Gender Is a Natural Kind with a Historical Essence

Abstract

Traditional debate on the metaphysics of gender has been a contrast of essentialist and social-constructionist positions. The standard reaction to this opposition is that neither position alone has the theoretical resources required to satisfy an equitable politics. This has caused a number of theorists to suggest ways in which gender is unified on the basis of social rather than biological characteristics but is "real" or "objective" nonetheless-a position I term 'social objectivism'. This essay begins by making explicit the motivations for, and central assumptions of, social objectivism. I then propose that gender is better understood as a real kind with a historical essence, analogous to the biologist's claim that species are historical entities. I argue that this proposal achieves a better solution to the problems that motivate social objectivism. Moreover, the account is consistent with a postpositivist understanding of the classificatory practices employed within the natural and social sciences.

Social Categories are Natural Kinds, not Objective Types (and Why it Matters Politically)

“…So too, I argue in (Bach 2012), are social gender kinds like men and women. 9 The model developed in (Bach 2012) explains how the replicative processes that take place during an individual's ontogenetic history -for example, the socialization processes that are designed to slot a sexed individual into the historical role of men or women -make that individual a reproduction of ancestral men or women. It is thus through these replicative processes that an individual gains a participatory relation to a historical gender lineage.…”

“…It is also worth mentioning here that the specific account I provide in (Bach 2012) indicates a general schema that has application to other social kinds, for example race. In particular, one might assimilate features of Alcoff's notion of an "ethnorace" (Alcoff 2000), or McPherson's notion of a "socioancesty" (McPherson 2015), to the non-biological essentialist model of natural kinds with historical essences given in (Bach 2012).…”

Feminist Metaphysics and Philosophical Methodology

“…Of course, which social factors fix gender is an ongoing debate within feminist philosophy (cf. Bach ; Frye , ; Haslanger ; Mikkola , ; Stoljar , ; Sveinsdóttir ; Young ; Witt ).…”

Natural Kinds and Classification in Scientific Practice

“…They are unified functionally, historically, qualitatively and other ways. (Boyd 1999;Mallon 2003Mallon , 2007Mallon , 2014Bach 2012;Mason 2015) Social science, in fact, is in the business of discovering such kinds. So there is no reason to think that we need to provide glue; but then one might wonder, what is this "glue," and is there a need for "glue" at all?…”