When was gender created

The account claims that such kind-identity is granted by the historical reproduction between items. We thus already have an initial grasp of how inductive potential and intra-kind variation need not be in a state of mutual tension; indeed the latter seems to presuppose the former. The reader might already protest that a gender cannot be a kind in the same sense as War and Peace simply because it is much less evident that there is significant copying in the case of gender than in the case of War and Peace in which reproduction is obvious and the fidelity amongst instances can be assured.

But the shared features of War and Peace hardly constitute a trivial outcome. After all, they demand, among other things, the invention and successful execution of the printing press, well-maintained technologies and legal institutions to ensure common features amongst instances. It is true, nevertheless, that there may not be a clear grasp of reproduction as a concept. At first pass, a historical kind seems to require the following main ingredients:.

The interaction with past models or members causes the new members to resemble past member s ;. Steps 2—3 recur such that there is chain of reproduction or lineages. With regard to models of gender 1 , Eagly and Wood suggest that it was the physical differences between the sexes—such as pregnancy and lactation among women and the greater size, speed and upper-body strength among men—that originally gave rise to the original gender differences.

In their account, for example, this led men to perform tasks that required upper-body strength for extended periods of time, uninterrupted by having babies.

It is quite plausible that real, or at the very least perceived, physical sex differences played an important role in the original emergence of gender models that were then transmitted through social learning. It is worth noting, however, that proponents of the historical-reproductive account of gender do not have to presume any particular account of how specific binary models or further gender models emerged alongside sex differences.

Let us, again, consider War and Peace. On the other hand, whereas there is good reason to assume a common cause or model in the case of War and Peace , this is not at all obvious in the case of gender. In other words, given the likelihood that different cultural systems were spatially and temporally isolated from one another, current binary systems might, in fact, have different origins. I will return to this question and its implications for solving the representation problem in the next section, but for now it suffices to note that there is no need to assume a particular account of the emergence of models of gender to make the case for a plausible reproductive link between members.

For now, the question concerns how interaction between individuals could proceed such that new members come to resemble their predecessors. The third condition of reproduction is that the interaction between past and present members has some modal force.

In other words, it is precisely because the interaction produced similarity amongst members that new members were also produced. It is the nature of the interaction itself that makes it no accident that new members of a historical kind are produced.

The copying of genetic material is one form of such reproductive interaction, but Peter Godfrey-Smith introduces what is perhaps a more common phenomenon: scaffolded reproduction , Ch. In scaffolded reproduction as opposed to, say, sexual reproduction, no material is exchanged and the reproduction relies heavily on the machinery outside of that which is reproduced.

Scaffolded reproduction is the predominant model of cultural transmission, such as in the case of War and Peace. It also seems to be what happens in the case of gender. Theodore Bach lists a number of causally interconnected components of a binary gender system that could be considered part of the machinery of the scaffolded reproduction of gender and gendered traits.

Amongst these elements, perhaps the most basic issue is why it is that individuals learn from certain models of gender and the horde of characteristics that belong to them.

The first set of motivations are primarily studied in the literature on gender identity. In fact, Wood and Eagly make a useful distinction between two different traditions of gender-identity research: one that measures the degree to which an individual identifies with gendered traits often coded in terms of masculinity and femininity and one that measures the degree to which an individual identifies as a member of a gendered group.

According to the former tradition, gender identity could be thought of as a judgement about, or recognition of, how similar one is to certain gendered stereotypes in terms of the traditional division of labor roles, for example.

The latter tradition broadly aligns with the theory of social identity in social psychology Tajfel Thus, motivations concerning in-group belonging, or simply arising from perceived similarity with others, offer one set of reasons why individuals pick the models that they do. Bach, however, believes that at heart gender is something imposed on the individual by external social pressures.

This may happen through the desire to abide by gender norms to attain social approval, or indeed a fear of disapproval or punishment if one were not to conform to the norms of the perceived sex or gender see also Castro et al. Although it is common wisdom in cultural evolution theory that one learns more from some individuals than from others e. Henrich and McElreath ; Lewens , it is still worth asking why gender models are so much more powerful than other culturally available models of social learning such as hair color and class.

In any case, one is now in a position to see how the account could resolve at least the initial puzzle. Although each member of a gender is reproduced within a historical lineage that can be traced back to different models of gender, the lineage need not sustain all or even most properties originally associated with either of the binary models.

It might also seem that the unity of a gender simply follows from the shared reproductive history of each lineage. But this conclusion is arrived at too hastily. The claim so far is only about gendered reproduction regardless of the number of original models. I have already flagged a worry that pervasive binary gender systems are not necessarily traceable back to common models as in the case of War and Peace , now I turn to this worry more explicitly.

If gender is a historical kind, then it should be clear that the current binary gender system need not necessarily have unfolded in a binary manner. In fact, I have shown just how contingent this system is on two features of reproduction: an existing cultural niche with binary models and the existence of gender-based social learning. Indeed, given the view of gender as binary cultural lineages one can see that there are three different ways in which a culture can depart from having binary genders.

First, the binary lineages might merge at some point, or one or both genders might cease to exist. Third, new alternative genders may emerge either because an existing lineage has locally branched off into one or more new gender lineages, or due to the partial merging of the two lineages into three.

Genderless cultural systems option 1 seem as rare as those in which gendered social learning does not occur perhaps for the same reasons. The latter two options on the other hand—where categories of gender have always been, or have become, non-binary—have, in fact, featured in multiple cultural systems. I contend that these alternative or third genders should be considered historical kinds of gender in their own right. A new model or in the case of more than three genders, several models has been introduced and reproduced in accordance with the process of gendered social learning described in the last section.

First, as noted in the above quotation, belonging to any gender in the Zuni tribe is part of a formalized process of cultural reproduction. Second, the Zuni berdarche is an attractive model of social learning in that berdarches in the Zuni and in other North American tribes have occupied prestigious positions on many levels of their society—from being integrated into the origin myths to taking an active role in societal governance ibid. Under the hypothesis that third genders are historical kinds in their own right, these values and norms sustain the continued reproduction of the gender.

Of course, once the cultural system perishes, so does the life-support system for such genders as, sadly, is largely the case with the berdarches of the Zuni tribe. What cultures in which gender is not strictly binary demonstrate, is not merely the contingency of the dominant binary cultural gender system, but also the likelihood that many cultural systems of gender do not share common origins or a common ancestry.

It is far more likely that models of gender—binary and non-binary—have emerged separately in different cultures. If this is so, it does not matter how prevalent non-binary cultures are. If one wishes to tell a tale of historically reproduced gender, therefore, it is less likely to be a tale of two genders. It will rather be a tale of binary system s of gender and some of which are not strictly binary than of a binary system, each one containing different historical kinds of gender.

This could spell trouble for the unity of gender. In fact, the survey into non-binary systems also implies that such a proposal already excludes individuals who are gendered as part of non - binary systems.

Nor can one claim to be concerned with one of the two genders in a binary system, or one of three genders in a non-binary system and so on , since that presupposes an account of which of the two or three genders and so on one was talking about to begin with.

Is there any way to salvage the notion of two genders with the broad scope that is typically intended? As noted above, Bach advocates a historical cultural-reproductive account of gender that aims to address the representation problem—as well as other problems. But rather than making this property definitive of women, it explains this property as one of several properties that reliably co-occur as a result of a more fundamental, historical property. First, allow me to state that I fully agree with Bach about not building in the normative feature that might concern us as a matter of definition of what it is to be of a gender—not least because if it is a matter of definition, we would not be able to have substantial disagreements about those gender claims.

However, as was made clear in the previous section, the view that gender is a historical kind comes at a cost. As I have shown, this is not merely a theoretical possibility. It is rather grounded in evidence of the existence of multiple gender systems—some of which are non-binary—between which there has been no cultural transmission.

Although Bach does not seem to appreciate the extent of the representation problem for the account, he does offer what one might first see as a remedy: an appeal to teleological functioning. According to Bach, items that are replicated from a historical lineage due to selection have a teleological function , p.

For example, pumping blood is a teleological function of the heart because its function is part of the reason that hearts are reproduced—it bestowed bearers of hearts with certain fitness advantages. He supposes that the same holds for a gender system: the advantage originally conferred by certain traits belonging to a gender system is also the reason why these traits are reproduced.

It is the favorable effect of gendered traits within a cultural gender system in the past that causes descendants of that culture to continue to possess them. Consequently, women with different historical models may still share membership in virtue of the teleological function. One can therefore speak of sameness in teleological functioning across different gender lineages as well as sameness in the breakdown of the function.

Bach gives the following example:. American and Japanese women are not members of numerically the same historical kind. However, the historical gender roles in each system are analogous. On account of their shared type of history, then, American and Japanese women are members of numerically the same teleofunctional gender kind. This means that both American and Japanese women can fail to satisfy their teleofunctional gender norm and yet both are still members in the cross-cultural teleofunctional gender kind and, of course, they are still also members in their respective historical kinds.

Bach does not suggest it directly, but it may be possible to hold on to a tale of two genders if they are grounded in a shared teleological function rather than history. It is because of the shared function between numerically different historical kinds of gender that two teleofunctional gender kinds arise. For instance, common selection pressures may lead women to be barred from certain leadership roles in different gender lineages, which is then attributed to a common telefunctional role amongst all historical kinds of women.

Or, common selection pressures may lead men to abuse their power for their sexual advantage in different lineages, and this explains a common telefunctional kind, men. But what, then, is the real status of selection or selection pressure in these examples? If the teleological function is not to be merely a nominal status, there must be some way of knowing which features should form the basis of a teleofunctional kind.

This is an empirical guess, which is in fact more difficult to support than it may seem. First it seems plausible that it would take a relatively long time for a gender kind to acquire a shared teleological function—even in a culture. It is known, however, that over large chunks of time and space, many cultural selective pressures on gender are bound to vary both within and between lineages.

Let us revert to one of the examples: how do we ground the tendency to abuse power for sexual advantage amongst contemporary middle-class men in Finland and contemporary working-class men in the Philippines, as well as between male aristocrats in either of these locations years ago? Although I am not denying that there may be such a common tendency amongst these individuals, common selection pressures amongst lineages does seem like a bit of a stretch. Why could it not be social learning in some cases, a by-product in others, and individual learning in yet others?

As Richard Lewontin and Stephen J. In the case of cultural evolution there are even more alternatives to adaptationist hypotheses in that not only are there traits that are by-products of some gendered traits, some traits may develop as a result of individual trial-and-error learning.

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Negotiating hegemonic masculinity: imaginary positions and psycho-discursive practices. Keywords : gender trouble, gender, gender performativity, social psychology, non-binary gender, genderqueer, Judith Butler. The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author s and the copyright owner s are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice.

No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Morgenroth exeter. Ryan 1,2. Future Research Directions In the previous section, we have outlined how some of the issues raised by Butler, such as the negative reactions to those who fail to do their gender right, have already received considerable attention in the social psychological literature. Conflict of Interest Statement The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Thomas Morton, Teri Kirby, Christopher Begeny, and Renata Bongiorno for their helpful comments on a previous version of the manuscript and Peter Hegarty for his contribution as an engaged reviewer.

There are no clear conventions around non-binary pronoun use and many different alternatives have been proposed. References Adams, N. Edited by: Alice H. Does this mean that the story about feminists before having no theoretical concept of gender might be true after all? That question raises the somewhat tricky issue of what the relationship is between theory and terminology.

Just as the end goal of socialist revolution was not only the elimination of the economic class privilege but of the economic class distinction itself, so the end goal of feminist revolution must be… not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.

When does that start to turn up in the texts sampled for dictionaries and corpora, and what kinds of texts do you find it in? But the work done at Johns Hopkins made a significant contribution to the history of gender—both the concept and the word. Knowing that the two competing senses have developed from different intellectual traditions one sense has its roots in the social scientific study of human culture and behaviour, while the other is rooted in the theory and practice of clinicians working with gender-variant individuals makes it easier to understand why they conflict in the ways they do.

But it might be asked how much we really need that word. Maybe what was good enough for Simone de Beauvoir and Angela Davis should be good enough for me. Feminist, linguist, writer View all posts by debuk. Like Like. I also recall being puzzled by the words sex and gender being used interchangeably in contemporary discourse — the former is a biological category, the latter is a social […].

Both have sprung from different academic theories and so are both a valid way of understanding the world around us. It used to refer primarily to the […].