Contemporary gender theory (esp. Judith Butler) regards gender as a performative social construct. While there certainly is a performative dimension to gender, biological sex may still determine gender if the sexual function is structurally normative over performativity; a female body acting like a man is performatively distinct from a male body acting like a man. In its most basic, intuitive formulation (Mikkola, Mari. Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender. 2017), man is just a human male, and woman is just a human female, irrespective of what they act like. There is no good reason to make the concept of gender any more complicated if the performative qualifier <like> can do all the work of describing gendered behaviour without resulting in potentially counterintuitive claims like ‘this female is a man’ but, instead, favouring ‘this female is acting like a man’ or ‘this female is acting according to a gender-like social construct’. Gender theorists nonetheless choose to appropriate the term ‘gender’ as just socially constructed, but this could lead to logical inconsistencies if inclusive of some property of gender that is not socially constructed.

Gender performativity is determined by sex only if sex is structurally normative over some performative property. It is therefore necessary to show that sex is in fact normative in the relevant sense – something that Butler explicitly denies (Ibid. Mikkola). By ‘structurally normative’ I mean that formal conditions of normativity (Lavin, Douglas. Practical Reason and the Possibility of Error. Ethics, 2004.) are satisfied with respect to some performative property. I argue that the relevant conditions are satisfied for the functional properties of sex.

If sex is analysable as a set of complementary functions and functional modalities with a common constitutive aim which is existentially indispensable (and assuming there are no other constitutive aims to sex that are existentially indispensable) then the most appropriate determinant of sex is the kind of functional capacity that an individual possesses just in light of this aim. On this view, Male is a functional kind characterised by the hypothetical capacity to produce sperm, and Female is a functional kind characterised by the hypothetical capacity to produce eggs. By ‘hypothetical’ I mean a capacity that could be realised in one’s lifetime under conditions of anatomical completeness, sexual maturity and the optimal state of health.

Belonging to a kind is an in-or-out qualification that depends only on satisfying a threshold condition. If two individuals have the hypothetical capacity to produce eggs irrespective of differences in the degree of development of sexual characteristics (like breast size or estrogen levels) then both individuals are female. A female who presently produces viable eggs is a functional female. Only a functional female together with a functional male can accomplish the constitutive aim of the sexual function, where genetic information from two individuals is selectively (perhaps optimally) combined in an offspring. While there is certainly overlapping and degrees of development of male and female characteristics, the sexual function consists of two distinct functional roles. If any of these roles is not performed then procreation cannot obtain. This existential necessity applies to all sexually differentiated species, not just to humans, what counts against Butler’s radical thesis that even sex is discursively constructed.

If the sexual function is constitutively binary, and if gender is demarcated by managing, accomodating or otherwise responding to the kind of sexual function one is biologically geared to perform, then gender must be also binary. This line of reasoning has been taken even further in the field of classical psychoanalysis. C. G. Jung has argued that the relationship between binary genders is structurally normative at a fundamental (archetypal) level of human consciousness, as anima and animus. “Both figures represent functions which filter the contents of the collective unconscious through to the conscious mind. (…) Anima and animus [can be realised] only through a relation to the opposite sex, because only in such a relation do their projections become operative.” (Jung, C.G. Aion: Researches into the Phenomenolgy of the Self. Bollingen Series, 1959. p20/22)

This does not imply that the distinction between sex and gender is meaningless, as Butler insisted (Ibid. Mikkola); gender may be objectively determined in kind but socially conditioned in the range of gender-like expressions without negating the functional capacity of binary gender. The functionalist account of sex and gender defines only a functional norm, not a behavioural norm. For the function to work it must satisfy the functional norm (that’s just what the function means), but there is no obvious normative reason for everyone to aspire to fulfil that function, let alone to fulfil it in a particular way, which leaves room for qualification of socially constructed gender-like behaviour. Nothing precludes feminist gender theorists from defining gender-customs as an essentially non-binary social construct as long as its application does not conflict with the possibility of a structurally normative binary gender. This would entail two parallel conceptions of gender that could work without negating one another. The functionalist account may be informative about the inherent human needs and capacities, while the socially constructed gender-custom account could be informative about social conditioning of gendered or gender-like behaviour and expectations about behaviour. Respecting this distinction could dispense with a lot of futile argumentation and frustration where the core disagreement is not about conclusions or values but simply a misunderstanding about the intended meaning of terms. The functionalist account has the capacity to objectively ground social theory about gender and, reciprocally, could be enriched by it. This might just be the way to reconcile the two opposing sides of this controversy.

Update 14.01.2020

Alex Byrne argues in Philosophical Studies that Gender can only mean an Adult Human Female or an Adult Human Male. The primary reason for this conclusion is that defining Gender as something independent of biological Sex would be linguistically inconsistent, leaving a hole in the universal lexicon, and epistemically fallacious (subjective assertions of fact cannot at the same time be the normative standard by which to verify facts). Additional reasons presented are as follows:

1) One would expect English to have a word that picks out the category adult human female (AHF), and ‘woman’ is the only candidate.

2) AHF explains how we sometimes know that an individual is a woman, despite knowing nothing else relevant about her other than the fact that she is an adult human female. Without recognising that AHF entails Woman we would not be able to determine whether our prehistoric female ancestors were women or men, since we do not know how they ‘identified’.

3) AHF stands or falls with the analogous thesis for girls, which can be supported independently.

4) AHF predicts the correct verdict in cases of gender role reversal.

5) AHF is supported by the fact that ‘woman’ and ‘female’ are often appropriately used as stylistic variants of each other, even in hyperintensional contexts.

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