Jan Bergstra & Laurens Buijs
Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team
Photo: Queen’s University
From the now famous publication Beyond Sexual Orientation: Integrating Gender/Sex and Diverse Sexualities via Sexual Configurations Theory (2015) by Sari van Anders (Queen’s University), we extract the following excerpt from the introduction:
“Sexual orientation is largely used as the primary way to describe a person’s sexuality (Katz-Wise & Hyde, 2014; Rosario & Schrimshaw, 2014). Since understandings of sexual orientation generally revolve around gender, this means that gender is the de facto foundation for categorizing sexuality. More accurately, two genders are a necessary foundation for categorizing sexuality: an individual’s gender and the gender(s) of those whom the individual finds sexually attractive. But is it gender or sex? Sex (biological, evolved, physical features related to femaleness, maleness, and sex diversity) actually seems to be the unstated but underlying feature that is evoked in lay and academic discussions of sexual orientation (e.g., Freund, 1974; Pillard & Weinrich,1987).But does that mean gender (socialized,cultural features related to masculinity, femininity, and gender diversity) is irrelevant to sexual orientation?”
This brings us to the following observations:
- Sari van Anders does see “gender” as the traditional starting point of sexual orientation theory. But here it remains unclear how to read “gender.” This observation about tradition perhaps concerns more an observation about the use of the term “gender” than about the choice of a specific interpretation of it.
- In SCT (conveniently also our designation for Sari van Anders’ paper), gender is understood as social gender, and thus not as a categorization into the triad masculine, feminine and neutral.
- The term sex does play the role of and for classification (as does its obvious translation “sex” in Dutch).
- If we formally use gender as a classification criterion instead of sex, it requires a modified reading of SCT.
- The underlying classification in SCT is also primarily male and female (in contrast, these terms play a secondary role in co-essentialism).
- Putting down SO as “the primary way to describe a person’s sexuality” overloads the concept, so to speak. Perhaps there is no such primary way, and perhaps “primary” should be read as “initially,” just as “number of bedrooms” is a primary way of saying something about an apartment. This is done in the knowledge that there is much more to be said about it. By implication, the qualifier “primary way to …” is deployed here as an argument against the concept, and surely that is not convincing.
On p.3, Sari van Anders formulates the question:
“Sexual orientation as defined by gender (or is it sex?) is largely positioned as the singular defining feature of people’s sexual selves, but should it be?”
This is barely readable. What underlying assumptions about gender are at play here, and what is “sexual orientation as defined by gender”? It is unfortunate that no clear references are given here to literature with examples of “sexual orientation as defined by gender.”
A little later we read:
“Sexual orientation is largely seen to be fixed and immutable, a ”rock” that sexual identity is constructed upon.”
Thus, according to Sari van Anders, there is a concept of sexual identity of which (until then) sexual orientation provides the solid ground. Here we assume that “sexual orientation as defined by gender” is meant.
Further explanation is as follows:
“In other words, sex + culture = gender is an equation that seems to be the basis for thinking sexual orientation + culture = sexual identity.“
This formulation shows that there is a great distance between formal gender and the notion of gender that Sari van Anders has in mind at SCT. But the objective of SCT becomes clear: redesign the theory of sexual identity in such a way that “sexual orientation as defined by gender” is no longer its dominant foundation.
Sari van Anders reasons that the concept of sexual orientation has ambiguous descriptions, as well as limitations that complicate its application. But Sari van Anders gives no definition that she “opposes,” so it is unclear to us whether SCT leads to a new definition of SO. Among other things, Sari van Anders formulates her criticism of SO as follows:
“Gender is how some groups make distinctions. And sexual orientation fails to make sense of these distinctions (e.g.,between women who are interested in women vs. women who are interested in butch or femme women). It fails to account for heterosexual men interested in feminine women regardless of sex versus those aroused by breasts, vulvas, or vaginas regardless of gender. It makes no room for women who are attracted to men regardless of penis presence. Theories of sexual orientation rooted solely in sex are scientifically problematic because they fail to ”see” diverse sexualities that empirically exist.“
Furthermore, Sari van Anders sees that the terms man and woman do not simply clarify either:
“The ways in which women and men are operationally defined are muddy for the purposes of science and fail to acknowledge that what even counts as sex is contingent ….”
Needless to say, we agree with Sari from Anders (especially as a text coming out in 2015). FGT aims to make precise what “male” and “female” mean (as well as “neutral”) starting from a notion of formal gender that varies from jurisidiction to jurisdiction and evolves by jurisdicition over time.
From SCT’s text, we conclude that Sari van Anders does not want to rely on tightened definitions of sex, gender, and sexual orientation and that Sari van Anders does not find all of these notions sufficiently clear to properly capture the forms of diversity she is concerned with.
We think that a different approach is possible here: take FGT with also the notion of physical gender as a starting point and try from there to always get a sharp focus on what additional data are needed to capture the different “sexual configurations.” Also try to maintain a clear notion of sexual orientation, even if that notion is not as applicable as you would like, and only part of the phenomena can be described that way.
Sari van Anders also argues that sexual orientation may be a regressive (i.e., non-progressive, or no longer progressive) term and that sexual preference would be better here. We believe that such a comment does not serve clarity: sexual orientation and sexual preference are different concepts that need not crowd each other out when definitions are properly organized.
SCT is a successful “fuite en avant” that certainly provides an overarching narrative but leaves the underlying concepts as loose and disjointed attachments whose applicability diminishes rather than increases. The search for a definition of sexual orientation that takes into account (is compatible with) gender theory does not end with the review of SCT. We therefore maintain, for the time being, that sexual orientation is a core concept in theoretical sexology, and the question of making definition and use of that core concept compatible with FGT.