"The only thing I know is that I know nothing"- Socrates

Q1. A team of scientists wants to discover how many genders there are. How should they proceed?

 

The process of discovering how many genders there are is a process of enumeration. To count something one first needs to define it, and mark its boundaries as a discrete thing. That which is being counted must also be stable, and not change during the process of counting itself. So, if scientists were to count how many genders there are, they would have to define gender as a discrete, bounded concept. There is a theoretically simple, albeit practically difficult, positivist solution to this question. To begin with, gender and sex would have to be treated as a mutually inseparable concept-couple. This is an underlying assumption in most positivist theories of gender. It is seen as the socio-psychological expression of the physico-biological essence of sex. Here, sex is an aspect of reproduction.

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In the strong version of this theory, there can be only two sexes – male and female – characterised by their opposed and complementary sexual organs. The sexual organs are accompanied by their associated hormones, which in turn, get expressed in the sexed-body. Any deviation from this binary is seen as an abnormality or aberration. In the weak version of this model, sex is seen as a position on a horizontal scale based on quantities of male and female hormones. Most concrete biological-individuals would coalesce around the two extreme poles of this scale (spectrum), while there would be some who would be scattered across the horizontal space. The two poles would be the male and female positions, while everything in-between would count as being intersex.

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Both these models consider sex to be the base on which arises the psycho-social concept of gender. The strong version draws a direct connection between the biological categories of male and female and the social categories of man and woman. Just as all that falls outside the male/female binary is considered to be an abnormality (or even disease), gender-identities that do not fit within the man/woman binary are considered to be aberrations (or even perversions).

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The weak version of the positivist theory of sex/gender eschews the politically incorrect language of normality and disease. Since it treats sex as a statistically quantifiable position on a hormonal scale, it can admit to the existence of many more genders, other than man and woman. In theory, scientists could use this model to statistically analyse the characteristic male and female hormones of a large population, and look for clusters around a range of hormone-levels. Each such cluster could be counted as a separate sex and, therefore, a separate gender.

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This is constantly done in medical sciences to identify ‘normal’ ranges and deviations. For instance, the categorisation of LDL Cholesterol levels, by quantitative ranges – optimal (less than 100 mg/dL), near optimal (100-129 mg/dL), borderline high (130-159 mg/dL), high (160-189 mg/dL) and very high (above 190 mg/dL). One could create a similar classificatory table for gender, by assigning quantitative ranges of male and female hormones. It would then just be a matter of fine-tuning the number of categories to be considered, and the outer-limits to each range, to come up with a ‘scientific’ number of genders.

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This is not as far-fetched as it seems. One of the biological explanations of autism relies on a similar quantitative model of hormonal excess. It is argued that male hormones result in systematic attitudes, while female hormones express themselves in empathetic attitudes. Excessive male hormones are seen to result in the suppression of empathy and an overdeveloped ability to be systematic, or the typical attributes of the ‘autistic savant.’ The corollary of this is that excess of female hormones leads to overly emotional states, typified in the high-strung ‘hysterical woman.’ Creating a gender scale according to hormone-levels would simply be taking the model to its logical end.

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Indeed, it is possible to even modify the gender scale, and the number of genders, for each racial type. This is done for various other markers, such as height and weight. In theory, one could have separate surveys which could throw up different hormonal clusterings. Asians, for instance, might show a higher number of ‘genders’ than Caucasians, while the latter might show a larger number of clusters towards the male-hormone pole, thus displaying a larger number of male-type genders.

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What is theoretically relevant here is not that this method could throw up a very vast number of ‘genders’, but that it is possible to count them, in a bounded manner. The method also satisfies another specific condition for enumeration, that of the categories being stable across time. What will change is the number of people within each gender, while the number of genders themselves will remain constant. Of course, this too, will be subjected to periodic revisions, just as the components of various economic indices are revised according to changing economic trends. It is possible to conceive of periodic scientific commissions that would review the current number of genders - adding some, retiring some.

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But that is where we run into problems. There is abundant evidence from both history and contemporary societies to prove that gender has nothing to do with sex. It is an identity constructed within a very specific field of power, that of the social valuation of reproduction. Reproduction is a biological object-in-itself, and is ontologically prior to, and independent of, its representation within discourse. How it is appropriated within ideology is overdetermined by its diachronic and synchronic political value. I use the term political to point to a field of power, within which gender is produced and articulated. To state this differently, gender is the constitution of the concrete sexed-body into a ‘subject’ of the ideology of reproductive-power.

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However, here again, we are faced with a problem, a need for a qualification. Ontologically, the act of sexual intercourse leads to reproduction. This occurs irrespective of whether we are able to comprehend this connection and represent it to ourselves symbolically. Due to the time lag between the sex-act and its reproductive result, it is not necessary for societies to recognise an epistemological connection between the two. In fact, it is possible to argue that the ideologies of reproduction are absent as themselves and only present as sexuality and desire. Gendering, sexuality, and the knowledge of reproduction do not necessarily coincide with the (supposed) binary of sexed-bodies. We have numerous examples of this in folklore, and in anthropological reports of various non-modern communities.

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It is tempting to look for an originary explanation of gender, by tracing its global history. It is irrelevant for our task here, since, for us, the point of departure is the historical present. It should suffice to say that gender categories are produced within interrelated systems of power and representation. Indeed, the discursive formation, which seeks to represent the supposed pre-discursive (ontological) gender-category, itself constitutes the subject of the discourse. The process of representing gender brings it into existence.

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If this were to be true, can we even speak of universal, cross-cultural, genders? Once again, to do that we would have to define the constitutive aspects of the gendered ‘subject’. This is entirely different from defining the sexed-body through the positivist science of biology, and positing a mimetic relation to gender. To define gender in the field of power/knowledge, we will first have to describe that field itself and the relationship(s)

of dominance and subjection that prevail within it. Along with that we have to identify the elements that constitute sexuality within that field of power.

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I would submit that the most widely accepted genders, or gender roles, of man and woman, are effects of the domination/subjection inherent in the discourse of reproduction and sexuality. Within patriarchy, which is globally dominant now, the man is dominant and the woman is subjected. These are not neatly bounded within the sexed-bodies of males and females, respectively, but are specific material practices within specific institutions. Thus, we speak of a masculine woman who is assertive in the office, or of a feminine man who cooks and is ‘good with kids’. Each of these attributes have power-values attached to them, not intrinsically, but through their specific role in the overall structure of society and the dispersal of power therein.

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I would argue that psycho-social attributes that patriarchy assigns to the woman-role, are, paradoxically, also critiques of the power-relations that inhere patriarchy. On the one hand, the woman-role, as a set of attributes/attitudes that are associated with subjection, is crucial to the reproduction of the global ideology of patriarchy. On the other, by being the polar opposite of the expression of dominance (the man-role), it undermines the moral strength of patriarchy itself. This is not only expressed in the woman’s gender-identity, but also in sexuality in general. Gender attitudes, as presented in the man and woman roles, culturally produce sexual desire itself – such as the ‘brooding’ man, or the ‘demure’ woman.

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A woman or a man, or any other non-binary gender, is a complex combination of various attributes that are produced within the discourses of sexuality and reproduction. They not only cannot be standardised across cultures, but also cannot be fixed for eternity within any specific culture. The very purpose of counting genders would be to classify a population, for the purposes of governmentality - to reproduce, and hence represent, the gendered subject within juridical structures. This is necessary even in the discourse of rights - reproductive-rights, right to one’s body, and rights adhering to the state’s gender-based affirmative actions.

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As I have argued, gender-roles are produced within a field of domination/subjection, which in turn affects (or even constructs) sexuality and desire. This means that all gender-identities are marked by the field of power within which they emerge, and get reproduced. Any assignation of gender to a sexed-body would amount to imposing

conditions of subjection to concrete individuals. This leaves self-identification as the only just and democratic way to enumerate genders and mark their boundaries.

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This is not to argue that self-identification is, somehow, an expression of free-will. It, too, is a product of power/knowledge. However, in democratic societies, based on universal human rights, and the sovereignty of the individual citizen, self-identification is strategically the most equitable and just way to juridically recognise gender and give it a legally-established place in discourse.

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This means that ‘scientists’ will have little to do, except periodically keep track of the number of genders that are self-identified in any given society. This is not as onerous as it seems; neither is it arbitrary. Historically, censuses have done precisely this when it came to identifying linguistic and religious communities. This was an important part of the project of colonialism in, what is today, the third world. It is inevitable that there will be overlaps, and different cultures will have different names for the same gender attributes. It is important to let these overlaps be, and record their differences, because when similarities are privileged over differences, the crucial residue of identity gets submerged.

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Today, Wikipedia recognises more than a hundred genders. As local discourses on gender get exposed to each other, this number may reduce (or increase), based on the translatability of identities, from one culture to another. This will be important in revising and refining gender-based rights within the context of international human rights. It is better for ‘scientists’ to err on the side of finding more bounded genders, than subsume them under larger sets, so that their actions do not submerge the differences of marginalised cultures.

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References:

 

● Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble. Routledge, 1990.
Baron-Cohen, Simon, The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain. Penguin, 2003.

● Eliot, Lise, ‘Neurosexism: the myth that men and women have different brains,’ Nature, 566, 27 March, 2019, pp. 453-454. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x, accessed on 14th June 2023.

• ●  Malinowski, Bronislaw, Sex and Repression in Savage Society. Routledge, 2004, (1927).

• ●  Althusser, Louis, ‘Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (Notes towards an investigation)’, Lenin and Philosophy, NLB, 1971.

• ●  Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality (Volume 1): The Will to Knowledge. Penguin Classics, 2020 ( 1980).

• ●  Wittgenstein, Ludwig (von Wright, GH, Rhees, R, Anscombe, GEM, (eds.)) Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Basil Blackwell, 1964.