I wrote: >>One important part of this discussion is the distinction between
"gender" and "sex." The way I try to deal with these terms is to see "sex"
in biological terms... <<
Doug writes: >You're lucky I'll spare you a long quotation from Judith
Butler on how "sex" and the "biological" are themselves discursively
constructed. But she has a point.<
Rod writes: >Thank you for sparing us. She is another of the idealist.
"Language is the only reality" school of metaphysical thinking. A firm
believer of the Humpty Dumpty theory of linguistics.<
I don't know anything about Butler, so I can't comment on her views. If
she's indeed one of the "language is the only reality" types, then forget
her. Doug, aren't all of the statistics you wield so well in LBO
"discursively constructed"? Does that mean that they should be flushed down
the toilet?
More importantly, I really don't like the kind of argument in which someone
says "But Authority X says you're wrong," where here X is Butler. I think
that the old bumper-sticker slogan "Question Authority" was quite valid.
Just because X was right about issue Y doesn't mean that he or she is right
about issue Z. Instead, tell us what logical argument X presented, what
kind of empirical evidence he or she mobilized, and/or what kind of
philosophical-methodological insights X had.
The sex/gender distinction (and the dialectic between them) was developed
by anthropologists (who of course used language and so constructed their
concepts "discursively"), many of whom were influenced by feminism.
Unfortunately, I can't give you a specific reference, since my books are in
boxes...
If we are to reject the sex/gender distinction, what is the alternative?
How does that alternative concept help us understand the relevant issues?
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine
