Real Sex/Fake Gender: A Reply to Robert Willmott

Abstract

A series of claims relating to the sociological problematic of sex/gender are made by Robert Willmott in a critique of my article Goodbye to Sex and Gender (Hood-Williams, 1996). In his account he claims that: sociology is 'impossible' and feminism 'impotent' without the sex/gender distinction; that sex belongs to an order of real world objects that is ontologically distinctly from, and irreducible to, gender and that to oppose this view is to favour conflation; that men are ontologically distinct from women. In reply I argue that it is absurd to say that sociology, which pre-dates the sex/gender distinction by two hundred years, or feminism (also historically prior), cannot function without it; that the distinction between the real and the ideational rests on an ontology that is itself discursive and that the critique of the general distinction made between sex and gender does not necessitate conflating the objects of biological and sociological discourses; that men and women are no more ontologically distinct than people with black skins are from those with white.

Gender and Organizational Rule Abidance

“…The use of biological sex to measure gender, aside from providing analytical ease, is consistent with the close interrelationship between sex and gender (Acker 1992, 251; Burrell and Hearn 1989, 2), particularly given that one’s biological sex determines the societal messages one receives about appropriate roles and behavior. Measuring gender as biological sex is a common methodological choice, but it is one that has been debated intensely (Cresswell 2003; Hood‐Williams 1996, 1997; Laner 2000, 2003; Willmott 1996). This discourse includes scholars who argue that biological sex and gender are distinct, with the former pertaining to anatomy and the latter the social construction (Laner 2000, 2003; Oakley 1972), and others who argue that the two concepts cannot be separated in any meaningful way (Cresswell 2003; Hood‐Williams 1996, 1997).…”

Sex/Gender: Which Is Which? A Rejoinder to Mary Riege Laner

“…2 See, for instance, Laqueur (1987Laqueur ( , 1992, Hood-Williams (1996), Hitchcock (1997), and Lofstrom (1997). 3 It is now a commonplace of philosophy that a clear distinction can be drawn between the "earlier" Wittgenstein of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1961) and the "later" work, which culminated in the Philosophical Investigations (1978).…”

‘'Sex Changes'? Paradigm Shifts in ‘Sex’ and ‘Gender’ following the Gender Recognition Act?’

“…The sex/gender distinction remains contested however and rears its conceptual ugly head on occasions (see the exchange between Hood-Williams 1996 and Willmott 1996;Hood-Williams 1997). Underlying debates of the sex/gender distinction is the conceptualisation of gender as changeable and sex as immutable demonstrating the residual strength of the nature/culture binary -as demonstrated by Lord Tebbit's statement at the beginning of this paper: 'sex cannot be changed'.…”