Transcript John Money: The Plasticity of Gender

Philosophy of Law –2015
M.Bonfili
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major theorist of past century in sex/gender
debate
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introduced the term gender
Work on Intersex condition:
individuals born with undifferentiated sex
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cannot be identified as male or female and are
reassigned sex through surgery and
reconstruction
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sexual preferences
sexual orientation
gender/ sex differences
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Sexual Behaviors Unit Money: gathered many
case reports/ data to support his theories.
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in this context felt need for a single term that
would allow him to discuss the masculinity and
femininity of intersex
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Distinguishes between Gender and Sex
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Gender includes Sex, but is not restricted to it
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The term “sex” has multiple uses, all of which are
only attributed to the physical meaning of the
genetic, gonadal, hormonal, genital, morphological
condition or to the meaning associated with civil or
legal status.
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when studying the manliness and or
womanliness of intersex individuals
became clear need for an umbrella
term(general term)
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at that time the only term available was
sex, which Money found unsatisfactory
because of its use in language.
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body status(of the female/male sex)
person’s psychological status as masculine
or feminine(sexual identity)
patterns of social and intimate behaviors
considered appropriate to men and women
(sex roles)
Using the term “gender” he could discuss the
masculinity and femininity of the
intersexed.
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= relations between people
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= status of nouns and pronouns :
Masculine (girl)
Feminine (boy)
Neutral (child)
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Money’s innovation was to apply gender as
a human attribute
 gender role /gender identity.
 different sides/same medal
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Gender identity is the personal experience
of gender role
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Gender role is the external expression of
gender identity
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The two dimensions may or may not match.
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is the “sense of self, the unity and persistence
of individuality male or female, or ambivalent
in greater or lesser degree, particularly as the
experience of gendered perceptions of oneself
and one’s behavior”.
GENDER is therfore a psychosocial
category that expresses characteristc,
attitudes and feelings that are appropriate to
masciuline and femminine.
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Gender role :“everything a person says and
does to indicate to others or to the self the
degree that one is either male, or female, or
ambivalent”
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everything:
words/actions/behavior aspects
conversation, direct/indirect questions
sexual practices.
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social assumption of roles “how we should behave” in sociocultural context.
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social life of people is described as a
”functional unity”
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Tries to explain the interconnectedness
of all forms of human activity through
biological and organicistic analogies
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Example comparison between social body
and human body:
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Body has different organs that perform tasks
to keep equilibrium
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By analogy social institutions perform
particular functions that serve to sustain
society
first place for socialization of children
human personality is not something that
people are born with
but rather something to be made.
Parsons: “families are factories which produce
human personalities”.
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Functionalist paradigm goes beyond social
theory analogies
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it understands reproductive organs
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Despite Money’s academic training in
psychology, functionalist paradigms in both the
social and the medical sciences explain how he
uses the term gender role with its emphasis on
personality and identity
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Money’s sex/gender theoretical
nature/nurture debate
lies
in
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between biological determinism/innatism and
biological indeterminism or environmental
determinism,
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Depending on level of influence of biological and
environment factors on the formation of human
identity and behavior
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all human behaviors have biological
background
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behavior is expression of biological
origins  NO influence of social,
cultural or environmental factors.
 physical sex (which includes the
genetic, hormonal, gonadal,
anatomical, and biological
dimension) determines gender
from birth in a static, fixed,
irrevocable, unchangeable
manner.
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nature is essence of gender
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Gender matches always sex
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Female sex given by nature= Female
gender
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Race/Sex/Gender/Sexuality are figured as
‘rational’, ‘objective’ and ‘apolitical’ .
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qualities are inherent;
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interchangeability, equivalence,
substitutability sex / gender
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sex /gender distinction irrelevant also on
terminological level
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gender is absorbed in the sex / sex
determines gender
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nature before culture
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Biological indeterminism sex is undifferentiated at
birth.
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Environmental determinism environment
determines gender
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Sexual differentiation as male and female through
apprehending inner psychological identity and
through exterior social acquisition
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Gender derives from the normal association of roles,
imprinted by the family/society /culture.
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gender role/identity is neither entirely
constituted by intrinsic nature (as it is not
exclusively a being)
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nor entirely by the external environment (as
it is not exclusively a “becoming”).
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gender is structured by physical sex and inner
psyche influenced by the external
environment
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Money :
“at every stage of development,
nothing is purely nature and nothing
is purely nurture. There is always a
collaboration between the two”.
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elaborated in the field of psychosexuology,
recognizes that sex lies inbetween biological
determinism and environmental determinism
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'sex' is indeterminate at birth
'gender' is acquired gradually, through an
interaction between internal and external
factors.
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J. Money theorizes the existence in the body
of “internal pre-dispositions” which through
“external stimuli” (observation of reality and
experiences) form in the brain of interior
‘schemes' of what it means to be male or
female;
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These schemes constitute 'behavior patterns'
that can be confirmed or eliminated by the
society’s approval or disapproval.
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The internal predispositions are therefore
shaped by learning (education and
socialization): external factors apply a
'pressure', constituting a 'force' that shapes
'gender'.
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The external signals have effect within a year
and a half after the birth: any subsequent
change will affect the individual’s mental
balance. This is the theory of plasticity and
malleability of “gender”.
 Malleability of
'gender' identity
is not arbitrary, but oriented to
natural predispositions and
influenced by external elements
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person born without properly differentiated
sexual anatomy because of abnormalities in
chromosome dimorphism, hormonal
dimorphism and genital anatomy.
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According to Money intersex cases are a
“false problem”.
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cases (kind of 'natural experiments') can be solved:
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surgical and hormonal “reassignment”
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attribution of sex chosen
- by doctor (depending on technical possibility)
-and parents (according to their expectations and
desires)
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Sex assigned within first weeks of life
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The earlier the sex is assigned/chances of
developing gender as male or female
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All following interventions (like hormone
therapy) are to be directed toward
maintaining the assigned sex in order to
ensure successful adaptation to a gender.
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Doctors should not transmit doubts on
which sex is to be reassigned
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Risks for parents ability to educate/raise
child in a “gender appropriate” manner
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Parents have to be really convinced they
are educating their child as a “boy” or
“girl”
The John/Joan/David Reimer
Case
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Six months twin boys underwent circumcision
surgery, one of the boys -John -external genitals very
damaged
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Money told John’s parents that sex reassignment
surgery would be in John’s best interest.
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John is feminized and will be raised as a girl: Brenda
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Psychological support for the reassignment and
surgery was provided by Money, who continued to see
Brenda annually for about ten years for consultations
and to check the outcome.
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Money constantly reported on Brenda's
progress:
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Used the case to support the practicability of
reassignment and reconstruction even in
non-intersex cases
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When living as Brenda, John did not feel like a
girl and continually showed signs of discomfort
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By the age of 13, John’s parents told him the
truth about his gender reassignment
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At 14, John decided to reinstate being male,
calling himself David and eventually underwent
several treatments to reverse feminization
In 1990, he married and became a stepfather to
his wife’s three children.
By 1997, John had undergone several
treatments to reverse the signs of feminization.
The disturbance of psychic equilibrium led him
to commit suicide at the age of 38.
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At a practical level
gender provided a
solution to the
uncertainty of sex
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no longer important
that the somatic
signifiers of sex
failed to reveal the
sex
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What increasingly
mattered were the
psychosocial
and
cultural signifiers of
masculinity
and
femininity
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Doctors tried to discover hidden sex in
ambiguos body
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Money instead claimed that it was a matter
of determining the best sex/most appropriate
in light of person’s :
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genital appearence
psychological make-up
family expectations
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Money distinguishes two poles of sexuality: male
or female
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Reproductive functions vital for humanity’s
survival
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One “becomes” male or female in stages,
gradually
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Process influenced by phsyical and psycho-social
changes
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Freud indirectly entered the sex/gender debate
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his theory is a point of reference for the
thematisation of the two categories and their
mutual relationship
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one is born biologically male or female and one
becomes a man or a woman socially through a
process of identification through several phases
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Identification is the means through which
individuals become aware of their own
masculinity and femininity
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children learn through imitation, modeling
the behavior of the same-sexed parent
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used to explain gender development
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child develops sexuality within the first 5
years of their life
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During this time the child will go through
three of the five psychosexual stages
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for the first 3 years of the child’s life they are
bisexual
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child doesn’t show a strong sense of any
particular gender
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between 3 and 5 years of age gender division
happens as a result of the Oedipus Complex
in males and the Electra Complex in females
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Freud against biological determinism
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Oedipal period gender identity is configured
through the comparison with parents,
sexually different
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In the Freudian perspective, parental sexual
difference is a structural element of gender
identification.
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Oedipus and Electra complexes are quite
controversial
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gender identity occurs around 3-5 years of
age, yet most evidence shows that children
have appearance of gender identity long
before 3 years
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Children don’t acquire gender identity in one
goal but rather through a gradual process
 Along the same lines as Money,
Stoller distinguishes sex from
gender within the
distinction/interaction between
nature and culture, body/psyche,
biology/environment.
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According to the Author “sex” indicates the
biological component that determines being male
or female, as a substrate of human sexual
behavior divided into male and female
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“Sex” but also “sexual” refers to the physical,
anatomical and physiological dimension of sex
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Sex is about what we are
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Gender refers properly to the exhibition,
preservation and development of
masculinity and femininity, understood as a
unity of feeling thoughts and behavior.
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Gender indicates the amount of femininity
and masculinity in a person
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Gender is about what we learn through
a process that begins at birth, develops
gradually in the family and appears in
childhood until full maturity in
adulthood.
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There is usually a correlation between
male sex and masculine gender, as well as
between female sex and feminine gender.
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But there are cases of abnormal
interpersonal relationships: there may be
a masculine male and a feminine female,
but also an effeminate male or masculine
female.
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The author believes that the difficulty of
thematization of the gender category
depends on the concept of identity
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By “identity” he means the organization of
those psychic components that maintain
awareness of one’s existence(…) and the end
of the world”.
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Gender identity means in his view the
awareness of belonging to one sex or another
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Gender role is the role or position in society
as regards to one’s gender identity.
 According to Stoller gender, gender
identity and gender role can be
considered synonims despite their
having subtle semantic differences
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In his view the formation of gender identity
coincides with the awareness of one’s sexual
identity, according to the formula “I am Male”
or “I am female”:
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this occurs in a person usually during the first years
of life- from 3 to 5/6 years of age
 The core gender identity that is the
unalterable awareness of being
male or female remains
“unchanged during life”.
R.Stoller:
 By the “sense of maliness” I mean the awareness I
am male. ..this core gender identity is to be
distinguished from the related but different belief.. I
am manly (or masculine).
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This attitude emerges only after the child has
learned how his parents expect him to express
masculinity; the knowledge I am male starts
developing much earlier than the sense that “I am
masculine”
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Subsequently doubts or the desire even to
change one’s identity may arise : but those
doubts and desires presuppose that identity
has already been established according to the
formula “ I want to be female, because I know
I am male” and vice versa.
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The elements that contribute to the formation of gender
identity are in the opinion of the Author:
the “natural” appearance of the anatomy of external
genitalia and the related feeling that accompanies the body
in the early stages of the identity of development;
the parent child/relationship
the expectations of parents regarding the identity of
children, their own gender identity and identification by the
child with both sexes in pre-oedipal and oedipal
development;
but above all the “biological force”.
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Stoller believes that gender identity is
primarily learned, but that there are
biological forces that contribute, increase and
interfere with its expression.
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The author postulates the existence of an
innate and instinctive impulse, a “biological
force” that is unchanged and continuous
towards femininity and masculinity.
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This force in normal cases works in harmony
with the outside world, but it can also in some
contexts, counter anatomy and environment,
in relation to impressed education and
interpersonal relationships.
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Stoller believes that there is empirical
evidence, albeit without scientific proof,
that identifies in gender identity a
variable power, usually hidden behind
the effects of postnatal psychological
influences
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Biological and environmental influences
usually work in harmony. When this does not
occur it is the result of an unfortunate
combination between a weak biological force
towards one’s gender and the harmful effects
of the environment, as in intersexuality and
transexualism.
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In some individuals the biological force can
become a decisive factor that goes beyond
anatomy and external influences, despite
their being a “tremendous power” of
attitudes and behaviors of parents towards
their children in the formation of masculinity
and femininity.
The author believes that this biological tendency is
related to genetic sex: the tendency to masculinity
and femininity in males and females is a silent and
effective force from the prenatal period to birth.
 Biological and environmental influences usually
work in harmony. When this does not occur it is the
result of an unfortunate combination between a
weak biological force towards one’s gender and the
harmful effects of the environment, as in
hermaphroditism and transexualism.
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