It’s About Power: White Gender is a Dualism not a Binary

I live in the UK, and this post is about the dominant gender system in the UK. I suspect it also applies to much of North America and Europe. It may or may not apply beyond those areas, and is unlikely to apply to everyone within them. This is the case with all my writing. I do, however, speak with a language which takes part in historical and contemporary colonialist activity. As a result, words in the language I use (such as “gender”) may also be used to refer to other systems, experiences or identities in the majority-world (particularly but not limited to those of people of colour)[1] to which this post doesn’t apply. I’d like to clarify that I don’t mean to speak to those meanings of “gender”, and note that Val Plumwood, who I quote extensively below, clearly situates her work in the context she describes as “western culture” as a critique of that minority-world culture.

A view I often hear is that patriarchy has separated gender into two; that this is called the “gender binary”; and that it creates an oppression called “binarism”. Separate to this, I also hear the view that patriarchy falsely devalues one of those two (the “feminine”). And sometimes, that not only is the feminine devalued, it’s distorted - that without a patriarchy, the feminine wouldn’t end up looking like it does.

These processes, and a few others, can be united in the ideas of Val Plumwood on how dualisms are created. I’d like to briefly outline those ideas, and try to persuade the reader that we should move from talking about the idea of a gender “binary” to a gender “dualism”, incorporating Plumwood’s insights. This has the advantage of understanding the “splitting” of gender as fundamentally intertwined with sexism, and also indicates possible feminist responses.

Val Plumwood’s Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (Routledge, 2003) sets out the concept of a dualism, which is not the same as a difference or even a hierarchy:

A dualism, I have argued, results from a certain kind of denied dependency on a subordinated other. This relationship of denied dependency determines a certain kind of logical structure, in which the denial and the relation of domination/subordination shape the identity of both the relata. (p41)

Dualisms, Plumwood argues, have the following characteristics:

1. Backgrounding (denial): “making the other inessential, denying the importance of the other’s contribution or even his or her reality, and through mechanisms of focus and attention” (p48)

2. Radical exclusion (hyperseparation): “to magnify, to emphasise and to maximise the number and importance of differences and to eliminate or treat as inessential shared qualities, and hence to achieve maximum separation” (p49)

3. Incorporation (relational definition): “the underside of a dualistically conceived pair is defined in relation to the upperside as a lack, a negativity” (p52)

4. Instrumentalism (objectification): “those on the lower side of the dualisms are obliged to put aside their own interests for those of the master or centre… they are conceived of as his instruments, a means to his ends” (p53)

5. Homogenisation or stereotyping: “The dominated class must appear suitably homogeneous if it is to be able to conform to and confirm its ‘nature’. In homogenisation, differences among the inferiorised group are disregarded.” (p53)

In the section on homogenisation, Plumwood goes on to state that:

Homogenisation supports both instrumentalism, incorporation (relational definition) and radical exclusion. It produces binarism, a division of the world into two orders. (p54)

This is where the “gender binary” fits into the picture. “Binarising” gender is a necessary part of the process of “dualising” gender, but it’s not the only part of the process. A binary has a quality of “two-ness”, and feminists from both radical and non-radical perspectives have correctly argued that there’s probably no essential “two-ness” to whatever behaviours are “natural” to our sexes (if any). But a dualism has a quality of “one-ness”; there is the Subject, and there is the inessential, distant, lacking, instrumentalised, homogeneous Other, which is more like a cloud of gas than a subject position. There are Men, and there are those who, in existing, make men Men. Understanding this is part of the leap from non-radical to radical feminism.

This leap is important, because in understanding gender as a dualism, not a binary, we can look for routes out corresponding to the dualising processes Plumwood has listed:

Dismantling a dualism based on difference requires the reconstruction of relationship and identity in terms of a non-hierarchical concept of difference. An appropriate relationship of non-hierarchical difference will have the following specific features:

1. Backgrounding (denial): a non-hierarchical concept of difference requires a move to systems of thought, accounting, perception, decision-making, which recognise the contribution of what has been backgrounded, and which acknowledge dependency.

2. Radical exclusion: a non-hierarchical concept of difference will affirm continuity, reconceive relata in more integrated ways, and break the false choice hyperseparation presents in reclaiming the denied area of overlap.

3. Incorporation (relational definition): a non-hierarchical concept of difference must review the identities of both underside and upperside. It can aim to rediscover a language and story for the underside, reclaim positive independent sources of identity and affirm resistance.

4. Instrumentalism: a non-hierarchical concept of difference implies recognising the other as a centre of needs, value and striving on its own account, a being whose ends and needs are independent of the self and to be respected.

5. Homogenisation: a non-hierarchical concept of difference involves recognising the complexity and diversity of the ‘other nations’ which have been homogenised and marginalised in their constitution as excluded other, as ‘the rest’. (p71)

When I speak about gender, I often clarify my meaning as referring to a system, not an essential characteristic, with a definition such as: “Gender is a system for organising male power within which women, forced to live here, have made makeshift homes”. As well as gender, there is, of course sex, or rather, sexed characteristics.

There are sex differences between us, and they are roughly distributed according to two clusters of characteristics, even as there are people who fall outside these clusters, or whose position changes during our lifetimes. It’s upon these patterns of sexed characteristics that the gender dualism is established (part of which involves applying the dualising processes to even sexed characteristics!):

Dualism… imposes a conceptual framework which polarises and splits apart into two orders of being what can be conceptualised and treated in more integrated and unified ways. But dualism should not be seen as creating difference where none exists. Rather it tends to capitalise on existing patterns of difference, rendering these in ways which ground hierarchy. (p55)

For more (and this is just a part of her groundwork; there is much, much more!) go read the book. :)

EDIT: And of course after writing this, I’ve read back through it and noted some inconsistency. Perhaps it’s better to say that there is a sex dualism (constructed upon sexed characteristics), and that the name of the dualising system is “gender”. Thoughts?

[1] For some discussions of this see here and here. I ask fellow radical feminists not to bring this conversation to those discussions per the author’s request.

6 years ago  /  20 notes  /