Abstract
In this paper, we argue that there are good, scientifically credible reasons for thinking that some nonhuman animals might have genders. We begin by considering why the sex/gender distinction has been important for feminist politics yet has also been difficult to maintain. We contrast contemporary views that trouble gender with those typical of traditional sex difference research, which has enjoyed considerable feminist critique, and argue that the anthropocentric focus of feminist accounts of gender weakens these critiques. Then, drawing from Jordan-Young’s concept of gendered norms of reaction (2010) and van Anders’ Sexual Configurations Theory (2015), we consider what it might mean to say that animals other than humans are gendered in a scientifically robust sense that does not simply reduce gender to sex or project human gender norms onto other animals. It is important that such an account is not only sensitive to its political ramifications for feminist and queer politics but is also sensitive to the ways in which troubling the human–nonhuman animal divide may seem to threaten those humans whose oppression is constituted by dehumanization and animalization. We suggest that, in fact, the contrary is true. We find that decolonial feminists have plausibly argued that animalizing oppression is premised on the human–animal divide and that the idea of nonhuman animal genders fits naturally with some traditional Indigenous ways of thinking about other animals and their relations with humans.
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Notes
As one of us has noted elsewhere, there is no agreed upon term that picks out the cultures that are rooted in the Greco-Roman Christianized world and are now present in various regions globally due to the European project of colonialism in the modern period (Meynell 2009, pp. 1–2). None of them are wholly satisfactory and we have here chosen the term “Global North.”
Although published in The Politics of Reality in 1983, Frye notes that she had developed the main themes of this paper as early as 1974.
See Blackless et al. (2000) for a useful discussion of absolute versus moderate sex dimorphism.
For instance, in Bodies That Matter (1993) Butler neither presumes nor negates materiality (1993, p. 30). She argues that we “discover that matter is fully sedimented with discourses on sex and sexuality that prefigure and constrain the uses to which that term can be put” (p. 29).
The point here is not that the way these sex differences are treated, say in the medical world, is not thoroughly imbued with and shaped by social values, but rather that no matter what shape these institutions might have they will still need to cope with basic sexed bodily functions, such as puberty, menstruation, ejaculation, pregnancy, and so forth.
Van Anders explains, “Partner number sexuality refers to the number of partners people have or are interested in having. For example, someone might want to have no partners, one partner, two partners concurrently, or more” (2015, p. 1193).
One of Jordan-Young’s examples makes this point forcefully—the “very low bone mineral density in the lower back among ultra-Orthodox Jewish adolescents” (2010, p. 285). Although typically in this age group bone density is higher on average in boys than girls, in this population this is inverted. Moreover, “the sex difference was found even after [the researchers] controlled for [environmental factors associated with higher bone density], such as hours per week of weight-bearing exercise and walking” (p. 285).
This definition is in line with Whitehead and Rendell’s definition of culture: “culture is information or behavior—shared within a community—which is acquired from conspecifics through some form of social learning” (2015, p. 12). However, it requires an important proviso. Nonbinary gender identities and traits are neither correlated nor culturally integrated with sex yet must nonetheless be distinguished from non-gender traits that have sociocultural and historical causes (like speaking Spanish, wearing a hanbok, or using a fork). We propose that nonbinary genders and gender traits exist only in cultures with binary genders and can only emerge in reaction and relation to binary gender identities and traits. What the details of a given nonhuman nonbinary gender might be are not entirely clear but must be considered species by species. We note that cultures with a gender binary may evolve to have three distinct genders and, concomitantly, there is the possibility that cultures with three distinct genders might have non-ternary genders, and so on.
It is not clear that we should include all types of social learning as evidence of culture. Whitehead and Rendell provide a useful list of social learning processes, differing in “complexity and cognitive demand” from stimulus enhancement to emulation (2015, pp. 16–17). Whether only those species that display complex and cognitively demanding types of social learning are capable of having cultures is an important question that must be left to a later discussion.
While the restrictions of space limit a fulsome discussion of other examples, we can at least gesture toward a couple of other promising cases. For chimpanzees, it is plausible that at least some of their hunting practices are socially learned; considered at the level of species, hunting is strongly sex-linked with males. However, female participation differs significantly between communities (Pruetz et al. 2015, p. 9). Most notably, the practice of hunting with modified “spearing” tools (Pruetz and Bertolani 2007), used only by a community of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) at Fongoli, Sénégal, is practiced more by females than males (Pruetz et al. 2015). This suggests that various hunting practices are gender or perhaps gender/sex traits. (We leave readers to make their own inferences about what this finding might suggest for “man the tool-making hunter” hypotheses in evolutionary psychology.).
Another interesting place one might look for gender is in sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) cultures. While adult male sperm whales live mostly solitary lives, female sperm whales have clear communities, the structure of which differ between oceans (Whitehead and Rendell 2015, p. 148). Given our definition, any socially learned adult behavior that is specific to a family unit or clan will be gender or gender-sex. Perhaps more interesting is the possibility that within a community there might be distinct socially learned roles among the females, meaning there could be two (or more) genders among females. So, it is possible that there could be two (or more) female genders and no male gender among sperm whales.
While it is tempting to include examples of same-sex sexual behavior here, we must be cautious. Unless a behavior is socially learned and culturally contingent it is not gender as we have defined it. Moreover, as SCT reveals, the relationship between sexual behavior and gender is complicated and the two can be conceptually distinguished. For instance, the well-known same-sex sexual behavior among bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) (Roughgarden 2004, pp. 137–40) may be biologically driven and thus have no relationship to gender. However, if such behavior is socially learned or has a socially learned component, then it will be a gender or gender-sex trait.
We note that the chimpanzees at Arnhem were brought together not by families and lineages, but by human intervention in a place far from the typical chimpanzee habitat, meaning that the social structure of their community was likely quite anomalous. Nonetheless, like humans, chimpanzees are biologically social animals, and the Arnhem colony would have developed certain social practices. Whether some of these were passed down from the norms of free-living populations could only be ascertained by a careful examination of the personal histories of the founding members of the group.
We note that this elision is not unique to discussions of gender but rather applies to any account that finds in nonhuman animals any morally or politically relevant capacity (in effect, any affective, cognitive, and social trait) that has been thought to be uniquely human. It is particularly fraught when the trait in question is considered central to conceptions of human rights, as is the case, for instance, with autonomy.
Lugones writes that “often, when social scientists investigate colonized societies, the search for the sexual distinction and then the construction of the gender distinction results from observations of the tasks performed by each sex” (p. 744). Sexual dimorphism then comes to ground a dichotomous understanding of gender, to the point where sex and gender are conflated. We believe that SCT successfully resolves this concern.
Some may wonder how these kinds of respectful relationships are consistent with hunting. There are a diversity of views among Indigenous people on hunting and food ethics and their relation to Indigenous culture and sovereignty (e.g., Belcourt 2019; Coté 2010; Fisher 2011; Koleszar-Green and Matsuoka 2018; Peterson and Hogan 2002; Robinson 2016; Robinson 2018; TallBear 2019; Womack 2013; see also Kim 2015, Ch. 7; Russell 1999;). Many Indigenous authors stress the importance of taking no more than one needs and maintaining attitudes of gratitude and reciprocity for whatever one takes, including the lives of other animals (Coulthard 2014; Deloria 1991/1997; Kimmerer 2013; Robinson 2014). Within the constraints of subsistence hunting, various rituals are required to remain in good relations with the animals killed. In a book for Indigenous children on their relations with nonhuman animals, Deloria writes, “other creatures do have thought processes, emotions, personal relationships and many of the experiences we have in our lives. We must carefully accord these other creatures the respect that they deserve and the right to live without unnecessary harm. Wanton killings of different animals by some hunters and sportsmen are completely outside the traditional way that native people have treated other species” (1991/1997, p. xii). This reflects what Glen Coulthard refers to as “grounded normativity,” a relationship to land and its inhabitants based on reciprocity (2014, p. 60; Coulthard and Simpson 2016, p. 254). This normativity is not merely ethical, but political, with the political interest and agency of nonhuman animals being held as important (e.g., Hogan 1998; Hudson 2015; Mohawk 1988).
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Acknowledgements
We thank audiences at meetings of the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science and the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy, as well as those who attended presentations of various drafts at the University of Calgary, Laurentian University, and Dalhousie University, for their thoughtful feedback. Our conversations with Andrew Fenton, Erik Nelson, Sofie Vlaad, and Emily Bingeman have also been invaluable, and we thank the anonymous reviewers and Noah Trammell for their careful reading and helpful advice. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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Meynell, L., Lopez, A. Gendering animals. Synthese 199, 4287–4311 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02979-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02979-4