CHAPTER SEVEN. REIMAGINING GENDER.

To add to the controversy, a member of a government delegation who had considered the debate about the definition of gender an overreaction, mentioned the topic to the family's baby sitter. The baby sitter just happened to be taking a course at Hunter College entitled "ReImagining Gender." She explained to her employer that Bella was correct. Gender no longer meant sex, but referred to socially constructed roles. The baby sitter provided copies of the course materials to prove this. These were photocopied and circulated among profamily delegates and members of NGOs.

The students had been assigned a two- to five-page paper on their own "reimagining of gender," and the course's instructor, Lorna Smedman, had written the following introduction for her students:

In this course, we will read a variety of texts-modernist and postmodernist literature, science fiction, the cartoon, film, essays-to find out how twentieth-century thinkers have reimagined the concept of gender. Is gender a "social construction" or the product of "biological sex"? What is at stake in transgressing the binary categories of female/male, feminine/masculine, heterosexual/ homosexual, natural/unnatural?

The representatives from conservative countries were not interested in returning home with a document that "transgressed binary categories" or which opened up the issue of homosexuality.

Among the photocopied materials was an article by Adrienne Rich entitled "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," which included the following quotes: "heterosexuality, like motherhood, needs to be recognized and studied as a political institution" [Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," Bloody Bread and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979-85 (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.), p. 35 (photocopied materials supplied for course)].

"In a world of genuine equality, where men are non-oppressive and nurturing, everyone would be bisexual" [Rich, p. 34].

An article by Lucy Gilbert and Paula Webster, "The Dangers of Femininity," suggest that defining gender as a "social construction" would mean that masculine and feminine are not natural, hardly a comforting thought for the delegates:

Each infant is assigned to one or the other category on the basis of the shape and size of its genitals. Once this assignment is made we become what culture believes each of us to be-feminine or masculine. Although many people think that men and women are the natural expression of a genetic blueprint, gender is a product of human thought and culture, a social construction that creates the "true nature" of all individuals. [Lucy Gilbert and Paula Webster, "The Dangers of Femininity," Gender Differences: Sociology or Biology? p. 40 (photocopied materials supplied for course)]

A chapter taken from a book by Kate Bornestein, a man who underwent a "sex-change," argues that the way to liberate women is to deconstruct gender: "Women couldn't be oppressed if there was no such thing as `women.' Doing away with gender is key to the doing away with patriarchy" [Kate Bornestein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us (New York: Rutledge, 1994), p. 115].

For Bornestein the number of genders is not limited to two: "Gender fluidity is the ability to freely and knowingly become one or many of a limitless number of genders, for any length of time, at any rate of change. Gender fluidity recognizes no borders or rules of gender" [Bornestein, p. 52].

Particularly troubling was an article by Anne Falsto-Sterling entitled "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough." This article was the source of the ideas promoted by Marta Llamas. Ms. Falsto-Sterling claims that the existence of various genital abnormalities constitutes a reason for expanding the number of sexes from two to five-males, females, herms, merms, and ferms.

Ms. Falsto-Sterling's interest in adding extra sexes does not appear to be related to a sincere concern for the small number of individuals who suffer from these abnormalities, but from a desire to challenge traditional beliefs:

Why should we care if there are people whose biological equipment enables them to have sex "naturally" with both men and women? The answers seem to lie in a cultural need to maintain clear distinctions between the sexes .... Inasmuch as hermaphrodites literally embody both sexes, they challenge traditional beliefs about sexual difference: they possess the irritating ability to live sometimes as one sex and sometimes the other, and they raise the specter of homosexuality. [Anne FalstoSterling, "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough," The Sciences (March/April 1993), p. 24]

Ms. Falsto-Sterling sees the acceptance of the existence of more than two sexes as advancing the feminist and homosexual agenda: "Imagine that the sexes have multiplied beyond currently imaginable limits. It would have to be a world of shared powers. Patient and physician, parent and child, male and female, heterosexual and homosexual-all those oppositions and others would have to be dissolved as sources of division. A new ethic of medical treatment would arise, one that would permit ambiguity in a culture that had overcome sexual division" [FalstoSterling, p. 24].

The articles included in the Re-Imagining Gender class were bizarre, but the profamily delegates and coalition members who read them could not help but notice that many of the themes contained in the articles were echoed in what had heretofore seemed to be innocent statements in the proposed Platform for Action.

FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGY

A reporter for the "Earth Negotiations Bulletin" called the debate over gender "a textbook case study on the state of global feminism and feminist epistemology," which "raised central debates on the relation between language, knowledge and power, the political contest over `natural' and socially negotiated identity, and ideas informing the current `backlash' against some of the feminist advances made in the US" ["Earth Negotiations Bulletin," 10 April 1995].

Most of the delegates, however, hadn't come to New York to debate "feminist epistemology." The defenders of gender insisted that the word had been accepted at the U.N. and in academic literature and had not been questioned before. Those questioning the use of gender pointed out that it had not been questioned before because no one knew they had invented a new definition.

When the U.S. objected to a definition of gender which included the terms two sexes, the delegates began to speculate on their motives. Did the representatives of the Clinton administration believe that there were more than two sexes, or additional genders? If so, how many, and what were they? Profamily delegates were concerned that the "gender perspective" concealed a hidden agenda, namely, the promotion of homosexuality. The Clinton administration was known to be aggressive in its support of the homosexual agenda. Was their refusal to define gender as two sexes part of this agenda? The discussion created a great deal of confusion. Several reporters picked up the subject, and a number of conservative leaders in the United States and Latin America were under the impression that the platform promoted five genders: male, female, homosexual, lesbian, and bisexual or transsexual.

Marta Casco, as chief of the Honduran delegation, asked the U.N. officials for a definition of gender. She was told that gender "did not have a definition and did not need one." She was accused of trying to sabotage the cause of women and undermine the conference by even raising the question.

Sra. Casco made a strong intervention, warning that "in the search for her legitimate rights and equality of opportunity, the woman should not surrender and even less deny her own nature" and that "to design a world of individualistic, egotistical women who are marginalized from family realities will not contribute to the eradication of violence nor the overcoming of injustices or inequalities nor the diminishing of poverty, to the contrary" (author's translation).

TRUE PROTECTION

Gender was not the only source of contention at the conference. Almost every paragraph generated debate. Both sides suggested additional paragraphs, eventually swelling the text by one-third. While over one hundred new paragraphs were added, those presented by profamily delegates were mysteriously omitted from the printed record of the proceedings.

For example, in the section on violence against women, the draft blamed violence on the family, religion, tradition, and "unequal power relations between men and women." Seeking to offer positive solutions to the problem of violence, profamily delegates offered the following paragraph:

It is important to recognize that the only true protection for women is a society where men are taught from infancy that acts of violence or disrespect toward women are unmanly and unacceptable. Mothers, as the primary teachers of children and formers of consciences must raise their sons to understand that men must respect women and protect them from all forms of violence and abuse. Fathers must reinforce these teachings with words and actions.

When the printed record appeared, this paragraph was nowhere to be found. The chairman claimed that it was an oversight, but took no corrective action.

Deliberations dragged on, and, eventually, the PrepCom had to be delayed for three days. The profamily forces saw that the extension was a ploy to shift power to the richer nations, since delegates from the poorer, profamily countries, who had already made plane reservations, would have to leave with many important issues undecided.

The coalition supported the demands for a clear definition of gender. Although several in the group felt that the word had acquired so much ideological baggage that it should be replaced by other terms-either male and female, or women's or sex, as was appropriate-the profamily delegates felt that all that was necessary was to clearly define gender as referring to "male and female, the two sexes of the human person."

When Marta Casco, the delegate from Honduras, made a formal request that gender be bracketed throughout the document, the chairman, Irene Freidenschlus of Austria, in an unprecedented move, refused. Sra. Casco continued to defend her right to bracket unacceptable text. When it became apparent that the controversy could not be contained, Freidenschlus agreed to forming a contact group which would meet from 15 May to 15 June to discuss a definition of gender.

The "Earth Negotiations Bulletin" reported that the U.S. was not interested in having gender clearly defined: "Some of the most interested parties in the debate are now represented in the Contact group set up to arrive at an agreed understanding of the word gender. As one senior US delegate put it, the likely outcome will be the introduction of some `positive fuzziness' to the text" ["Earth Negotiations Bulletin" (10 April 1955)].

The daffodils in the park in front of the U.N. were just peeking out of the ground when the PrepCom began. They had already begun to wither by the time it was over. A third of the text was still in brackets, and no decision had been made on the question of gender. Looking back, the profamily forces would realize that this was the high point of their influence. Behind the scenes, money and power were being used to assure the triumph of the Gender Agenda.