racesexsexualityjewishnesshomoheterogaylesbianbio?

*
~
'jews
& other differences';
or,
"essentialism as
resistance"
~
*




'IT
could be said
that the tension
produced by the essentialist/constructionist debate
is responsible for some of feminist theory's greatest insights,
that is,
the very tension
is constitutive of the field
of feminist
theory.

But it can
also be maintained
that this same dispute
has created the current impasse
in feminism,
an impasse predicated
on the difficulty of theorizing the social
in relation to
the natural,
or the theoretical
in relation to
the
political?'

[Fuss]

-

ALTHOUGH
it is inflected differently
for race,
sex,
and sexuality,
there are ways
that the essentialist/social constructionist dichotomy
operates similarly
for all of these
categories!

-

WE
must start
with a recognition
that essentialism has
no essence.


There are
as many essentialisms
as there are differences
to be essentialist
about.


Although
they have been often analogized,
essentialism with regard to gender
seems to me
quite different from essentialism
with regard to sexuality -
and both, it seems,
are entirely different
from essentialism
to race
and to whatever
Jewishness is
as well.


To begin
to understand
the dimensions of this difference,
a typical definition of the question with regard to sexualities
will be sufficient.


Contrasting
definitions of essentialism
with regard to feminism and gayness
will bring out this point
clearly.


A writer
on gay identity
has defined the controversy
in the following
manner:

[Epstein]

'"Essentialists"
treat sexuality
as a biological force
and consider sexual identities
to be cognitive realizations
of genuine,
underlying differences;
"constructionists,"
on the other hand,
stress that sexuality,
and sexual identities,
are social constructions,
and belong to the world of culture
and meaning,
not biology.



In
the first case,
there is considered to be
some "essence" within homosexuals
that makes them homosexual -
some gay "core" of their being,
or their psyche,
or their genetic ['hormonal']
make-up.



In
the second case,
"homosexual," "gay," and "lesbian"
are just labels,
created by cultures and
applied to the
self.'



THIS
quotation
should
by itself point up
how the meaning of essentialism
will be different
when applied to the category
"woman"
than when used for
the category/ies gay &
lesbian,
for virtually
no one will doubt
the reality of the division
into sexes
or its historical &
cultural
universality.



Essentialism,
then,
with regard to the category
"woman"
has to do
rather with whether attributes
beyond the obvious
and physical ones
- women menstruate,
conceive & bear children,
and lactate;
men lack all of these
capabilities -
are to be associated
with these physical differences
or whether all such associated characteristics
are culturally constructed
and thus
detrimental to the anatomy of
individual women
to define
their own
essence.



[My illogical usage
of "essence" at the end of the sentence
is conscious and proleptic
of the position I will
take.]



On
the other hand,
the debate about sexuality is
whether or not in other cultures
or in the past of
our culture,
which is
the same thing,
there were homosexuals
and heterosexuals as categories of people,
or only
homosexual and
heterosexual
acts.



With
regard to
sexualities,
I claim,
the question of essentialism
is first a historical and ethnographic question,
almost an empirical one;
with regard to sexes,
it is a
philosophical
one.

~verliefdliefdesverdrietverliefd~
engel
30 aug 2005 - bewerkt op 21 mrt 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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