Fausto-Sterling: Dueling Dualisms & "The Sexe Which Prevaileth"

In these first chapters of Sexing the Body, Fausto-Sterling writes of the flexibility of sexuality, the “shades of difference” (Fausto-Sterling, 2000, 3) that encompass a person’s sex, and the sense of identity that results from an individual’s consciousness of unique sexuality. She mentions “social movements to include diverse sexual beings under the umbrella of normality” (15) and, by writing this text, advocates for a wider conception of gender, sex, and sexuality beyond the current constructs reinforced by society and an acceptance of “gray areas” rather than starkly contrasting dualisms.

Modern American society strives to ensure that everyone fits a specific, identifiable, singular sex. The act of “labeling someone a man or a woman is a social decision” (3), which contributes to expected gender norms for that individual based on their identification as either male or female. The text works to answer: Who decides an individual’s sex and gender? The power was originally held by religious leaders, lawyers, and judges, but now has shifted to physicians as “the chief regulators of sexual intermediacy” and, accordingly, surgical and hormonal methods are employed to suppress intersexuality (40). There exists a fear that intersex individuals will disrupt normal gender divisions, so intersex infant bodies are physically manipulated so that they align with a specific gender.

Language also reinforces the two-sex system and perpetuates gender inequality (30) because for many centuries, gender neutral pronouns did not exist and their current existence is in no way universal. Fausto-Sterling investigates the varying degrees of acceptance for intersex individuals and specifically for hermaphrodites and the influence of location, time period, religion, legality, and other factors in the categorization of those within this “third sex.” She also cites the hypocritical nature of efforts for human equality amid scientific determinations that “some bodies [were] better and more deserving of rights than others” (39).

In the same way that the text argues that sex dualisms are inadequate and neglect individuals across the sexuality spectrum who may not identify as either male or female, the text also suggests that what was previously considered solely natural (biological, sex) and what was considered solely unnatural (constructed, gender) may also be inadequate to describe the fluidity and interconnected nature of biological and constructed elements of sexuality. Genitalia is literally constructed by doctors who perform surgery on intersex individuals (27) and societal influences lead to sex and gender constructions.

She points out that many “feminist theorists view the body not as essence, but as bare scaffolding on which discourse and performance build a completely acculturated being” (6), suggesting the overbearing power of social construct in developing identities. She also mentions that what is deemed “normal takes precedence over the natural” (8). When sex is only examined through a biological lens, as it is in the Kinsey scale, “sexuality remain[s] an individual characteristic, not something produced within relationships in particular social settings” (9-10). This is problematic because there is no period, even during infancy, when bodies can be separated from the social world. Each person interacts within relationships with others, is influenced by these relations, and influences others, contributing to conceptions of what is normal in society.