The Apartheid of Sex: A Manifesto on the Freedom of Gender. - book reviews

Humanist, Jan-Feb, 1997 by Peg Tittle

Back in the late 1970s or early 1980s, when the title Ms. was becoming a standard part of our vocabulary, I wrote a letter to the editor of Ms. magazine protesting that, while the term was an improvement over Miss and Mrs. because it at least stopped labeling us according to our marital status, Ms. (and Mr.) persisted in labeling us according to our sex. How, I wondered, in the feminist fight for a gender-neutral society, could we ignore this sexism in our very namesz Ms. never responded.

Martine Rothblatt explores the same question - "If sex-based differences are irrelevant, then what is the point of saying one is either male or female?" - in a book aptly titled The Apartheid of Sex. It is an apartheid indeed when we are segregated from the moment of birth (literally) into male and female.

Rothblatt's main argument against this apartheid of sex is quite simple: sex is a complex continuum from very male to very female (sexual continuism) rather than a simple duality of male or female (sexual dimorphism). Therefore, any labeling of individuals as male or female is an injustice to those individuals, especially if such labels are to have social, economic, or legal importance.

Several aspects of sex are dealt with: genitaha, chromosomes, hormones, reproductive capacities, and thought patterns. In every case, Rothblatt reveals the continuum and the consequent in-justice of using that aspect to categorize people as eitherfor.

Along the way, most causal connections between those aspects are examined and found to be not at all clear. There is no causal connection between genitals and thought patterns, for example; as Olympic testing committees have found, there isn't even a clear connection between genitals and chromosomes.

Rothblatt also points out that any biology-is-destiny argument is simply out of touch with current reality. Science and technology can change biology (consider plastic surgery); it can also make it irrelevant (consider bottled infant formula and backhoes).

Several suggestions are made for dismantling this apartheid. Adopt laws that prohibit the classification of people according to sex, except for bona fide medial reasons (this would especially include the elimination of sex on marriage applications). Encourage the concept of self-defined sex. Create gender-neutral pronouns (I prefer expanding the use of it). Desegregate public washrooms. And replace the sex categories in sports with weight, or height-based categories.

What makes this book especially good are the simple countexamples Rothblatt presents to undermine traditional arguments (and so many traditional arguments are undermined in this book!). Consider, for example, this comment about keeping women out of combat positions during the Vietnam War because of their size: "Yet the Vietnamese won that war with male soldiers who, on average, were shorter than the average American woman" (emphasis added). Or consider this rebuttal to the insistence on heterosexual marriage because the purpose of marriage is to raise a family: "Were childbirth still the reason for marriage, then post-menopausal marriages would be illegal and nonproductive marriages could be annulled in secular fora."

Rothblatt's summary is clear: "The legal separation of people into male and female sexes is unfair because it deprives everyone of the right of creative self-expression. It is also unfair because separate is never equal." I think I'll start using it more often, and the next time I'm asked to check "male" or "female," I'll write in "other"

Peg Tittle is a freelance writer living in Canada.