Pulling it All Together: Serano’s Intrinsic Inclination Model

            

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Throughout the semester, we have read quite few pieces of very influential philosophy involving the nature of gender, and many of these texts have centered around the question of whether or not gender is to be considered “constructed,” (shaped largely by social forces) or if gender is to be thought of as something separate from social forces, and is instead  intrinsic, innate, and fundamental to who a person is. Many of the texts that we have viewed so far, from Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble and “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” to Ásta's  Categories we Live By: The Construction of Sex, Gender, Race and Other Social Categories, to many of the writings we have seen discussed in Shannon Dea’s book have taken the view that gender is in fact socially constructed, and that there is nothing intrinsic about it. While reading these perspectives and the reason and justifications behind them, I continually found myself unconvinced. All of these views seemed impossible to reconcile with the lives and identities of transgender people, who often express that their gender is something fundamental and innate to them. In fact, many trans people (as we have seen in Dea’s discussion of the contentious relationship between trans feminists and radical feminists) have expressed that they find the reduction of gender to merely a “performative social construction” is an act of erasure of their identities and everything they have fought for for much of their lives. 

But, in her book Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, gender theorist, biologist, writer, and trans woman Julia Serano presents a model for understanding gender that I find the most convincing out of any we have viewed so far this year. In fact, I found reading Serano to be a cathartic experience because her writings perfectly express the ideas that I had been trying to articulate in my writings all semester. Serano proposes a model for viewing gender expression, subconcious sex (which she defines “as unconscious and inexplicable self-understanding regarding what sex one belongs to or should be”), and sexual orientation that, in my opinion, accounts for the variation, experiences, diversity, and lived experiences of all people, and human beings the freedom and validation that they are who they are, and that they are permitted to be who they are. 

I think the beauty and nuance of Serano’s theory stems from the fact that it points out that the philosophical debate surrounding gender, as we have seen in this course, so often creates a false dichotomy between gender constructionists (who view gender as something that does “not occur naturally, but rather is an invention or an artifact of human culture” (Serano 96)) and gender essentialists (“who believe that those born male are simply preprogrammed to act masculine, and those born female are preprogrammed to act feminine” (96)). All semester, I have felt trapped between these two views of gender, each seeming inadequate and flawed in different ways. Serano points out exactly why these views are flawed, explaining that gender essentialists and gender constructionists are both at least partially incorrect. She argues that gender essentialists are incorrect in their view of gender because of the simple fact that “not all men are masculine and not all women are feminine,” and so gender must therefore not be “essential” and based solely on biological sex because so many people exist that are exceptions to the gender essentialist view that “those born male are simply preprogrammed to act masculine, and those born female are preprogrammed to act feminine” (96, 97). Moreover, Serano points out, people who have gender expressions that do not fit the model proposed by gender essentialists (such as masculine women and feminine men, for instance) “exist in virtually all cultures throughout history, which suggests that they [too] are a natural phenomenon,” and at a higher rate than would be expected if such people represented mistakes of genetics (97). 

Serano also demonstrates that the view of gender proposed by gender constructionists is flawed, pointing out that “Many girls who are masculine and boys who are feminine show signs of such behavior at a very early age,” and often these signs present themselves even before such children have been “fully socialized with regard to gender norms” (98). Moreover, despite the social pressures and forces such individuals face, they often still display such “exceptional gender expressions” well into adulthood. This, Serano concludes, demonsatrates that “certain expressions of femininity and masculinity represent deep, subconscious inclinations” about a person’s own gender that Serano likens to the deep and subconcious inclinations humans also experience about their subconscious sex and sexual orientations (98). 

After rejecting key aspects of these two prevailing theories about gender, Serano presents her own view of gender, which forms a bit of a hybrid between constructionism and essentialism. She suggests that our inclinations in relation to our gender are “deep and subconscious,” and are therefore “hardwired into our brains” (Serano 98). She then supports this view of gender as something natural, “hardwired,” and fundamental to who we are by citing gender based differences found in other species of animals. She points out that other species, such as mammals and birds, are not influenced by social construction in the way that humans are, and yet they still possess “certain behaviors and affinities that seem to predominate in one sex, but which also occur at lower but substantial frequenceis in the other sex as well” (99). This demonstrates that independently of social forces, differences in other non-human animal species tend to naturally distribute among individuals in both typical and exceptional ways. She argues that this principle extends to human animals as well, who display natural differences in masculine and feminine affinities and inclinations that more frequently align with biological sex (that is that feminine-inclined persons will more often be biologically female and identify as women in terms of gender expression), but do not always align in this exact way in a substantial number of cases. Through these explanations, she implies that much of gender is therefore intrinsic and fundamental to who we are, just in the way that these traits are intrinsic and fundamental to non-human animal species. In some ways this perspective aligns with the biological essentialists, who highlight the “pre-programmed” nature of gender, but Serano succeeds in highlighting the intrinsic nature of gender in a way that does not discount those who take the “exceptional” forms of gender like the biological essentialists do. 

Serano then goes on to say that gender is not something that can be reduced purely and entirely to our biology, because, she argues, social factors play strongly into how we interpret our intrinsic and deep seated inclinations (98). This, in a way, borrows slightly from the social constructionists, but moves away from the assumption that gender is entirely socially shaped. Instead, Serano advocates for the idea that socialization impacts how we view and interpret the natural inclinations that are already present within us. Therefore, under her model, a mixture both our innate biology and  socialization work together to shape our gender. 

I find this model incredibly convincing, because it seems the most plausible out of all theories we have seen so far. It cleverly accounts for and explains the experiences and diversity that exist among the human population. Moreover, unlike many of the other theories we have seen so far, it is not trans-exclusionary, and does not belittle what trans people have been expressing all along; that their gender identity is something fundamental and intrinsic to who they are. In addition, it manages to reconcile biology with human population variance, and highlights the fact that many differences within groups such, such as observed differences between males and females, represent averages, and so there is often larger differences among members of the same group than there are between members of different groups, as well as many individuals that are exceptions to such averages. For these reasons, I am very convinced by Serano’s intrinsic inclination model of gender.