The field of biology is currently delivering a broad repertoire of explanatory tools for identity, behaviour and social configurations. After the Second World War, while physicists were celebrated as hero scientists, biology was condemned for its connections to eugenics, Nazi medical experiments and bad science (Keller 1992; Kevles 1985). Since the late twentieth century, however, biology has regained public confidence with the powerful Human Genome Project (Kevles and Hood 1992). Nowadays biology has found strong allies in technology, industry and politics and contributes to public discussion of such social issues as health and disease, behaviour, identity and kinship. Given the place of biology in contemporary society, the question of what is a man or a woman is often assumed to be a question that only biology can answer, and a central public debate concerns the distinction between, or roles of, what are thought of as the separate realms of ‘nature’ and of ‘nurture’. This debate structures but confuses much current discussion of gender.
Although the biology of ‘Man’ had been virtually non-existent until the twentieth century, men have been both the objects and the subjects of biology, especially as deviancies to the prime subject: Man. As many scholars have shown, this prime subject was not so much linked to nature, biological processes or the flesh, but to culture, reason and the mind. Moreover, twentieth-century biology was less interested in individuals and their innate qualities than in clusters of individuals (social groups) and the relations between them. Biology, and most problematically so in its eugenic variant, had been preoccupied with delivering biological answers for the (racial, sexual and class) ordering of societies (Haraway 1989). It had focused its attention to otherness, the alleged threat to the social order and the masculinity of the centre (Duster 2003). In biological research racial differences, criminal or violent behaviour, and sexual reproductive success or deviancies had been the subjects of choice while studying men (Kevles 1985). Men of colour or members of lower classes were enrolled as objects in biological studies of various kinds. Brain masses were measured to establish the human chain of being (Gould 1981), IQ studies were studied to explain poverty and social status (Lewontin et al. 1984); phrenology and hereditary studies aimed at criminal behaviour and violence were studied preferably among (black) prisoners (Kevles 1985; Duster 2003); sexual behaviour, reproductive success and sexual deviancies (such as homo- or bi-sexuality) were conducted preferably among the lower classes (Kevles 1985). Thus although men have been objects of biology contributing to the inscription of deviancy among social groups, man and masculinity had not been put on the research table of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century biology.
From deviancies to dominance
In a different branch of late twentieth-century biology, ‘Man’ the prime subject had been contrasted to the animal kingdom. For example, during the 1970s and 1980s sociobiological studies of animal behaviour had become powerful legitimating tools for male dominance. Studies of ant colonies or primat apes have figured as laboratory controlled experiments where the biology and behaviour of males could be studied in ways that would enlighten our understanding of men in society. Such studies have been both hailed (in the fields of biology and psychology) and criticised (especially by feminists) because they contributed to the legitimisation of male violence and aggression. Violence, aggression, territoriality and dominance were explained as communication strategies, contributing to evolutionary success, and as guarantees for the future existence of a population or a species (Haraway 1991). A classical socio-biological study, Dawkins’s (1979) The Selfish Gene, borrows from cybernetics and computer science to establish the chain of command in such communication and to argue that genes have a life of their own aiming at diversity in the gene pool and at competition between different genotypes. In this context, genes (‘the replicators’) are eager to reproduce and use human bodies as vehicles to safeguard their future existence. Although men, or humans for that matter, do not enter the scene until the last chapter of Dawkins’s book, the message is crystal clear: the nature of masculinity is gene-driven, and dominance, competition and violence are goods in themselves. This understanding of masculinity had prevailed in popular science books by the end of the twentieth century.
From deviancies to differences
Biological knowledge and discourse are powerful. They tend to travel more easily to the rest of society than, say, knowledge about electrons. It is for this reason that feminist scholars have insisted on an engagement with biology. The stakes in biological knowledge have been high. In contrast to ‘Man’, biology has quite a lot to say about ‘woman’. Whereas men have been conceived of as non-biological, i.e. rational and detached, etc., in dominant social and biological discourse women have been considered biology-driven, i.e. emotional, attached, and so forth. This dichotomy has contributed to women’s association with nature and related domains, such as the household or child care, whereas men were placed outside of nature in the public sphere.
Feminist scholars have participated strongly in the so-called ‘nature—nurture’ debate and argued that scientists claiming to study biological sex-differences had actually been inscribing social phenomena on to the biological. The introduction of the concept of gender in the 1980s found a warm welcome in feminist science studies. Juxtaposed against the biological (sex), this cultural concept (gender) provided feminists with a powerful tool to study inequalities between men and women and concepts of femininity and masculinity and to intervene in processes of domination. During the 1980s and 1990s gender became the category of choice, and sex its stable yet not so relevant referent. Feminist scholars, such as Haraway (1991) and Mol (2002) argued that biological sex was too important to be left to biologists for study and too complex to be reduced to one thing. Influenced by the constructivist turn in science studies, Haraway, Mol and others have insisted on a view of science as a cultural practice. Since scientific practice is heterogeneous, its objects of study are multiple by nature, be this biological sex, man, woman, the body or race. Others, especially feminist women of colour, have raised similar questions about the unified subject of feminist politics, namely woman. They have argued that woman may be a variety of different things or positions depending on where you are in the world. If woman is multiple, what about man (Connell 1995)? Important here is that biological sex has changed from a stable reference out there in nature to a fluid subject, intricately connected to scientific work and technology (M’charek 2005). Biology is plural, and so are masculinities and femininities.
Rather than a mere critique of biology as a form of ideology, the constructivist turn has contributed to taking biological knowledge and practice seriously. For biology (and science in general) as a field has contributed to our understanding of ourselves, and it has delivered technologies that are intimately connected to our daily lives and identities. The constructivist turn has thus contributed to strands of research that are interested in how biology produces differences, knowing that these differences are not lying out there in nature, waiting for scientists to reveal them. Sex differences are material cultural products that matter in serious ways. For example in her study of the male pill, Oudshoorn (2002) shows that in contrast to the expectations of scientists and industry, men were actually eager to take a hormonal contraceptive. Moreover, men would welcome an effective alternative to the condom if only to alleviate the burden for their female partners. Oudshoorn shows that the medical field was not equipped to provide this care for men. Whereas women with questions concerning contraception would be referred to a gynaecologist, no such discipline existed for men, indicating a lack of knowledge about the male reproductive system. Although men did see urologists, these professionals did not want to be involved in the clinical trials for the male pill. Their core business was improving men’s sexual performance and not anything that might jeopardise this, such as hormonal contraceptives. The study of the male pill shows that in order to produce future users of the male pill, different masculinities had to be fashioned both in biological and clinical research and outside. Thus taking biology seriously allows us to go beyond one male nature (which lies in hormones, genes, cortex, skeletons, gonads, etc.) and to see a variety of differences that biology helps produce.
Y-man?
By the end of the twentieth century biology had predominantly become the biology of the gene. The launch of the Human Genome Project (HGP) and the completion of that genome (the first human genetic map) in June 2000 contributed substantially to this ‘genetic revolution’. Whereas genetics and heredity had been an anathema outside medical practice, nowadays genes for virtually anything are being announced, varying from maleness and homosexuality to violence or language capability (Sykes 2003). In practice, scientists would acknowledge that any behaviour is much more complex than an identification of a gene, yet the message widely received is that the answer is there in biology—even better, in the genetic code. The most exciting result of the HGP and its technologies is the insight that the DNA is a huge landscape. Based on similarities and differences in the DNA, this allows for an endless clustering of individuals. Genetic differences are less a matter of DNA than matters of technologies. The difference between one population and the other, or one individual and the other, depends on the technologies applied and on the part of the DNA that is being studied (M’charek 2005).
Let us take a step back to view what is considered the ultimate identifier of masculinity in genetics, the Y-chromosome. This chromosome was ‘discovered’ in 1959. At that time the paradigm of biological research was: ‘more is better’. Similar to attempts aimed at finding evidence for more brain mass in males (Gould 1981), biologists expected to find more chromosomes in men (Kevles 1985). Yet scientists ended up finding that one of the smallest chromosomes seemed to demarcate the difference between the sexes. Ever since, the genetic difference between females and males has been represented as XX—XY. Presence of the Y-chromosome seemed to make man. However, research in the 1990s shows that it is not so much the Y-chromosome as a specific gene that is involved in sex determination, the SRY-gene. This gene is usually found on the Y-chromosome, but its functioning depends on genes located on the X-chromosome. In some cases it is even located on the X-chromosome. Does this mean that the biology of sex differences is determined and understood? If we take man to be more than a bag of genes, we are still left with complexities that resist general or universal claims. For, in addition to genes, hormones, minerals, gonads, brains, breasts, diets, metabolic processes and so on, also matter. However, these biological ‘objects’ or mechanisms do not add up to a full picture of what a man is (see also Mol 2002). More often than not, they may conflict as they cluster individuals in different categories. One could say that the more knowledge biology produces about maleness, the further away we move from a unified signifier of masculinity.
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