Biodeterminism / Biological Determinism

Biodeterminism / Biological determinism – a principle of interpreting phenomena according to which biological and natural factors are regarded as determining human characteristics. Biodeterminism first emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in the context of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, initially as a way of explaining the specific behavior of living systems, to which human beings were later also attributed.

Biodeterminists attach privileged importance to sex. In their view, biological sex not only defines a person as a man or a woman, but also shapes their gender image. Biological differences between the sexes are regarded as a universal basis that receives its cultural continuation in the form of gender roles in every society. Thus, cultural theorist Igor Kogan (2003, p. 22) argues that it is sex that, to a significant extent, determines and gives content to every form of human activity, every pattern of human behavior, and every type of human thought, feeling, or creative imagination. Sex is one of the elements that plays a leading role in choosing the direction of the cultural process in many of its forms and currents.

From the standpoint of biodeterminism, a person’s sex is not a secondary characteristic following immediately after the concept of the human being. Sex is the human being itself; it is the first thing that constitutes the human being. Anatomy and physiology are only consequences of sex; they change under the influence of age and the environment, whereas sex does not change under any circumstances. This proposition does not deny the internal dynamics of sex, but asserts the existence of an unchanging sex structure and sex differentiation of the biological as the immutable basis of the existence and functioning of a living organism (Kogan, 2003, p. 22).

Thus, the main idea of biodeterminism in gender theory consists in the so-called idea of sex:

  1. Sex constitutes the basis and structure of everything biological;

  2. Sex is a dynamic flow that provides the human being with vital force of a biological character and gives them primary meaning as a constitutive content throughout the entire period of human life activity (Kogan, 2003, p. 24; Males, 2004, pp. 108–109).

Although men and women belong to the same species, Homo sapiens, which only emphasizes the biological unity of human beings within the living world, and although the differences between male and female organisms are relatively small and are contained in their reproductive function, biodeterminists confidently assert that it is precisely this reproductive function that forms the differences between the male and the female, between the masculine and the feminine, that we now observe in society. It is the biological difference between men and women, in this view, that creates male and female gender images, influences various spheres of public and private life, and shapes psychological relations between the sexes.

Summarizing the above, the following controversial propositions of biodeterminism concerning sex and gender may be identified:

  1. Biodeterminists argue that participation in the process of reproduction is the primary biological purpose of both men and women. In their view, this is fixed at the anatomical level and by sex characteristics (Males, 2004, p. 110). However, in society we can observe human control over one’s own sexual life and emancipation from childbearing. Here one should speak not only about a broad range of contraceptive methods and means, abortion practices, but also about changes in life priorities. The increasing age of motherhood and fatherhood — the average age of motherhood in Ukraine is 27, while in Canada, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Spain, Japan, France, and many other countries the average age of motherhood exceeds 30 — as well as the growing number of one-child families and childfree couples, call into question the biological nature of the maternal instinct in particular and the “natural purpose” of the sexes in general.
  2. Biodeterminism emphasizes differences in anthropometric characteristics between men and women. These include height, body mass, and the ratio of different tissues, muscles, and organs in the body. For this reason, according to biodeterminists, women’s performance indicators are consistently 9–21% lower in most sports, although flexibility and grace are more developed.

However, one may object that sports records are broken every year. What was once considered an achievement among men becomes the norm for women today, and vice versa. So far, no boundary has been reached that could not be overcome through bodily exercise and training. In addition, in contemporary society, body weight, height, and the development of various human tissues depend quite strongly on inherited predispositions, illnesses, diet, lifestyle, and, not least, fashion. Given the difficulty of determining the biological norm for these characteristics, they should be considered rather within the framework of gender differentiation than sex differentiation (Males, 2004, p. 111).

For example, the American feminist philosopher Alison M. Jaggar (1983, p. 109) showed that changes in social customs lead to changes in the human body. In this way, she drew attention to the fact that women become physically stronger because female physical strength has become socially acceptable. Moreover, by changing social customs, it is possible to influence not only a person’s appearance, but also their internal biology, including changes in their genetic code. Thus, the cultural preference given to fragile women in certain societies led to the preferential selection of such women for reproductive purposes. Jaggar argued that the mutual causal connections between biology and social customs made the idea of a clear demarcation between nature and culture theoretically problematic (Nicholson, 1998, p. 290).

  1. The hypothesis of functional brain asymmetry attempts to explain cognitive differences between the sexes and to justify the distribution of gender roles, the gender segregation of labour, and ultimately gender inequality by reference to features of prenatal development, fluctuations in male and female hormones, the rate of sexual maturation, and similar factors. Such an approach completely negates the individual as a subject and creator of social reality. The theory of the social construction of gender refutes this essentialism by emphasizing that most differences between women and men are not biological, but sociocultural and historical in nature. Thus, the ability to perform certain types of activity is determined more by the gender stereotypes of a specific social environment, which approve and encourage patterns of gender-normative behavior, than by physiological processes in the human body. The destruction of sex monopolies over so-called male and female spheres of activity demonstrates the absurdity of the gender polarization supported by most adherents of the hypothesis of functional brain asymmetry.
  2. By defining the reproductive function of the human being as primary, biodeterminism relies on sexual dimorphism, that is, on two opposite sexes: male and female. However, the concept of sex is complex and is not limited only to the natural capacity to reproduce subsequent generations. The World Health Organization notes the importance of recognizing the existence of people who do not fit into the binary system of male and female sex categories. An emphasis on reproductive processes makes mixed and transitional sex forms invisible.

The well-known American feminist and professor of biology Anne Fausto-Sterling (1993), in her article “The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough,” argues that, from a biological point of view, there are many gradations from female to male. Depending on which complex of sex characteristics predominates, she suggests speaking of at least five sexes, namely:

  1. People with female genitalia – women;
  2. People with male genitalia – men;
  3. People with mixed genitalia – hermaphrodites, or herms;
  4. People with predominantly female genitalia, but with male elements – feminine pseudohermaphrodites, or ferms;
  5. People with predominantly male genitalia, but with female elements – masculine pseudohermaphrodites, or merms.

These terms are retained here in the historical context of Fausto-Sterling’s 1993 article. In contemporary scholarship and public discourse, the language of intersex traits or intersex variations is generally preferred, since terms such as “hermaphrodite” and “pseudohermaphrodite” are now regarded as outdated and potentially stigmatizing.

In addition, Fausto-Sterling notes that sex is a vast and extremely flexible continuum that cannot be rigidly limited even to these five categories (Males, 2004, p. 114).

According to Ukrainian scholar Liudmyla Males (2004, p. 114), sex belongs to a number of concepts that are disappearing. The very fact of discussing the biological and gender principles of the male and the female proves that the existence of sex as a binary opposition is being problematized. Doubt about the immutability of the sexual division of humanity is strengthened by introduced technologies and recent discoveries in biology, medicine, and psychology. The possibilities of contraception and the recognition of women’s reproductive rights, society’s greater openness to different sexual orientations, the possibilities of gender-affirming surgery, and, finally, the emergence of assisted reproductive technologies almost completely remove the biological barriers that weigh upon the human being, making sex a sentence.

Although the hypothesis that biological factors determine the characteristic features of women’s and men’s behavior cannot be completely rejected, attempts to identify the physiological causes of such influence have not been successful over the past century. Anthony Giddens (1997) argues that there is no evidence of the existence of mechanisms linking such biological forces to the complex social behavior of women and men. Theories whose proponents believe that, in the formation of human behavior, the individual is subject to certain innate predispositions neglect the vitally important role of social interaction.

The best-known example of biodeterminism in post-Soviet scholarship is Geodakyan’s evolutionary theory of sex.

Biodeterminism often becomes an object of feminist critique because it treats natural factors as unchanging. However, feminists themselves have repeatedly turned to biology in order to support their arguments. In this context, it is appropriate to recall special-rights feminism, which later developed into welfare-state feminism, as well as radical feminism and certain theories of female sexuality, including those of Monique Wittig and Luce Irigaray. All of these, to one degree or another, appeal to biological essentialism, that is, to the idea of a special female nature distinct from male nature, with its own specific female values.

References:

Kogan, I. L. (2003). Gendernaia kulturologiia: Kultura pola i “pol” kultury [Gender cultural studies: The culture of sex and the “sex” of culture]. Minsk: Kovcheg. [in Russian].

Males, L. V. (2004). Biolohichni, psykholohichni ta sotsiokulturni chynnyky [Biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors]. In Osnovy teorii genderu: Navchalnyi posibnyk [Foundations of gender theory: A textbook] (pp. 109–131). Kyiv: K.I.S. [in Ukrainian].

Jaggar, A. M. (1983). Radical feminism and human nature. In Feminist politics and human nature (pp. 83–168). Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld; Harvester.

Nicholson, L. (1998). Gender. In A. M. Jaggar & I. M. Young (Eds.), A companion to feminist philosophy (pp. 289–297). Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell.

World Health Organization. (n.d.). Gender. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/gender-equity-rights/understanding/gender-definition/en/

Fausto-Sterling, A. (1993, March/April). The five sexes: Why male and female are not enough. The Sciences, 20–24.

Giddens, A. (1997). Sociology (3rd ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press.

Shevchenko, Z. V. (2016). Biodeterminizm [Biodeterminism]. In Slovnyk gendernykh terminiv [Dictionary of gender terms] (pp. 19–24). Cherkasy: Chabanenko Yu. [in Ukrainian].

Shevchenko, Z. V. (2015). Ideia biodeterminizmu v gendernii teorii [The idea of biodeterminism in gender theory]. In Suspilni nauky: Suchasni tendentsii ta faktory rozvytku: Materialy mizhnarodnoi naukovo-praktychnoi konferentsii [Social sciences: Current trends and factors of development: Proceedings of the international scientific and practical conference] (Odesa, Ukraine, January 23–24, 2015) (pp. 106–108). Odesa: NGO “Prychornomorskyi tsentr doslidzhen problem suspilstva.” [in Ukrainian].

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

code