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Gender Constructions: The Politics of Biological Constraints

Genetic determinists about gender think that gender differences are a result of biologically, hard-wired differences between the sexes reflecting differential sets of attributes maximizing fitness in human pre-history. Radical social constructivists about gender deny that it has any biological basis. I explore a moderate version of social constructivism—genetically constrained constructivism—about gender tied to a socio-biological approach to gender differences. On this view biological factors interact with non-biological factors to determine gender. My aim is not to defend this view, but to show that it can accommodate social constructivists' main worries about the normative and political implications of genetic determinism about gender, viz.: that it falsely represents gender differences as unavoidable; that it embodies stereotypical conceptions of women and men; that it suppresses the possibility of individuals who are neither happily classified as men, nor as women; and that it canvasses constraining scripts about how individuals ought to live their gendered lives. Ultimately, those of us who share these worries should welcome a reconciliation of genetically constrained constructivism and the normative concerns the worries just mentioned reflect, since it implies that the latter does not hang on the failure of the socio-biological research programme.