Gender essentialism
Gender essentialism is a theory which attributes distinct, intrinsic qualities to women and men. Based in essentialism, it holds that there are certain universal, innate, biologically based features of gender that are at the root of many of the group differences observed in the behavior of men and women.
In Western civilization, it is suggested in writings going back to ancient Greece. With the advent of Christianity, the earlier Greek model was expressed in theological discussions as the doctrine that there are two distinct sexes, male and female, created by God, and that individuals are immutably one or the other. This view remained largely unchanged until the middle of the 19th century. This changed the locus of the origin of the essential differences from religion to biology, in Sandra Bem's words, "from God's grand creation its scientific equivalent: evolution's grand creation," but the belief in an immutable origin had not changed.
Alternatives to gender essentialism were proposed in the mid-20th century. During second-wave feminism, Simone de Beauvoir and other feminists in the 1960s and 70s theorized that gender differences were socially constructed. In other words, people gradually conform to gender differences through their experience of the social world. More recently, Judith Butler theorized that gender is performative. While rejected by many feminist theorists, gender essentialism sheds light on social constructs surrounding gender that are found in society as well as societal views on sex and sexuality.
In religion
The male–female dichotomy has been an important factor in most religions. In the Abrahamic religions the difference between man and woman is established at the origin of time, with the Bible saying of Adam and Eve, "... in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them", indicating that the difference is instituted by God. Some discuss whether this verse is an expression of gender essentialism or a reference to humanity as a whole.Religion and biology
Gender essentialism has been heavily influenced by both religion and by science, with religion being the prominent reasoning behind gender essentialism until the mid-1800s. The reasoning ultimately changed from religion to science, but still supported the same essentialist thinking.Latter-day Saints
The official view of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is an essentialist belief in gender. The 1995 LDS Church statement The Family: A Proclamation to the World declares gender to be an "essential characteristic" and an "eternal identity". Mormons generally believe in an eternal life and that it would be impossible for one's eternal gender to be different from one's physical, birth sex. Church regulations permit, but do not mandate, ex-communication for those who choose gender confirmation surgery, and deny them membership in the priesthood.In biology
The gender essentialist claim of biology theorizes that gender differences are rooted in nature and biology. Historical views based in gender essentialism claim that there are biological causes for the differences between men and women, such as women giving birth and men going out and hunting. This claim is analyzed in detail by Emily Martin in her article Medical Metaphors of Women’s Bodies: Menstruation and Menopause. In her article, Martin examines some of the historical views that used biology to explain the differences between women and men. One popular medical view in ancient Greece was that malaise was associated with excess moisture. The masculine form was considered hotter and dryer. Through sweat, the male body was better able to balance this humour than the colder, wetter female form which regulated through menstruation.In 1975, American biologist, Edward O. Wilson, claimed that "both human and social behavior and human organization" are encoded in human genes. He later added to this claim, using the example of reproduction and how one male can fertilize many females but a female can be fertilized by only one male.
Biologism
is a particular form of essentialism that defines women's and men's essence in terms of biological capacities. This form of essentialism is based on a form of reductionism, meaning that social and cultural factors are the effects of biological causes. Biological reductivism "claim that anatomical and physiological differences—especially reproductive differences—characteristic of human males and females determine both the meaning of masculinity and femininity and the appropriately different positions of men and women in society". Biologism uses the functions of reproduction, nurturance, neurology, neurophysiology, and endocrinology to limit women's social and psychological possibilities according to biologically established limits. It asserts the science of biology to constitute an unalterable definition of identity, which inevitably "amounts to a permanent form of social containment for women".Naturalism is also a part of the system of essentialism where a fixed nature is postulated for women through the means of theological or ontological rather than biological grounds. An example of this would be the claim that women's nature is a God-given attribute, or the ontological invariants in Sartrean existentialism or Freudian psychoanalysis that distinguish the sexes in the "claim that the human subject is somehow free or that the subject's social position is a function of his or her genital morphology". These systems are used to homogenize women into one singular category and to strengthen a binary between men and women.
Superior gender
Throughout history women have been viewed as the submissive and inferior gender. In ancient Greece, this view was supported by the belief that women had to rid their bodies of toxins by menstruating while men could sweat their toxins out. By the 1800s, this view remained the same, but the reasoning had changed. In 1879, the French doctor, Gustave Le Bon, explained this inferiority of women as their brains being closer to the size of gorillas than most male brains. Le Bon also stated that women were fickle, inconsistent, lacked thought and logic, and were not able to reason.Child development
Children have been observed making gender categorizations and displaying essentialist beliefs about gender preferences and indications. Proponents of gender essentialism propose that children from the age of 4 to 10 show the tendency to endorse the role of nature in determining gender-stereotyped properties, an "early bias to view gender categories as predictive of essential, underlying similarities", which gradually declines as they pass elementary school years.Criticism
Feminist critique
In feminist theory and gender studies, gender essentialism is the attribution of a fixed essence to women. Women's essence is assumed to be universal and is generally identified with those characteristics viewed as being specifically feminine. These ideas of femininity are usually related to biology and often concern psychological characteristics such as nurturance, empathy, support, non-competitiveness, etc. By the late 1980s and 1990s, anti-essentialism became a dominant trend in feminist thought. Anti-essentialists argued that there are no universal characteristics shared by all women, and that any attempt to define women in such terms is both descriptively false and politically oppressive.In 1980, Monique Wittig published One Is Not Born A Woman, an article that discusses how gender essentialist views regarding men, women, and gender roles work to re-establish patriarchal roles and ideas in society. She also talks about how these views contribute to women's oppression, focusing on “lesbianism” and how it goes against the “rules” that society has set in place. Wittig's piece attempts to show how the gender essentialist claim of normal gender is rooted in homophobia and how these roots continue to allow women to be oppressed.
Elizabeth V. Spelman, in her influential book Inessential Woman criticized feminist theories that took the experiences of privileged women as the norm, thereby excluding or marginalizing other women.
In 1988, Emily Martin published Medical Metaphors of Women’s Bodies: Menstruation and Menopause. This piece analyzed the history of gender essentialist claims and how biology has been used to explain differences between genders. This claim of biology, according to Martin, dates back to ancient Greece. Martin explains that, throughout history, views regarding women varied with menstruation originally being viewed as something important but still something that made women lesser, but later changing to be viewed as a disorder that negatively impacted women's lives. Martin's piece provides insight on how society places great importance on the different biological processes between genders.
The 1993 publication of The Lenses of Gender by Sandra Bem addresses how gender differences are perceived by society. She also talks about how essentialist gender roles reproduce male power.
Transfeminist critique
Essentialism of gender in feminist theory presents a problem regarding transfeminism. Gayle Salamon writes that trans studies are to be "the breaking apart of this category, particularly if that breaking requires a new articulation of the relation between sex and gender, male and female". Transubjectivity challenges the binary of gender essentialism as it disrupts the "fixed taxonomies of gender" and this creates a resistance in women's studies, which as a discipline has historically depended upon the fixedness of gender.Sandy Stone offered a critique to essentialist discourses of gender in "The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto", a foundational essay in transgender studies. Since then, other theorists like Jack Halberstam, Jay Prosser, Judith Butler, Julia Serano, Paul B. Preciado and Susan Stryker have written on the topic.