Variations on Sex and Gender: Behaviour Wittig, and Foucault
Variations on Sex and Gender: Behaviour Wittig, and Foucault

Summary/Abstract: If gender is the corporealization of choice, and the acculturation of the corporeal, then what is left of nature, and what has become of sex? If gender is determined in the dialectic between culture and choice, then what role does “sex” serve, and ought we to conclude that the distinction between sex and gender is anachronistic? Has Beauvoir refuted the original meaning of her famous formulation, or was that declaration more nuanced than we originally guessed? To answer, we must reconstruct Beauvoir’s distinction between sex and gender, and consider her theory’s present life in the work of Monique Wittig who considers the distinction anachronistic. We will then turn to Michel Foucault’s rejection of the category of “natural sex,” compare it with Wittig’s position, and attempt a reformulation of gender as a cultural project.

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