Anthropological, Social, and Moral Limitations of a Multiplicity of Genders

Abstract

This work argues from a social-theoretical perspective for the view that every concept of 'gender' remains bound to reproduction. As every culture is interested in its continuity, it distinguishes individuals according to their assumed possible contribution to reproduction and so develops a fundamental dual classification. Subsequent gender categories are necessarily derived from this one. The conceptual and empirical arguments for this thesis are illustrated through an imagined dystopia. There I envision under what conditions a complete dissociation of the concepts 'sex' and 'gender' from the old dual distinction would be possible and in what way a multiplicity of genders would be accomplished.Since it began about thirty years ago, gender research has-in many different areas and in different respects-explored the extent to which human beings, women as well as men, are determined in an actual cultural sense by their sex and gender (the German for both terms is Geschlecht). Questions have been raised as to whether humans necessarily are or should be determined by Geschlecht and how social conditions have to be transformed in order to assure the greatest possible diversity of life choices for both sexes. Gender research investigates the roles (among others) of art, literature, and theory for each culturally specific conception of gender (femininity and masculinity). The original question has been slightly modified in the meantime. Now, more explicitly than before, it is being historicized and-given the (sub)cultural and situational variations in the relevance and meaning of gender-related to a specific cultural context.