This whole debate, like the other thread on gender, leads me to think: If we take it to its natural conclusion, the whole concept of sex/gender must disintegrate. Each of us is a human being. OK. But anything to do with sex and gender, sexual tastes, reproduction, "mating", becomes fluid and undefinable. So, I could be born male, acquire breasts and long hair and long eyelashes, keep my penis and testicles, and decide with whom, of whatever sexual combination, I wish to have sexual intercourse. So we will no longer have men and women, but individuals each of whom follows their own inclinations regarding the physical, psychological and social aspects of sexuality/gender. Male and Female will cease to exist. Or is this too Startrekkish?
No, it is not too fanciful, although the markers of gender that you cite- hairstyles etc, have changed markedly throughout history and culture. The preponderance of clean shaven faces and short hair for men was in no small part influenced by modern warfare, ie. the preponderance of lice in the trenches, and the fact that a gas mask would not fit properly over a full beard. The luxurious barnet of Lloyd-George, or impressive facial fungus of George V, gives an indication of pre WW1 historical fashion.
The publication in 1970 of radical feminist Shulamith Firestone’s
The Dialectic Of Sex caused waves throughout second-wave feminism. Firestone argued that reproductive technology had advanced to the degree that gestation was now possible outside the womb, thus freeing women from the onerous (and dangerous) task of childbirth. Firestone’s thesis was so controversial because it eliminated the biological determinist view that women were biologically preordained to gestate the foetus and give birth.
Until the advent of so called ‘gender critical’ feminism, the consensus tended to view ‘sex’ as biological and ‘gender’ as its emotional, cultural and social interpretation. The opposing viewpoint regards gender as expressing an underlying essence of sex, where gender functions as a passport; a marker of a specific biological locus. In this essentialist view, there are immutable characteristics associated with congenital, biologically determined gender. This ‘essence’ is inaccessible and unknowable to those born without it. Transgender women who claim “always to have been women” are dismissed. Not being born as, and socially conditioned as, a ‘woman,’ i.e. having no inherent access to feminine ‘essentialism’ prohibits any claim to womanhood.
There is a further strand of (exceptionally challenging) gender theory that views biological sex as a marker to which a human body is adhered to; a fluid category, socially constructed rather than a trans-historical fixture. According to this view, while biology (genes, chromosomes and hormones) is of course responsible for anatomical differences in the human body, the body itself exists as culturally interpreted, and is therefore neither stable or ‘natural.’
People are free to accept or dismiss this as they wish, but it’s out there. And it’s not going back in the box anytime soon.