Jan Bergstra & Laurens Buijs
Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team
We view sexual orientation (SO) as a main topic in theoretical sexology. We want to try to discuss the topic of SO “bottom-up” in a series of blogs (see also AGTRT-BDT1). In this blog, we look at how we can arrive at different definitions of sexual orientations based on physical gender.
Read more about our research on sexual orientation:
Sexual orientation: general principles
Physical gender leads to the notions male, female and neutral, which, according to AGTRT-BDF75, we adopt (like gender and pronoun) from English into Dutch in the absence of a useful Dutch-language counterpart. In addition to pronoun, we also adopt noun from English.
We further distinguish between monadic and dyadic sexual orientations. Monadic sexual orientations are monodirectional: the direction in which the person described experiences attraction is then leading in describing the sexual orientation (“attracted to male” is then a monadic sexual orientation, for example). Traditionally, we think in dyadic sexual orientations: both the person described and the person to whom that person experiences attraction are involved in describing the sexual orientation (“gay,” for example, is then a dyadic sexual orientation, because the word indicates a man who is attracted to a man).
Dembroff (2016) describes (put in our terms) monadic sexual orientations from the gender nouns male, female, and neutral. We do not find that convincing for the time being, and we look first at the possibility of staying closer to corporeal reality and prioritizing the three nouns for corporeal gender, namely male, female, and neutral. The three options will be as follows, assuming that all persons discussed are adults:
- AT-male: attracted to male individuals.
- AT-female: attracted to females.
- AT-neutral: attracted to neutral persons.
Now we get as a derivative dyadic sexual orientations:
- Homo_LG = male & AT-male.
- Lesbian_LG = female & AT-female.
There is no common designation for persons who are AT-neutral. We cannot simply claim that these definitions are useful in practice. When physical gender (LG) is determined on the basis of karyotype, and when male P has made a morphological transition and on that basis now presents himself as female, and when also P’s formal gender (and possibly P’s legal gender as well) is now female, then it is not readily obvious to assume that a Homo_LG is also attracted to P. There is thus what reason to look for other possibilities for definition.
Using Dembroff’s 2016 theory, we would get the following for the as-derived dyadic sexual orientations:
- Homo_D = man & AT man.
- Lesbian_D = woman & AT woman.
Because Dembroff adheres to a completely co-essentialist gender theory, we think these definitions are not simply plausible. Take for example person P who is an AFAB transman and has not undergone medical gender affirming therapy. P is thus female, both morphologically and according to the various biological criteria. Now surely it is not just plausible that Homo_D is interested in P.
This does bring us to a somewhat remarkable conclusion regarding the theory of sexual orientation, at least if you want to base it on gender theory. It apparently takes a MotR version (say GT) of gender theory to arrive at the following definitions, where man and woman are seen in terms of GT:
- Homo_GT = man & AT man.
- Lesbian_GT = woman & AT woman.
If we assume extreme positions such as LG or just complementary to LG (and as with Dembroff) we encounter implausible descriptions of SO.
Next, it is quite conceivable that the interpretation of the physical gender nouns male, female and neutral needs to be sharpened to provide a clearer narrative of SO. Thus, we can start with the assumption that physical gender imposes on male and female the requirement that the morphological criterion, the chromosomal criterion, the reproductive (gonads/gametes) criterion, and the brain-FMRI based criterion each point in the same direction, and that anyone who falls outside of these are considered neutral (in terms of physical gender, that is). This leaves transgender people out of the story, and that is a weakness for which should be compensated by cautious wording.
In the case of persons, we then refer as a rule to “the normal case,” where “normal” is to be thought of exclusively statistically and not normatively, even if the thresholds of that statistic are not made explicit.
In definitions, assuming the normal case is problematic because that means you don’t know how the defined concept will function in a non-normal situation. To begin the desired precision, we then get (instead of or prior to) gay and lesbian, tightened (bodily) gender nouns as follows:
- Cis-gay = cis-male & AT-male.
- Cis-lesbian = cis-female & AT-female.
These descriptions are not informative about the designation of sexual orientations of a person who is not cis (physical) gender. But even these descriptions raise questions: what about a person P who:
- Cis-male & AT-(morphologically male & chromosomally female) is, or which is
- Cis-male & AT-(morphologically neutral & chromosomally female) is, or which is
- Cis-male & AT (morphologically female & chromosomally male) is?
While these are all “non-normal” cases, the question of characterizing the SO of P nonetheless arises even in such circumstances.