairly advantaged 'hermaphrodites.'"

For years, women athletes had to parade naked in front of Olympic officials. This has now given way to more "sophisticated" "gender testing" to determine if athletes like Semenya have what officials still perceive as the ultimate advantage--being a man. Let's leave aside that being male is not the be-all, end-all of athletic success. A country's wealth, coaching facilities, nutrition and opportunity determine the creation of a world-class athlete far more than a Y chromosome or a penis ever could.

That's quite different from what Mr. Stern seems to think was being claimed. But we're not done with him just yet, because he goes on to sink to new depths of ignorance and misrepresentation:

A political agenda lurks behind the argument that there are no such things as "male" and "female." The same agenda is behind assertions -- contrary to science -- that there is no such thing as "intelligence" or "race." By promoting a relativist view of the world, postmodernists seek to erase difference.

No, actually that's not true either. What we have learned over the last hundred or so years is that human beings exist on a continuum in many dimensions. The mythical concept of race becomes pretty meaningless when one considers the population in North American society - there are people with so many diverse mixtures of ancestral background that you couldn't call them "black", "white", "hispanic" or anything else without being substantially incorrect. Physical sex is just as ambiguous, with a myriad of different variations resulting from chromosomes, hormones, genetic variation and whatever other factors. While the vast majority of humanity falls into the male/female dichotomy, there are enough individuals who fall into the Intersex space that we can't simply - and objectively - ignore their existence.

But surely, Zirin and Wolf would not allow a man to lurk about in the women's locker room at the local gym on the grounds that he says he "perceives" his gender identity as female. If Usain Bolt were suddenly to announce that he is really a woman inside, I'd wish him all the best but I'd be against allowing him to compete in the women's 100-metre dash.

Now Mr. Stein has fallen into the trap of the ridiculous. First of all, he dredges up the infamous "bathrooms" argument used by right wingnuttia as a bludgeon against transsexuals. Then he makes an equally stupid statement about Usain Bolt - a statement which ignores entirely the reality that there are already clear rules of engagement for situations like that which would exclude Mr. Bolt from competing until he had undergone GRS, and been on hormones long enough to eliminate whatever gains might have been had from testosterone. Sorry, Mr. Stein, your reality cheque just bounced.