Summary of Wittig text for 8 February 1998

written by Marta Cuboni

"The Category of Sex"

This is a very dense essay that seems to be consciously circular and intertwined. Wittig writes from a Marxist perspective, drawing a parallel to feminism by using the theme of struggle that Marx and Engels applied to social class system revolution, and applying it to describe how oppression is evident in social sex/gender differences. In connection Wittig makes historical generalizations about race and class to make her readers question the "thought that affirms an 'already there' of the sexes, something supposed to have come before all thought, before all society." (p. 25)

The style of this essay requires an analysis that both makes use of and transcends the section by section breakdown of the sex-oppression argument that is the theme of this essay. By this I mean that Wittig addresses particular themes in each couple of paragraphs that are attacks on both the contributing factors and the consequences of the "thought based on the primacy of difference [that] is the thought of domination." (p. 26). However her treatment of this themes (listed and summarized below) is such that emphasis is put on the obscure and circular relationship of the causes and results of dominant thought / thought of domination. Which does reflect the difficulty in analysing social systems based on hierarchies, and the need to recognise that there is no logical starting point because the devices of oppression are inextricable from those who use them.[ And so the society, by being built of people who operate in a system of hierarchy, in turn builds the system].

The one unilateral statement Wittig makes early in the essay is a necessarily strong claim (that " It is oppression that creates sex and not the contrary." p.25) because the remainder of the essay is convoluted and contains so much definition and refinement of her terms that it is difficult to clearly follow her perspective on the essentialist vs. socialization argument.

Some of the themes Wittig addresses throughout the essay are :

- the need to reject thinking of "oppositons(differences)" as natural and predetermined, and to welcome conflict and struggle in that they make clear the unfounded nature of class systems based on politicized differences (paragraph 1-2 p.25)

- the need to awaken women to their situation of subjugation, which has been upheld in a variety of paradigms [metaphysical, scientific, marxist] which have given men the power to claim that differences of a"natural order" give rise to social categories along lines of male dominance. Needless to say, in recognizing these trends, Wittig actually seeks to debase them. (p.26)

- Wittig describes how the implantation of the category of sex serves to establish a norm of heterosexuality in a society. This paragraph is a good example of what i meant earlier about her circular, no-point-of-origin style of discussion:

"The category of sex is the political category that FOUNDS society as heterosexual." "The category of sex is THE PRODUCT of a heterosexual society that imposes on women the rigid obligation of the reproduction of the 'species', that is, the reproduction of heterosexual society.' (p. 27)

the two statements, though related, differ in the role they describe "the category of sex" as playing in the set-up of society and in that they bring both socialization and essentialist perspectives to the issue.

- The remaining two paragraphs are devoted to developing the theme of how the norm of heterosexuality leads to monogamy as a destiny of surrender for women. Surrender of freedom, identity, safety, rights, visibility and ownership of their own sexual nature.

Wittig closes her essay with polemic statements to the effect of destroying the paradigm of "the category of sex" even abolishing "sex" as a differentiator among humans.

Comments: I understand how Wittig can so strongly advocate the abolition of "sex" because as her argument shows it is almost impossible to acheive equality or at least to instigate a major shift in the way societies view men and women, and ordain their interaction as long as the difference bwteen them continues to be exaggerated because of history's impact on the issue. However it seems equally impossible to imagine a complete solution stemming from abolition. To continue the parallel she draws between the men/women hierarchy and slavery: the aboliton of slavery has only bred more insiduous discrimination problems.

I appreciate Wittig's efforts to consider many sources in explaining the erroneous instution of "the category of sex" and I take her non-linear discussion to indicate that what is to be gained from exposure to an analysis of how this situation arose, is the impetus to transcend the system and prove that the relationship between sex and society is tenuous, without wasting time rejecting the assumptions that allowed the system to be upheld.

Questions: This essay was written in 1976, first published in 1988. There are two comments in the second-to last paragraph of page 28 that struck me: one about lesbians and nuns escaping the sexual servility expected of women in a heterosexual society; and the other about it being impossible to conceive of women outside of the category of their sex (to the point where newspapers report "two travellers and one woman" etc. How do these points relate to the situation of today?