Understanding Biology ≠ Biological Essentialism

Anyone who has critiqued, or even dared to question, the ideology of the transgender movement likely has been accused of being a “biological essentialist.” A guest post by Robert Jensen

The most recent episode of this in my life came when a friend read the chapter in my new book about the trans debate and told me that I was advocating “a mistaken position of ‘biological essentialism,’ that biological sex is absolute,” and denying the “evidence of ‘gender as a spectrum.’”

It’s common in these debates for people to use the terms sex (a matter of biology) and gender (a matter of social norms) in confused and confusing ways. More on that later. Let’s start with the comment about essentialism, which many people assume to be a very bad thing, even if they don’t define it clearly.

Here’s how I have been writing about this for the past decade, since my first article on transgenderism:

There are two human sexes, along with a very small percentage of people born intersex, with what are now called DSDs (differences of sexual development). Human reproduction requires male and female gametes, sperm and ova. Gamete size (sperm are small, ova are big) is a coherent marker of one’s role in reproduction, and hence of one’s sex. When it comes to reproduction there is no third sex, nor is sex on a spectrum. If that’s essentialism, then basic biology is essentialist.

Discussion of gender takes us out of biology and into the many different ways that societies have developed norms and roles for male and female, creating expectations and/or demands for behavior based on definitions of masculinity and femininity.

That all seems pretty clear to me, but not to everyone. So, let me try an analogy to age.

I am 66 years old and I am unambiguously male. I was born in July 1958, and I do not have a DSD condition.

Neither of those statements is essentialist. They are descriptions of observable realities, using objective categories (years since my birth, and my potential role in human reproduction). I will never be younger than I am today, and I will never produce ova nor have the physiology that makes bearing a child possible. (Yes, I know that not all females can or will bear children, but at issue is the way male and female physiology determine one’s potential role.)

Essentializing age or sex involves assertions that certain activities are inappropriate or impossible for me because of my age or sex. For example, someone telling me “you can’t lift that heavy box because you are too old” would be invoking age essentialism. I may not be able to lift the box, but that would be a question of my strength, which can’t be read directly from my age. Someone telling me “you shouldn’t take care of infants because men can’t be nurturing” would be invoking sex essentialism. I may not be good with infants, but that would be a question of my temperament, which can’t be read directly from my sex.

When people make assumptions about capacities based solely on age, we call it ageism. When people make assumptions about capacities based solely on sex, we call it sexism.

Sexist claims about the alleged limitations and deficiencies of women, long used by men to keep women subordinated to male needs and desires, are so common that feminists coined the term gender to distinguish social norms from biology. Sex is a stable biological category, and gender is a social category that varies depending on time and place.

A few obvious points about this analogy: Sex is a binary, male or female, with a very small rate of anomalies described as DSDs, while age is a continuous variable with an upper limit somewhere beyond 100 (the oldest known person to date died at 122). Depending on time and place, there are various stereotypes for different ages, just as there are various stereotypes for male and female, but there is no analogous term for gender in descriptions of age that I’m aware of.

An important caveat: This analysis does not deny that the differences between young and old or male and female sometimes can be relevant.

At 66, I cannot do strenuous physical labor for as long as I could when I was 16. The physical realities of aging mean that I have less stamina. Many capacities, such as memory, change over time, though not in ways that can be predicted in every individual. But patterns can be identified. One could describe the average loss of stamina and changes in memory retrieval in people as they age, though individual capacities will vary.

As a male, there are obvious things I do not have the capacity to do, including menstruation, gestation of a fetus, and lactation to feed an infant. That is not controversial (or shouldn’t be). But what of other possible patterns of difference between male and female that are not so obvious?

The physiological differences in reproductive organs and hormones between male and female bodies are not trivial—reproduction is central to any organism—which raises a reasonable question: Given the obvious differences, could there also be discernable differences in intellectual, psychological, or moral attributes between male and female humans that are attributable to biology? That is, could male and female humans think, feel, or make judgments differently not just because of socialization but because of physiological differences? Is there a pattern in these human traits that would allow us to say that, on average, male and female humans are likely to differ in ways that are relevant to how we organize a society? These questions are about patterns and averages; there’s no reason to think that every male would differ from every female in the same ways.

Most advocates of patriarchy (that is, institutionalized male dominance) assume that those differences are significant, which conveniently leads to such conclusions as men are “natural” leaders because they have various traits and abilities (perhaps certain types of intelligence and greater assertiveness) that women lack. Feminists reject those patriarchal claims but vary on the underlying question—some reject the possibility of any differences beyond reproduction and basic physiology, while some are open to the question.

I’m open to the question, but I don’t think we have the research tools that allow us to make definitive assessments about intellectual, psychological, or moral differences between males and females. These are interesting and relevant questions but that doesn’t mean we have the capacity to answer them. Given thousands of years of institutionalized male dominance, we should be careful not to assume such differences always exist, but it is plausible that they might. It is neither sexist nor essentialist to wonder about the question.

Whatever one thinks of my analysis here, nothing I have argued is essentialist, unless acknowledging basic biology is essentialism. Accepting biology is crucial not only to bring greater clarity to the political debate but also to help us improve the treatment of people who experience gender dysphoria. A postmodern-inflected rejection of basic biology doesn’t help anyone deal successfully with that emotional distress.

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Robert Jensen, an Emeritus Professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics from Olive Branch Press. His previous book, co-written with Wes Jackson, was An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. To subscribe to his mailing list, go to http://www.thirdcoastactivist.org/jensenupdates-info.html or email him at rjensen@austin.utexas.edu.