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Patterned Fluidities: (Re) Imagining the Relationship between Gender and Sexuality

Author(s): Diane Richardson


Source: Sociology, Vol. 41, No. 3 (JUNE 2007), pp. 457-474
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42857007
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sgelinoli
Copyright © 2007
BSA Publications Ltd®

Volume 4 1 (3): 457-474


DOI: 1 0.1 177/0038038507076617

SAGE Publications

Los Angeles, London, New Delhi


and Singapore

Patterned Fluidities: (Re) Imagining the


Relationship between Gender and Sexuality
I Diane Richardson

Newcastle University, UK

ABSTRACT

This article examines the question of how the relationship between


sexuality has been theorized. Five strands of argument which draw o
epistemologica! concerns, are identified.These have structured the stud
and sexuality, providing a contested understanding of both the mean
categories and their relationship. A challenge for future work is to elabo
works that allow more complex analyses of the dynamic, historically
specific relationship between sexuality and gender; as well as the g
sexualized nature of their interconnections. To achieve this we need to consider

the question of the relationship of gender and sexuality at a number of levels of


social analysis.These issues are explored by drawing on three areas of research: on
transsexuality/transgenden homosexuality and heterosexuality. Finally, a new
metaphor for (ne)imagining how we think about the interconnections between
gender and sexuality is proposed.

KEY WORDS

feminist theory / gender / heterosexuality / homosexuality / queer theory / sexu

Introduction

lematic. In part, the question of their relationship represents an ongoing


The lematic.debate
debatebetween
links between
feministbetween
and queerIntheory
part, feminist
about thesexuality
'disciplinarytheturf
question
of and and queer gender of their theory are relationship theoretically about the represents 'disciplinary and politically an ongoing turf prob- of
the study of sexuality and gender and the process of establishing 'theory borders'

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

that may emerge out of and at the interface of queer/feminist theory


something that a number of feminist and queer writers have drawn att
in seeking to develop sociologically grounded queer theory (see, for ex
Richardson et al., 2006; Seidman, 1996). Hennessy (2006) terms this
rialist direction in queer studies', which includes global material c
within accounts of gender and sexuality and their intersections.
Clearly this is no easy task. Crucial to such an undertaking wou
empirical and theoretical investigation of the current construction of
porary sexualities and genders with a view to understanding the w
interconnect. I propose in the limits of this article to examine this qu
drawing on three areas of research that have been particularly significan
orizing the relationships between gender and sexuality: work on trans
and transgender (e.g. Butler, 1990; Hines, 2006; Kulik, 1998), work
sexuality (e.g. Chauncey, 1994; Sedgwick, 1990; Seidman, 2002; Se
et al., 1999), and work on heterosexuality (e.g. Holland et al. 1996
Jackson, 1999, 2005; Richardson, 1996, 2000).

Background

The theorization of the relationship between sexuality and gender as a


concern is a relatively recent event within the social sciences. During
19th century and the first half of the 20th century, it was the theories
gists, medical researchers, psychologists and sexologists that dominate
standings of sexuality and gender. A key characteristic of these early
is the assumption that gender and sexuality are natural phenomena and
relationship between them is universal and fixed. Although they did n
sarily ignore gender or sexuality, within classical sociological theory f
ers questioned a natural order linking sex, gender and sexuality.
sociology both drew on and contributed to the construction of m
understandings of sex, gender and sexuality as binary categories ordai
nature (Seidman, 1997). As I illustrate in this article, this was to chang
matically in the second half of the 20th century. Indeed, once soci
'opened up the private realm to investigation and certain givens of wh
ated gender and sexuality were dispelled, debates about how we concep
both gender and sexuality steadily grew' (McLaughlin et al., 2006: 1). A
sequence, the meaning of the terms sexuality and gender and the ways t
ers have theorized the relationship between the two have changed con
over the last 50 years.
Within this literature a number of distinct strands of argument can
tified, which draw on different epistemological concerns. For the pur
this discussion I have grouped these into five broad categories:

• Naturalist Approaches (Principle of Consistency)


• Gender Prioritized over Sexuality

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460 Sociology Volume 4 1 ■ Number 3 ■ June 2007

• Gender as an Effect of Sexuality


• Sexuality and Gender as Separate Systems
• Gender and Sexuality Elision

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).

Naturalist Approaches and the Principle of Consistency

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

A new canon of sociological work on sexuality and gender emerged in the


1960s and 1970s, which critiqued earlier 'essentialist' modes of thinking and
signalled a shift away from biologically based accounts of the relationship

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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.

Gender Prioritized over Sexuality

This understanding of the relationship between gender and sexuality is e


in early interactionist accounts, where gender is regarded as a central or
ing principle in the process of constructing 'sexual scripts' and sexual se
this sense gender is understood to be constitutive of sexuality, at the sam
as sexuality can be seen as expressive of gender. Thus, for example,
and Simon (1973) argued that men frequently express and gratify their de
appear 'masculine' through specific forms of sexual conduct, a claim that
empirical work supports (see, for example, Holland et al., 1998). Similarly,
majority of feminist work exploring their influence on social relations an
tity, it has been assumed that gender and sexuality have to be exa
together, with gender taking precedence over sexuality. In these debates
nist theories have extended definitions of gender and sexuality, in going b
considerations of how the link between them is socially constructed to v
their relationship as one of the key mechanisms by which gender inequa
are constituted and maintained.
The development of such an analysis of gender is particularly associated
with the work of materialist feminists such as Delphy (1984, 1993) and Wittig
(1981, 1992), who saw gender as a social product, the outcome of a hierarchy
where one class of people (men) have systematic and institutionalized power
and privilege over another class of people (women). The categories 'woman'
and 'man' are relative and contingent, defined by a specific social and economic
location. Gender categories would not exist if social divisions did not exist. In
this conceptual framework, the binary divide between heterosexuality and
homosexuality is seen to derive from gender.

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462 Sociology Volume 4 1 ■ Number 3 « June 2007

Jackson's work (1999, 2005) is an example of more contemporary writing


that draws on this tradition. She does not seek to establish a meta-narrative of
gender's relationship with sexuality that is sometimes apparent in earlier work,
emphasizing instead the complexity of their interconnections. In common with
most queer theorists, whose views I discuss below, Jackson also makes an ana-
lytical distinction between sexuality and gender, however she does so for dif-
ferent reasons and from a different theoretical perspective:

... I do so in order more effectively to theorise their interrelationship. Without an


analytical distinction between them, we cannot effectively explore the ways in which
they intersect; if we conflate them, we are in danger of deciding the form of their
interrelationship in advance. (2005: 64-5)

In making this analytic separation it becomes possible to move beyond a con-


sideration of the relationship between gender and sexuality, to analyses of how
gender and sexuality are inter- related. Unlike queer theorists, however, Jackson
continues to argue for the logical priority of gender on the grounds of social
intelligibility and emphasizes that sexuality, as it is currently constructed, is
inherently gendered.

Gender as an Effect of Sexuality

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)

In this quote MacKinnon moves between talking about gender's rela


with heterosexuality to sexuality. This is important. Most early accoun
concerned with articulating gender's relationship with sexuality rather t
erosexuality in particular, though in fact that is often what they were d
discussing the link between gender and sexuality it is important to rec
that the relationship between different sexualities and different gender
different to the connections between gender and sexuality in general. In
I argue in the second half of this article, we might question the usefuln
conditions of late modernity of asking such a generic question.
More recent work has moved in this direction of greater spec
Ingraham (1994, 2005), for example, argues for the primacy of heteros
over gender in feminist analysis. In invoking the concept of the 'heter
imaginary', she suggests that heterosexuality is the primary organizing
of gender relations. So closely does she regard their interconnection th
coins the term 'heterogender' to conceptualize their interrelationship a
tions whether without institutionalized heterosexuality gender would ev

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)

Poststructuralist approaches to sexuality and gender, especially quee


ories, are also identified with this strand. For example, in a key early qu
Sedgwick (1990), drawing on Rubin's earlier work, called for a sepa

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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.

Intersection of Gender and Sexuality

So far I have outlined a number of different frameworks for understanding the


relationship between gender and sexuality that have posed a direct causal con-
nection between the two (gender constitutes sexuality; sexuality constitutes gen-
der); or have separated out the two as distinct, albeit interrelated, arenas of
social practice; or, somewhere between these positions on the theoretical spec-
trum, have argued that sexuality and gender are both analytically separable and
closely interrelated, according logical priority to one over the other. In the fifth
and final approach to conceptualizing the link between gender and sexuality
that I have identified the categories are conflated. Here, the assumption is that
gender intersects with sexuality so fundamentally as to negate the possibility of
abstracting either one. For example, Wilton argues that 'discourses of gender
and sexuality are inextricably interwoven' (1996: 125, my emphasis). In argu-
ing for the use of the term heteropolarity to recognize erotic and non-erotic
aspects of the institutionalization of heterosexuality, Wilton states that 'het-
eropolarity saturates and structures the social fields of gender and the erotic,
and renders them indivisible' (1996: 138).

Complex Interimplications

In the introduction I outlined a number of reasons why we need to move


beyond these frameworks in developing new approaches to theorizing the inter-
sections between gender and sexuality. We have reached a point where theories
of the relationship between gender and sexuality, acknowledging the fluidity,
instability and fragmentation of identities and a plurality of subject positions
(Jagose, 1996; Morland and Willox, 2005; Sullivan, 2003), are seeking to
address how gender's link to sexuality is not determinate or unidirectional, but
complex, dynamic, contingent, fluid and unstable (although I argue that it may
be more useful to think of this as 'patterned fluidity'). To do this we require
theoretical frameworks that allow more complex analyses of the dynamic, his-
torically and socially specific relationship between sexuality and gender, as well
as the gendered and sexualized specificity of their interconnections. That will
enable understanding of gender and sexual diversity and, related to this, avoid
the past tendency to presume western frameworks, acknowledging non-western
localized understandings of gender's relationship to sexuality that demonstrate

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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

a dynamic, contingent process. In terms of the metaphor; the strands are in


motion, moving closer at some points, sliding away at other points; having firm
boundaries at some points of connection and becoming porous, bleeding into
each other, in other contexts.
As I suggested in the introduction, I am also arguing that this is a multi-
layered process, which means that we need to consider the question of the rela-
tionship of gender and sexuality at a number of levels of social analysis. This
opens up the possibility that rather than thinking of sexuality and gender as
separate areas of critical analysis, as do many queer theorists, or thinking of
them as connected, as do many feminist writers, they can be both depending on
the level of analysis and the social context. Few writers have done this, although
Jackson is a notable exception. In her recent work (1999, 2005), she sketches
out a framework for examining how gender and (hetero) sexuality intersect at
four levels or facets of social construction: at the level of social structure
through institutions such as the law, education, the state and the media; at the
level of social and cultural meaning; at the level of everyday interactions and
routine practices; and at the level of individual subjectivities. At any one of
these intersecting levels she suggests that the relationship between sexuality and
gender may be different:

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)

The issue of strength and directionality is an important one. It requires us


to consider that the relationship between sexuality and gender may not be the
same as that between gender and sexuality. One way of thinking about this is
to ask the following questions: Can we think about gender without invoking
sexuality? Is sexuality intelligible to us outside of a gendered discourse or
script? Although we might answer yes to both of these, I would argue that in
terms of current constructions of gender and sexuality the answer to the second
question is a more qualified yes. That is, the link between gender and sexuality
is less determined than that between sexuality and gender in the sense that we
make sense of sexuality through highly gendered scripts/discourses.
Jackson's focus in the quote is more specifically concerned with analysing
the relationship between gender and heterosexuality. Along with other feminist
and queer theorists (e.g. Butler, 1990; Richardson, 2000; Sedgwick, 1990), she
acknowledges that the question of how gender and sexuality are (inter)related
is different to that of how we conceptualize the relationship between gender and
particular sexualities. Can we, therefore, think about heterosexuality without
invoking gender? The answer would seem to be no as without gender cate-
gories we could not categorize sexual desires and identities along the axis of
same-gender or other-gender relationships, as heterosexual, bisexual or homo-
sexual/lesbian' (Jackson, 2005: 62). And what if we reverse the question and
ask: Is gender intelligible to us outside of a discourse of heterosexuality? Wittig

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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

gender subversion' is diminished, signalling a new relationship between gender


and homosexuality.
However, it is important to recognize that we might observe changes at dif-
ferent levels of social analyses that contradict each other and/or that the extent
of any such shifts might be uneven at different levels of social analysis
(Richardson, 2004). Drawing on interview data from case studies, Seidman
et al. (1999), for example, argue that many lesbians and gay men in the USA
appear to have normalized their homosexuality at the level of subjectivity and
everyday practices and relationships, although they recognize that this is varied
and incomplete. They also acknowledge that with increased gay visibility, as
new forms of knowledge about intimate relationships and 'families of choice'
enter the mainstream, changes are occurring at the cultural level. However, in
the US context at the time of writing they claim that '... this has not necessar-
ily been paralleled by institutional routinization' (Seidman et al., 1999: 440). In
addition, we might also ask whether the relationship is changing in the same
ways for lesbians as for gay men, and at different levels of analysis and in differ-
ent places. In the UK and parts of Europe, for instance, one might want to argue
that a changed relationship between gender and homosexuality is evident at the
institutional level through the operation of a neo-liberal social policy agenda that
extends certain rights to (some) lesbians and gay men and deploys 'sameness'
with heterosexuals as a central aspect of its argument (Richardson, 2005).
We have moved then from a position of an extremely close reading of gen-
der's relationship to homosexuality as one of imitation or mimicry that col-
lapses gender into heterosexuality, to one that is much more pluralized and
complex. For example, in her examination of female masculinities Halberstam
(1994) argues that, since the 1990s, lesbian communities have witnessed an
unprecedented proliferation of lesbian identities and practices. Halberstam's
focus on transsexuality and transgender as a way of theorizing future possibil-
ities for new constructions of the relationship between gender and sexuality,
and gender and homosexuality in particular, is one that is shared by many other
writers, including Butler (1990, 1993). This is a significant shift. Earlier studies
of transsexuality, although they were crucial to conceptualizing 'sex' as distinct
from gender, continued to uphold the idea of a hierarchical, congruent and
coherent link between gender and sexuality. Sexuality was seen as a symptom
of 'true gender', in the same way that in the case of 'doubtful bodies' doctors
had previously regarded sexuality as indicative of a person's 'true sex' (Fausto-
Sterling, 2000). Related to this, these studies also continued to reinforce the
presumption of a natural link between gender and sexuality; and the natural-
ization of heterosexuality. In more recent empirical work, both in the USA (e.g.
Halberstam, 1994) and the UK (e.g. Hines, 2006), transsexuality and transgen-
der are theorized in ways that demonstrate the potential to trouble as well as
reinforce the links between gender and sexuality.
The question of how the relationship between gender and sexuality is
changing is one that also needs to be addressed in relation to heterosexualities.

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Patterned fluidities Richardson 469

Could there be 'as many ways of gendering heterosexuality as homosex


(Weston, 2002: 100).
Implicit in this question is not only the recognition that these are no
lithic categories, but the suggestion that the process of deconstruction
Historically, it has been homosexual identities and practices that have
main focus of research, with social and political theory paying little att
theorizing heterosexuality (Richardson, 1996, 2000). Heterosexual
therefore been a relatively closed analytic category, frequently presen
monolithic, unitary concept, which renders contemporary heterosexua
ties as largely unexplored territory and limits analysis of the rela
between gender and heterosexuality.
To illustrate this, we might consider how this relationship is gender
at different levels of social analysis. As a number of empirical stu
shown (e.g. Holland et al., 1996, 1998; Kehily, 2000), at the level
practice there appears to be a close connection of heterosexuality with
in terms of (re)producing masculinity. For example, based on the findin
their study of young people's experience of first heterosex (as vaginal
course) Holland et al. argue that 'heterosexual "first sex" is an inductio
adult masculinity for young men', a major step to 'manhood' (19
(Here we might consider how and in what ways the link between hete
ality and gender may be age specific.) They did not, however, find an
lent relationship in young women's accounts, suggesting that this
interconnection does not apply in the same way to young women. How
the level of everyday practices and subjectivities (especially as wives an
ers) it can be argued that there are close interconnections between gen
femininity and heterosexual domesticity and (hetero)sexual attract
ways that are not similarly applicable to men. In this sense, it can be ar
'women's gender is more tightly bound to and defined by sexuality than
heterosexual men' (Jackson, 2005: 82).

Knots, Grids, Tangled Webs or Patterned Fluidities?

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

The tension between local and global theorizing is an important context in


which these debates over the conceptualization of gender and sexuality and their
relationship to each other take place. In light of this, and the emphasis placed by
queer, postmodern and poststructuralist accounts on fluidity, the metaphors of
'grids', 'knots' and 'tangled webs' seem somewhat strained: too static, too
anchored, too self contained, too focused in on themselves. The scope and force
of the relationship of gender and sexuality at specific levels of analysis will
depend on a wide range of factors, mediated through, for example, interconnect-
ing discourses about sexuality, gender, age, class, race, ethnicity and age that are
themselves embedded in wider discourses of place, culture, religion and govern-
mentality. I propose, therefore, a different metaphor to (re) imagine the relation-
ship between gender and sexuality: that of the shoreline, a boundary in motion
between land and sea. Moreover, this is a boundary that far from being self con-
tained is extensive and informed by the hinterlands that shape and shift it.
But which is sea and which is land? In most theoretical accounts, gender is
understood as having greater fixity than sexuality, which is regarded as more
fluid and capable of reconfiguration. Thus, for example, Sedgwick (1990) states
that sexuality is 'more ambivalent; more apt for destabilization and reconfigu-
ration than gender'.
On this basis, we can think of the two hinterlands that frame the shoreline,
the land and the sea, as gender and sexuality respectively. Where they intersect,
the relationship between them, constitutes the shoreline. This is a dynamic rela-
tionship, affected by both local and global conditions, (micro and macro cli-
mates) in which land and sea bleed into each other and are inter-related (they
shape each other), but are also distinguishable. This is also a metaphor that
enables us to think of the relationship between gender and sexuality as specific to
certain localities and historical periods. At different times and places shorelines
disappear and new ones form. Coastlines are constructed (spits form as a result
of coastal deposition; seas alter with global warming) as well as eroded (the
effects of both gradual and sudden change). New sexualities and genders emerge
as others disappear. It also allows for situational specificity, different aspects of
the shoreline are revealed in some circumstances that are not in view in others. In
some social contexts we may observe a particular link between gender and sexu-
ality, whereas in other contexts such a link is not apparent. For example, in some
situations gender nonconformity may 'bring into view' a particular relationship
between gender and homosexuality, whereas in others it may not.
The metaphor of the shoreline allows for the possibility of rapid and major
transformations, such as a tsunami (the consequences for the links between gen-
der and sexuality of a war suddenly breaking out) or a sudden landslide that
has been caused by years of erosion (major transformations that are the result
of years of campaigning for social change). This is a metaphor that also encom-
passes the possibility of gradual change. In the latter case, as has been noted by
Chasin (2000) and others, we might regard cultural changes, such as increasing
'gay visibility' in the media, as illustrative of more gradual change.
In this article I have argued that it is important that the question of the
relationship of gender and sexuality is theorized at a number of levels of social

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Patterned fluidities Richardson 471

analysis. Yet the interconnection(s) between them, like the shoreline, is a


multilayered process with shifting interfaces that often 'mess up' establis
els of social analysis. How, then, can we re-imagine, interpret and pred
shifting sands? The relationship between gender and sexuality is not free
but like shoreline construction has patterns to its fluidity. The shoreline
the structural level; both seas and lands are governed through state and
tate laws and regulations, as well as by local customs and practices. At t
of meaning, coastlines are understood in particular ways that are chang
sometimes competing, mediated through discourses of, for example, tour
ural disasters, farming and coastal management. At the level of material
there are the everyday routine processes through which the shoreline is
ally constituted and reconstituted within a particular local context.
might think of tides as performative practices that give the coastline re
and stability, in the same way that we can see certain relationships betw
der and sexuality reproduced through particular discourses/scripts, which
across different levels of social analysis. Finally, at the level of subject
although they may be fluid and contingent, coastlines have an identity;
recognizable and intelligible to us as particular shorelines. There is predic
we can predict the tides and the climate and their likely effects on the shor
same way that we can predict, for instance, responses to new legislation f
ferent groups (e.g. moral 'outrage', queer critique, neo-liberal acceptanc
social responses to forms of public behaviour (e.g. the likelihood of hom
violence). There is also unpredictability (for example, the oil tanker tha
aground and changes the shoreline dramatically as a consequence) and th
for destabilization that may lead to new genders and sexualities. It is th
leads me to suggest the term 'patterned fluidity' to describe their compl
tionship. It enables the recognition of both the possibility of the fluid i
between gender and sexuality, and that there exists structure and mater
well as socially and culturally meaningful 'sexual and gender stories' (Pl
1995) that give the subject social coherence and intelligibility.

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my thanks to those who offered constructive com


this article, including the reviewers and Nina Laurie at Newcastle Univers
article is dedicated to the memory of the life and work of Tamsin Wilton, w
tributed to and enriched these debates.

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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.

Address: School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Claremont Bridge Buildin


Claremont Road, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NEI 7RU, UK.
E-mail: diane.richardson@ncl.ac.uk

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