Key Salon Takeaways:
Sex, Gender, and their Entanglements. Isn’t that an intriguing title? This was the title of the October 2023 Ernst Strüngmann Forum, and the focus of our November 8, 2023 salon. Let’s start with the entanglement piece. But what is entanglement? For consumers of popular culture — and here, I’m outing myself as a longtime People Magazine reader — many of us credit Jada Pinkett-Smith for introducing and popularizing the term. The term entanglement however, is actually rooted in physics, particularly quantum physics and future quantum technologies.Key takeaways from our interesting discussion on sex, gender, and their entanglements (and as you can see from the lengthy list below, it was virtually impossible to cull the gems to just 5 or 6 points):
- In defining entanglements of sex and gender, Greta explained that in the English language, the terms sex and gender are separate, but this conceptual separation does not exist in all languages. She explained that this separation — that sex is biological, and gender is social/cultural — is also institutionalized within scientific research. For example, the U.S. National Institutes of Health mandates that researchers discuss sex as a biological variable. In Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research has a policy about sex and gender-based analysis that requires researchers to answer questions about the extent to which the proposed project addresses sex, and then separately how it addresses gender.
- By contrast, the concept of entanglement as applied to sex and gender addresses how sex and gender are embodied in ways that are both biological and social. Akin to how intersectionality theorists such as Patricia Hill Collins have discussed that intersectional positions such as racial/ethnic group and gender are mutually constituted such that racial/ethnic minority status cannot be separated from gender, sex and gender are similarly entangled as part of our neurology, endocrinology, and epigenetics. Thus, as Greta reminded us, from an entanglement perspective, there is no pristine effect of sex or any pristine effect of gender.
- There was consensus that it is impossible to do work related to sex and gender without an intersectional perspective. The key question is how? Lu added that intersectionality is a necessity because it reflects the reality of our biomateriality; namely their interconnectedness . Biological expression is not over here, and sexuality over, there, and then gender identity and ethnicity are in other cells. They are all interconnected and intertwined.
- A recurrent question at the Forum was: what does intersectionality have to contribute to basic biology on sex and gender. For example, do mice have intersectional positions that are important to consider in lab science? Anelis pondered to what extent can intersectional questions generate hypotheses that might be tested in animal models.
- There is a dire need for more interdisciplinary work on sex, gender, and their entanglements. The nature-culture dichotomy is reproduced in discipline (e.g., people working in the social sciences and humanities tend to prioritize gender, while those in the “natural” sciences tend to prioritize biology).
- Lu noted that the biggest problem in knowledge production was not necessarily the questions we ask about sex and gender, but rather the interpretations researchers make about sex and gender. They offered as an example, seeing a cell and talking about sex chromosomes. That in and of itself is not problematic. What is problematic Lu offered, is to think that sex chromosomes are not social and are not affected by social and cultural practices, when we know that social practices are present at all stages of human life.
- Tonia highlighted the historical case of Henrietta Lacks, the African-American woman from Baltimore who died of cervical cancer and whose cancer cells — extracted without her informed consent — were found to self-propagate and were used for many biomedical research and commercial purposes. Mrs. Lacks’ cells are the source of the HeLa cell line, one of the most important cell lines in biomedical research. This research enriched many companies and people, but not the Lacks’s family who still live in poverty in Baltimore. Tonia cited the Lacks’ example as one in our biological experiences (in this case, Mrs. Lacks’ cell lines) are inseparable from her intersectional experiences as that of a poor Black woman living in the U.S. from 1920, when she was born through her death in 1951
- The gold standard for how to measure transgender people in research is based on the assumption that gender is different from sex. What are the implications of this assumption for transgender health research? Put another way, if sex and gender are entangled what is the best approach for equity research with transgender and gender non-binary people?
- Lu noted that it is problematic to conceptualize gender as universal because gender is always local. Because different social practices imply gender, gender in Mexico City is different from gender in Argentina and in the Yucatan, for example. This has important implications for how we understand gender in a country as diverse as the U.S.
- Asked what researchers designing and analyzing research should consider when they develop measures of sex and gender, Zachary offered 7important recommendations for researchers:
- First consult with key informants in the local context in the places that they conduct research to ensure that the language and response options about sex and gender reflect how those communities use them
- Instead of deciding which sex/gender categories participants should be in, researchers should ask several questions to let participants self-identify their sex/gender using their own terms.
- Ask whether the sex/gender categories researchers chosen (by the researcher) are even necessary for analytic purposes.
- Introspect and be transparent about assumptions about sex and gender in relation to analyses. He added that most researchers ask questions about sex and gender on surveys as a “knee jerk universal” because sex and gender are how we organize our societies and ourselves.
- Link the questions to the research aims by making the questions about sex and gender explicit to participants so that participants know why they’re answering these questions
- Define sex and gender. Don’t assume that these are universal terms and that everyone will know what they mean.
- Avoid these common practices: (1) failing to define sex and gender; (2) using terms such as male, female, men, and women as if they’re synonymous; and (3) plugging these terms (e.g., male, female, men and women) into analyses with no rationale or theory.
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