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Sociology
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sgelinoli
Copyright © 2007
BSA Publications Ltd®
SAGE Publications
Newcastle University, UK
ABSTRACT
KEY WORDS
Introduction
457
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458 Sociology Volume 41 « Number 3 ■ June 2007
(Jeffreys, 2003; Merck et al., 1998; Richardson, 2006). The issues raised, how-
ever, are not just limited to sexuality and gender studies, but are implicated in
a broad range of areas of social analysis, such as theorizing difference; the body;
the project of self; transformations of intimacy; and how power and agency
operate. This article examines the question of how the relationship between
gender and sexuality has been theorized. It argues that a number of specific
approaches can be identified that have structured the study of gender and sex-
uality, providing us with a contested understanding of both the meaning of
these categories and their relationship.
The 'cultural turn', and the rise of queer theory in particular, has led to a
reappraisal of gender and sexuality categories (Nicholson, 1994; Sullivan,
2003). Of particular importance has been the emergence of new articulations of
identity associated with postmodernism, which have shifted emphasis from the
binary logic and understandings of sexuality and gender as fixed, coherent and
stable, towards seeing these categories as plural, provisional and situated. This
theoretical shift to understanding gender and sexuality in terms of performativ-
ity associated with the work of Butler (1990, 1993) has opened up new areas
for analysis and debate. However, I suggest that although conceptual inade-
quacies in theorizing gender and sexuality may have been identified this is much
less apparent in terms of theorizing their (inter)relationship.
One of the difficulties in theorizing the connections between gender and
sexuality is that these terms are ambiguous and are often used by different writ-
ers in different ways. In the first half of the article I clarify how different writ-
ers have conceptualized the relationship between these categories. Five distinct
strands of argument, which draw on different epistemological concerns, are
identified within the literature. These are briefly sketched out before going on,
in the second half of the article, to propose that more nuanced sociological per-
spectives are required to enable new ways of articulating an understanding of
the diversity of contemporary gender and sexual categories and the complexi-
ties of their relationships with one another.
This is for a number of reasons. First, I am arguing that the shift in the con-
ceptualization of 'the social' away from social structural definitions towards
definitions of the social in terms of fluidity and mobility, means that our under-
standing of how gender and sexuality intersect are delimited in a number of
important respects. This is often represented as a tension between feminist and
queer writers. Indeed, one of the criticisms that is often made of queer, post-
modern and poststructuralist work by feminist and other writers is that it does
not pay sufficient attention to issues of structure and materiality and that the
focus on cultural norms often fails to address questions of how these norms are
constituted and why they prevail (Hennessy, 2006; Kirsch, 2000; McLaughlin
et al., 2006; Seidman, 1996). This tendency suggests a need for a more socio-
logically grounded understanding of the relationship between sexuality and
gender. Second, developing such frameworks is important because it allows us
to move beyond the binaries of feminist/queer; 'the cultural'/'the social', which
have constrained theoretical development, and consider the possible new directions
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Patterned fluidities Richardson 459
Background
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460 Sociology Volume 4 1 ■ Number 3 ■ June 2007
The order in which these strands are presented represents, in some sense, a his-
tory of the epistemology of gender and sexuality. It is important to note, how-
ever, that none of these approaches has disappeared entirely and all continue to
exert varying degrees of influence on how we imagine the relationship between
the two. It is also important to acknowledge that such imaginings are shaped
not only by the discursive authority of any one particular strand, but also by
how these different strands intersect and are positioned vis-a-vis each other, as
an ongoing, dynamic process. For example, feminist and queer theories have
often been regarded as 'oppositional'. This has led various writers to seek to
move beyond the dichotomies forced by such a framework, for precisely the
reason that this may close down understandings of the relationship between
gender and sexuality (Butler, 1997; Martin, 1998; Richardson, 2006).
As discussed earlier, from the mid- 19th century to the second half of the 20th
century the dominant western understanding of the relationship between gender
and sexuality was as an expression of an underlying natural universal order: a
natural order that relies on notions of sexual and gender dualism/binaries
(male/female; heterosexual/homosexual; masculine/feminine), based on comple-
mentary polarity (Wilton, 1996). Ponse (1978) referred to this paradigm as 'the
principle of consistency', whereby it is assumed that sex-gender-sexuality relate
in a hierarchical, congruent and coherent manner, and 'a disruption in expecta-
tions to one element presumably carries consequences for all the other elements'
(p. 170). Accepting this principle, and the naturalization of heterosexuality
embedded within it, has meant that historically the link between sexuality and
gender has typically been investigated in relation to non-normative genders and
sexualities. However, rather than challenging the presumed theoretical link
between the two, such empirical work has usually been interpreted in ways that
have reproduced sexual and gender 'coherence'. Thus, for instance, following
the logic of the principle of consistency, homosexuality is connected with
assumptions about 'improper' gender that, as Butler (1993) argues, led to cross-
gender identity being seen as the exemplary paradigm for thinking about homo-
sexuality. Within this epistemological frame sexuality is a property of gender, a
gender that is pregi ven and located in the gendered/sexed body.
Sociological Perspectives
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Patterned fluidities Richardson 46 1
between gender and sexuality to social analysis. The shift from naturaliz
social constructionist accounts of sexuality and gender opened up ana
the relationship between the two. It did this through contesting and plura
the meanings associated with both gender and sexuality, suggesting that
are social rather than pregiven, natural categories and, associated wit
denaturalizing understandings of their relationship in certain imp
respects. However, what it did not do, in the main, was signal 'a need to
engage the two concepts' (Alsop et al., 2002: 115). The interdepe
between sexuality and gender which was presumed in the 'principle of co
tency' is also found in social constructionist accounts, including feminist
ries and more discursive analyses of gender and sexuality. Within this fi
interdependence two broad epistemological approaches to understandi
link between gender and sexuality can be identified: those forms of anal
which privilege gender over sexuality and those which accord priority to
ality over gender. A further distinction can be made between accoun
assume a direct causal link between the social construction of gender and
uality and those which, while rejecting a causal discourse, argue for the
priority of one over the other.
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462 Sociology Volume 4 1 ■ Number 3 « June 2007
In the third approach to conceptualizing the link between gender and sexuality
that I have identified, sexuality is prioritized over gender. Traditionally this is
the case in psychoanalytic accounts where, following Freud, sexual desire and
sexual object choice are seen as central, the 'driving force', to the formation of
gendered subjectivity through Oedipal processes (although see Hollway, 1996,
for a useful critical discussion of feminist psychoanalytic work). From this per-
spective, to become 'properly gendered' is to become heterosexual. There are
echoes here of the assumptions found in naturalistic accounts that I described
earlier, where homosexuality is seen as a sign of 'improper gender'.
Other writers from very different theoretical traditions have similarly
argued that sexuality is constitutive of gender. The radical feminist writer
MacKinnon (1982), for example, advanced this argument claiming a causal link
between sexuality and gender. Extending a Marxist understanding of capital-
ism to sexuality, MacKinnon developed a feminist theory of power in which she
argued that sexuality is the origin of women's subordination and - sharing the
materialist view of gender as hierarchy - thereby constitutes gender. Although
she acknowledged that sexuality and gender are interrelated, and are defined in
terms of each other, she asserts '... it is sexuality that determines gender, not
the other way around' (1982: 531). For MacKinnon, sexuality constitutes both
gendered subjectivities and the gendered power inequalities existent in society:
Sexuality is that social process which creates, organizes, expresses, and directs
desire, creating the social beings we know as women and men, as their relations cre-
ate society ... Women and men are divided by gender, made into the sexes as we
know them, by the social requirements of heterosexuality, which institutionalizes
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Patterned fluidities Richardson 463
male sexual dominance and female sexual submission. If this is true, sexuality
linchpin of gender inequality. (1982: 516, 533)
Separate Systems
The fourth strand of argument I have identified argues for the impor
conceptualizing sexuality and gender as analytically distinct but ove
categories. Up until the 1990s, the assumption that gender and sexualit
to be examined together went relatively unchallenged. However, a
with the emergence of queer theory various writers including Sedgwic
Rubin (1984, 1994) and Halperin (1995) called for a 'radical separat
gender and sexuality. Rubin's work has been particularly influent
development of this argument. In making a methodological distinction
gender and sexuality, Rubin (1994) claims she was motivated by epistem
ca! concerns. In her view, by the early 1980s feminist work on sexualit
established itself as an 'orthodoxy', a site of knowledge production abo
der and sexuality that was privileged over other analytical approaches.
tique was aimed particularly at those theories of gender developed by w
such as MacKinnon. Rubin argued that sexuality cannot be adequate
rized through gender, arguing for their separation on the grounds that
domains of independence from each other:
Gender affects the operation of the sexual system, and the sexual system
gender-specific manifestations. But although sex and gender are related, the
the same thing, and they form the basis of two distinct arenas of social p
(1984: 308)
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464 Sociology Volume 4 1 « Number 3 • June 2007
gender and sexuality in order for the internal dynamics within the production
of homosexuality and heterosexuality to be understood. Such an approach, it is
argued, opens up analysis of gender and sexuality, as well as theorizations of
the links between them, allowing more complex and diverse understandings.
For instance, it allows the possibility to think about 'sexualities without gen-
ders' (Martin, 1998), where sexual desires, practices and identities do not
depend on a person's gender for their meaning.
Complex Interimplications
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Patterned fluidities Richardson 465
the complexities and variability involved (see, for example, Blackwood, 2002,
and Kulik, 1998). These approaches, as I suggested earlier, do not fall into the
faultlines that are all too often apparent between feminist and queer theorist
in allowing consideration of gender and sexuality as both distinct and conjoin
and by bringing cultural and material analysis together (Hennessy, 200
McLaughlin et al., 2006).
Therefore, rather than wanting to privilege one over the other, or seekin
to analytically distinguish sexuality and gender in order to theorize them as se
arate domains or, alternatively, viewing them as inherently codependent so tha
they may not usefully be distinguished one from the other, I propose, echoin
Butler (1997), that we investigate 'their complex interimplication'. Indeed, for
Butler (1997) the articulation of new ways of thinking about sexuality and ge
der is one of the main tasks facing both feminist and queer theory. In the se
ond part of this article I sketch out how we might begin to (re)imagine how
think about the interconnections between gender and sexuality in ways that
might enable such analyses.
Other writers, in attempting to do this, have used the metaphor of a theo-
retical knot; a multiplicity of woven strands connecting gender and sexuality t
each other. Alsop et al. (2002: 115), for example, talk of the 'interweaving of
gender and sexuality being central to social constructionist accounts'. Similarl
gender and (hetero)sexuality are so 'closely entwined' for Jackson (2005) that
the connections between them represent a 'tangled web'. My starting point is
that given the extent to which gender and sexuality are thought to be relate
what we can identify as the areas of social life in which they are understood
be co-dependent is not universal but is the product of particular social and h
torical contexts. We might refer to this as the scope of the relational field and
using the metaphor of woven strands, this would refer to how many strands
were interwoven in any particular social and temporal location. That is, w
might consider their relationship to be broad or narrow, thick or thin, depend
ing on the social density of their points of interconnection. Also, this is not
static process; strands may be added or lost.
In addition, what we might refer to as the strength of the linkages betwee
the two is also likely to vary. Here, we might think of social contexts shapin
the relationship between gender and sexuality in terms of how tightly or loose
strands are bound together. Our knowledges about gender and sexuality repr
sent a grid of intelligibility by which we make sense of feelings, practices, bo
ies (Foucault, 1979). This is revealed in the limits to what one may legitimate
be understood as and the types of practices which give the subject social cohe
ence and intelligibility as well as authenticity (Rose, 1999). Here, I am suggest
ing that these grids of intelligibility may be overdetermined at some points
intersection, barely held together at others. That is, we might consider the lin
between them to be socially fragile or firmly embedded depending on the disc
plinary force of their interconnections. The scope and the strength of the rela
tionship between sexuality and gender are important to imagining how easily
their relationship can be refigured. As with social density, this is understood a
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466 Sociology Volume 4 1 « Number 3 ■ June 2007
The ways in which these intersections operate probably differs from one aspect of
social construction to another and varies even within each level, so that the linkages
between heterosexuality and gender are stronger at some points than other and not
always unidirectional. (2005: 28)
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Patterned fluidities Richardson 467
(1992) clearly thought not. She argued that 'woman' has meaning
heterosexual systems of thought and, on this basis, she famously
'Lesbians are not women' (1992: 32). Wittig was concerned with the
ship between heterosexuality and a specific gender category. However,
quent work has been concerned with heterosexuality and gender more
Both Butler (1990, 1997) and Ingraham (1994, 2005), for example, c
heterosexuality is the primary organizing principle of gender relation
although the directionality of the relationship may be disputed between
the balance between gender and heterosexuality and heterosexuality an
der does appear to be conceptualized more evenly than in the case of t
general question of the relationship between gender and sexuality. Wh
demonstrates is that it is important to detail what gender or sexuality
discussion, at any particular level of analysis.
To illustrate this, I want to examine the link between (homo)sexual
gender. In some historical periods sexuality and gender are so thick
that it is difficult to imagine sexual identity outside a gendered fram
the 1950s and 60s in the USA and Europe, for example, gender serv
'master code' of sexuality (Seidman, 2002). This close link between gend
sexuality meant that 'doing gender' served as a chief sign of one's
Chauncey (1994) makes a similar argument in his study of gay life in
in the early decades of the 20th century. Under those sociohistorical con
Chauncey argues that men could have sex with other men and still be
of as 'normal' (heterosexual) by virtue of their masculinity. 'Real' or 'a
homosexuals were 'fairies', who were thought to be 'like-women' an
fore) desired sex with 'normal' men. Thus, gender nonconformity was
a sign of 'real' homosexuality. In this historical frame it is difficult to
gay macho or lesbian femininity.
This is clearly not the case any more, which indicates how the mea
gender nonconformity has changed, and with it the link between gen
homosexuality. Indeed, since the 1990s, assumptions about the rel
between sexuality and gender have been challenged in many parts of t
as a consequence of the emergence of a new citizenship discourse that
the 'normality' of being lesbian/gay and the dominance of a 'politics o
lation' (Richardson, 2005; Seidman, 2002). Associated with these nor
processes, we are witnessing a significant shift in cultural meanings a
uality through the construction of lesbians and gay men as 'the same'
erosexual women and men. Various claims have been made about th
effects of these normalizing processes, in particular how they might aff
inant understandings of the relationship between gender and homosex
as well as gender and heterosexuality (Richardson, 2004; Weeks,
her study of the 'pink economy' in the USA and how it relates to the
conceptions of the lesbian/gay citizen within marketized neolibe
Chasin (2000), for example, suggests that one of the consequence
normalization' is that the association of homosexuality with the 't
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468 Sociology Volume 4 1 ■ Number 3 ■ June 2007
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Patterned fluidities Richardson 469
In this article I have argued that over the last 50 years our understand
the relationship between gender and sexuality have shifted dram
There has been a move away from accounts that presume preorda
terns that follow the 'principle of consistency', to a position where th
exists a wide range of complex and competing social analyses of ge
sexuality and, by implication, their relationship to each other. I h
highlighted in this article how modernist understandings of sexuality
der as fixed, coherent and stable have been challenged by recent
social theory that conceptualize these categories as plural, provisional a
uated. The question of their interconnections therefore simultan
becomes pluralized, requiring attention to how different sexual c
relate to different genders.
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470 Sociology Volume 4 1 » Number 3 « June 2007
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Patterned fluidities Richardson 471
Acknowledgements
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472 Sociology Volume 4 1 « Number 3 « June 2007
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474 Sociology Volume 4 1 i Number 3 » June 2007
Diane Richardson
Is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Gender and Women's Stud
at Newcastle University. She has written extensively about feminism and sexuality a
her publications include Rethinking Sexuality (Sage, 2000), the Handbook of Lesbian
Gay Studies (Sage, 2002) and Intersections between Feminist and Queer Theory (co-edite
with Janice McLaughlin and Mark Casey, Palgrave, 2006). A third revised edition
Introducing Gender and Women's Studies (co-edited with Vicki Robinson) will be p
lished by Palgrave in 2007.
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