Contents
  1. One sex or two?
  2. The “third sex”
  3. Four sexes?
  4. Five sexes?
  5. Nine sexes?
  6. Thousands of sexes?
  7. Two sexes “and others”
  8. Footnotes

The fundamental thing is that women are more like men than anything else in the world. They are human beings. Vir is male and Femina is female, but Homo is male and female. Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893–1957)1

Sexuation, gender, and sexuality form a tightly entangled triad: a person may be biologically female, socially recognized as male (through civil status and/or gendered behaviour), and live a physio-psychological homo- and/or heterosexuality. For that reason, each of these notions must be understood in its own right before considering their many combinations. If we begin with the biological level, a first question arises: how many sexes are there? The question has been posed since at least Antiquity—for example, when Aristophanes, in Plato’s Le Banquet, relates a myth of human origins involving three sexes: male, female, and androgynous2

One sex or two?

This question brings us back to Thomas Laqueur’s historical account, structured around two models 3: the “one-sex model” (in which the female body is a diminished or internalized version of the male: to have or not to have… a penis)4 and the two-sex model, in which male and female stand in an “incommensurable opposition.” In the first model, gender is primary and sex merely represents it; in the second, “sex […] became foundational, with social gender now only its expression”5. At first glance, the second view seems to emerge in the eighteenth century—curiously at the moment when female orgasm ceased (medically) to be considered a condition of conception 6.

The story, however, is not linear. While anatomical difference was already asserted forcefully in the sixteenth century, Freud in the twentieth century could still conceive sexuality within a one-sex horizon 7.

Whatever the heuristic value of these models, it remains necessary to challenge the reduction of Aristotle to a Galenic “one-sex” framework, where gender would override sex 8. True, Aristotle assigns superiority to the producer of semen9 and claims that man provides form while woman provides matter. Yet when he writes that “the opposite of male is female, of father is mother” and that, “as male and as father, he both rules and is ruled”10, he seems to undermine both any unisexism and any primacy of gender11.

The “third sex”

As we write, the German Federal Constitutional Court is calling for legislation that would allow the registration of a “third sex”12. Is this “third sex” that of German feminists or German homosexuals13? Of course not: here the third sex is, in the first instance, chromosomal14.

Still, the very emergence of the question has a history. In the contemporary period, “third sex” first referred to what would later be called the “liberated woman,” inaugurated by Mademoiselle de Maupin, before being applied to male homosexuality 15, and later to female forms 16:

“In truth, neither of these two sexes is mine […] I belong to a third sex of my own, which does not yet have a name.” 17

Four sexes?

The Pāli Canon 18, in its monastic code of conduct (Vinaya), distinguishes four sexes: besides male and female, ubhatobyanjanaka (ubhato = double, byanjana = sign), referring to androgyny, and pandaka (possibly from anda = egg or testicle), indicating a sexual or reproductive deficiency or incapacity19.

From a strictly biological angle, one might similarly propose four “sexes” by adding to male and female the variants, in an “Eastern” vocabulary, “neither one nor the other” (asexual) and “both one and the other” (“hermaphrodite” or “bisexual”)—the latter case, however, not existing.

Five sexes?

The biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling (1944–) suggested that one might speak of five sexes20, defining sex essentially in gonadal terms: male, female, “merm” (testes plus some features of female genital anatomy, but no ovaries), “ferm” (ovaries plus some features of male genital anatomy, but no testes), and “herm” (one testis and one ovary). The last three constitute intersex types, and in her work sex forms a continuum between the two most frequent poles21.

This typology roughly matches a current clinical taxonomy of congenital sexual anatomies, which likewise divides human beings into five groups:

  1. Female, presenting only standard female sexual anatomy;
  2. Male, presenting only standard male sexual anatomy;
  3. Female pseudohermaphrodites, presenting a mix of standard female and male anatomies, ovaries (but no testes and no ovotestis 22) and an “XX” chromosomal complement;
  4. Male pseudohermaphrodites, presenting a mix of standard female and male anatomies, testes (but no ovaries and no ovotestis) and an “XY” chromosomal complement;
  5. True hermaphrodites, presenting at least one ovary and at least one testis, or at least one ovotestis (this definition depending on no other element of sexual anatomy nor on chromosomal configuration). 23

This scheme—close to Edwin Klebs’s classification of 1876 24—has been criticized, rightly, for giving priority to gonads (at the expense of other dimensions of sexuation) and for the misleading use of the term hermaphroditism 25, which can generate confusion and harm in clinical practice. Indeed,

gonadal structure is not correlated with phenotype26, genotype27, physiology, diagnosis, or gender identity. 28

Nine sexes?

Starting from four genetic profiles—XY (typical male, roughly 48 percent of births), XXY, X0, and XX (typical female, 48 percent)—one can end up with nine distinct sexuations.

  • First, Klinefelter and Turner syndromes (grouped by CMDSD) are separated: the former is XXY (reduced testes, mammary glands; 0.16 percent of births), the latter X0 (female appearance, incomplete ovarian development; 0.04 percent).
  • Next, the male type (XY) yields three variants: genital anomalies (undescended or “invisible” testes, small penis; 1 percent), male pseudohermaphroditism due to 5-alpha deficiency (female or ambiguous appearance, masculinization at adolescence), and androgen insensitivity syndrome (female appearance; 0.005 percent).
  • Finally, the female type (XX) yields two variants: genital anomalies (clitoral hypertrophy, labial fusion; about 1 percent of births) and congenital adrenal hyperplasia (male appearance; 0.01 percent). 29

Thousands of sexes?

So-called “inter-sexuations” represent a small but non-negligible share of the population—between 0.5 and 1.7 percent, comparable to the rate of red-haired people30. This figure is not far from other anomalies such as hypospadias (one boy in 150, i.e., 0.7%)31, and it remains below the average prevalence of congenital anomalies overall (2.5%)32, while still amounting to many tens of millions of human beings.

If the proportion of “intersex” persons is limited, the range of sexuations within this group is virtually countless. Many factors contribute to biological sex: beyond reproductive glands (gonadal sex), there are at least X and Y chromosomes (genetic or chromosomal sex), genital organs (anatomical sex), predominant hormones (hormonal sex), and also environmental influences (endocrine disruptors during pregnancy, for instance).

Each factor introduces possible variation, especially since they come into play at different moments in development—moments that may be simplified into four: fertilization (chromosomal sex), intrauterine life (gonophoric sex), birth (perineal or anatomical sex determining civil-status sex), and puberty (hormonal sex); and each stage carries specific risks of divergence 33. On top of these come sexual identity (psychic sex) and sexual orientation (libidinal sex).

It is therefore unsurprising that, even at the highest level of sport (the IOC), sex testing for athletes has been abolished:

sports governing bodies, considering that none of the femininity tests (gynecological examinations, searching for certain genes, etc.) introduced since the 1960s was satisfactory, simply abolished this kind of control in 2000. 34

Even the famous hormonal tests—such as monitoring testosterone levels—were suspended in 2014 by the IAAF at the request of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). One reason is that the variation in testosterone can sometimes be greater between two men than between a man and a woman 35. Anne Fausto-Sterling, drawing on her dual expertise in biology and sociology, long criticized the culturally loaded naming of so-called sex hormones—androgens and estrogens—a choice that is obviously social and political, since “steroid hormones” would suit both sexes equally well 36.

Two sexes “and others”

In light of this brief inquiry, it seems unavoidable, biologically speaking, to posit an “others” group—combinations of the two sexes. First comes the argument of reproduction, i.e., the perpetuation of the species:

Intermediate states between the different biological sexes are extremely rare and often associated with infertility, which, from an evolutionary standpoint, condemns them to a dead end. 37

Put differently: if a given variety of sexuation is not reproductively viable, it is necessarily ephemeral and does not exist as such—which takes nothing away from the individual concerned, who remains a human being and a citizen like everyone else38.

Second, the moment any “other” sexuation is defined by reference to male or female traits—and how could it be otherwise?—the two common sexes are implicitly reaffirmed. Fausto-Sterling’s remark about the undeniable cultural (male) influence in certain workings of biological science 39 does not alter this: gender ideology does not create animal sex (and zoology and ethology are far from ignoring multiple “intersex” forms).

If one speaks, then, in terms of types rather than categories, one can acknowledge a generic dimorphism: two essential human sexes:

  • Male: one X chromosome and one Y, testes, a penis, internal ducts allowing the evacuation of urine and semen, and predominant secondary sexual characteristics (musculature, beard);
  • Female: two X chromosomes, ovaries, internal ducts allowing the evacuation of urine and ova, the system necessary for pregnancy and fetal development, and secondary sexual characteristics (breasts).

Beyond that, without wishing to endorse a “multi-gender utopia” 40, it now seems necessary—for those who so desire—to name and recognize the set of divergent sexuations and asexuations. The need is societal: recognition can offer better protection and limit imposed “normalizing” surgeries41.

In Anglo-Saxon literature one finds labels such as “n-sex”, “meta-sex”, “next sex”, or “no-sex”, but none covers all cases. While the Consortium on management of disorders of sex development rightly avoids the overly ambiguous term “intersex,” its acronym “DSD” 42 can sound stigmatizing 43. “Hermaphrodite”, as noted, is entirely improper. Would “GNC” (gender nonconforming) be better? Germany, since 2013, has allowed an unspecified civil status (unbestimmt Geschlecht, indeterminate sex) and in late 2017 awaited from parliamentarians a “positive designation of sex”: “inter”, “divers”, or other 44. In Australia, since 2014, the mention “non-specific” has been permitted on civil documents, whereas in France a judicial decision in favour of the “neutral” designation was recently overturned on appeal and then by the Court of Cassation45. The next step is the European Court of Human Rights46!

Given that “the Council of Europe recommends to member states not to choose a specified gender marker (‘male’ or ‘female’) […] and that the Defender of Rights has expressed support for the right not to provide one’s ‘sex’ on everyday documents” 47, there is little doubt that the law will change—but when, and how far?

One sees how difficult it is for the law to align itself with biology, whereas in matters of gender it appears much less hesitant: legal gender change from the age of fourteen (Quebec, 2016), the fact that transsexualism is no longer classified as a mental illness (France, 2010) 48, and the institutionalization of same-sex marriage. Yet the stakes may be comparable: on one side, restraining non-consensual mutilations of “deviants” 49; on the other, reducing discrimination that can lead some male citizens to burn others alive on the pretext of homosexuality 50, or lead states to authorize treatments “without scientific basis” aimed at modifying homosexual orientation 51.

With Denise Riley (1948–), one may regret “the unbearable air of eternity of sexual polarity,” yet—outside transhumanism—this polarity seems, in human beings, to have been established from time immemorial and for ever. This does not negate the “historically constructed character of the opposition (between masculine and feminine) [which] produces as one of its effects that very invariable and monotonous air of opposition men/women”52; but then one leaves sex for gender—“the most well-founded of collective illusions”53, perhaps!

Footnotes

  1. Dorothy Leigh Sayers, “The human-not quite-human”, Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society, London, 1959 (posthume).[↩]
  2. « La nature humaine était primitivement bien différente de ce qu’elle est aujourd’hui. D’abord, il y avait trois sortes d’hommes, les deux sexes qui subsistent encore, [189e] et un troisième composé des deux premiers et qui les renfermait tous deux : il s’appelait androgyne ; il a été détruit, et la seule chose qui en reste, est le nom qui est en opprobre », Platon, Le Banquet, Œuvres de Platon, trad. V. Cousin, Paris : Rey, 1849.[↩]
  3. Making sex, body and gender from the Greeks to Freud, Cambridge: HUP, 1990, p. VIII.[↩]
  4. In Galien (129-v. 216), female organs are seen as internal versions of external male organs (women are but men turned outside in) : the vagina as a penis, the uterus as a scrotum, the labia as a foreskin, even menstruation as bleeding hemorrhoids ; Thomas Laqueur, La fabrique du sexe. Essai sur le corps et le genre en Occident, trad. M. Gautier, Paris : Gallimard, 1992, p. VIII & 4.[↩]
  5. Thomas Laqueur, ibid., p. II.[↩]
  6. This was not the case with Aristotle: “often a woman conceives without having experienced the slightest pleasure in copulation”, Generation of Animals, L. I, ch. XII, 728a. Also: “Since the sensation was experienced just as vividly, and the man and woman performed the same act, there is nevertheless no generation” (ibid.).[↩]
  7. “In modern times, Freud, who recognized the uniqueness of libido despite two distinct sexes, is the exception.”Annick Jaulin”, “La fabrique du sexe, Thomas Laqueur et Aristote”, Clio. Histoire‚ femmes et sociétés (on line), n° 14, 2001 (pp. 195-205), § 8.[↩]
  8. “Aristotelian rhetoric then becomes that of the single sex”, Thomas Laqueur, ibid., p. 49.[↩]
  9. “Women resemble men who can no longer procreate; they are afflicted with a kind of impotence”, Generation of Animals, L. I, ch. XIV, 728b).[↩]
  10. Generation of Animals, 768a25-28 et 768a21-23.[↩]
  11. Annick Jaulin, op. cit., § 14. Engendering concerns “both the individual and gender, but more so the individual, because that is substance” (767b32-34), ibid. The thesis of Annick Jaulin, « Genre, genèse, génération chez Aristote » (1995) was published in 1999 by Klincksieck : Eidos et ousia. De l’unité théorique de la Métaphysique d’Aristote.[↩]
  12. Le Monde.fr, 8 nov. 2017, the designation is left to the discretion of parliamentarians: “inter,” “diverse,” or any other “positive gender designation.” (ibid.).[↩]
  13. Das dritte Geschlecht (1899, The Third Sex) is a novel from Ernst von Wolzogen (1855-1934) thus referring to feminists as women on the outside, with defective male souls on the inside, whereas in the essay Forschungen über das Rätsel der mannmännlichen Liebe (1864-1865, The enigma of Love Between Men) from Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895), his biological theory of the “third sex” concerns homosexual men, who in this case have “a woman’s soul in a man’s body”.[↩]
  14. “the complainant presented the Supreme Court justices with chromosome analyses showing that she was neither male nor female”, Le Monde.fr, ibid.[↩]
  15. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895), sous le pseudonyme Numa Numantius, “Vindex” : Social-juristische Studien über mannmännliche Geschlechtsliebe (« Études sociojuridiques sur l’amour sexuel entre hommes »), Leipzig : Heinrich Matthes, à compte d’auteur, 1864. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895), sous le pseudonyme Numa Numantius, “Vindex” : Social-juristische Studies über mannmännliche Geschlechtsliebe (“Socio-legal studies on sexual love between men”), Leipzig : Heinrich Matthes, self-published, 1864.[↩]
  16. Minna Wettstein-Adelt (1869- ?), under the pseudonym: Aimée Duc, Sind es Frauen? Roman über das dritte Geschlecht (“Are they women? A novel about the third sex”), Berlin : R. Eckstein Nachf., 1901.[↩]
  17. Théophile Gautier (1811-1872), Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835), Paris : Charpentier, 1876, p. 363.[↩]
  18. The Pāli canon, or Tipiṭaka (Three Baskets), is a collection of texts in the Pāli language that constitute the doctrine of Theravada Buddhism.[↩]
  19. More precisely, ubhatobyanjanaka primarily refers to gender, while pandaka refers to specific forms of sexuality or sexual incapacity. Thus, “in the earliest Buddhist communities, men who were penetrated anally were seen as feminized and considered hermaphrodites. On the other hand, men who performed fellatio were not considered to be crossing a sex/gender boundary, but rather to be engaging in abnormal sexual practices without threatening their male gender identity”, Peter A. Jackson, “The Persistence of Gender: From Ancient Indian Pandakas to Modern Thai Gay-Quings”, Meanjin 55, n° 1 (University of Melbourne), 1996, pp. 110-120. “Both terms refer to the single category of male homosexuality as it is culturally constructed in the West today, whereas in the time of the Buddha, they were markers of distinct individual types” (ibid.). See also Janet Gyatso, “One Plus One Makes Three: Buddhist Gender Conceptions and the Law of the Non-Excluded Middle”, History of Religions, 2003, n° 2, University of Chicago press.[↩]
  20. Anne Fausto-Sterling, « The Five Sexes: Why male and female are not enough », The Sciences, May/April 1993,‎ pp. 20-24.[↩]
  21. The study of partially “hermaphroditic” individuals shows an immense variety of sexual anatomies, cf. Anne Fausto-Sterling, “The Five Sexes, Revisited”, Sciences (New York), vol. 40, n° 4,‎ 2000, pp. 18-23. Also see: Anne Fausto-Sterling, trad. Anne-Emmanuelle Boterf, Les cinq sexes : Pourquoi mâle et femelle ne suffisent pas ?, Paris : Payot, 2013.[↩]
  22. Gonad having both the characteristics of a testicle and an ovary.[↩]
  23. Alice D. Dreger, Cheryl Chase, Aron Sousa, Philip A Gruppuso & Joel Frader, « Changing the Nomenclature/Taxonomy for Intersex: A scientific and Clinical Rationale », Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology & Metabolism, 18, London : Freund, 2005, p. 729. http://www.aissg.org/ PDFs/Dreger-Nomenclature-2005.PDF. Nous traduisons.[↩]
  24. Edwin Klebs, Handbuch der Pathologischen Anatomie (“Manuel des anatomies pathologiques”), Berlin : Hirschwald, 1876, spec. vol. 1, p. 718 ; Dreger, op. cit., p. 730.[↩]
  25. By definition, a hermaphrodite has the complete set of genital and sexual organs of both sexes, which has never been observed in hominids.[↩]
  26. All observable, apparent characteristics of an individual or organism due to hereditary factors (CNRTL).[↩]
  27. All the physical or psychological characteristics that an individual or species receives through hereditary transmission, carried by genes (CNRTL).[↩]
  28. Dreger, op. cit., p. 730. Italic from us. The authors provide a list of recommendations (p. 733), but no new taxonomy at this stage.[↩]
  29. Lise Barnéoud, « Quand la science redéfinit l’opposition entre les sexes », Science & Vie n° 1207, avril 2018, p. 45.[↩]
  30. United Nations, Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner, “Intersex,” Fact Sheet, https://www.unfe.org/fr/intersex-awareness/. Also: “How sexually dimorphic are we? Review and synthesis” (Melanie Blackless, Anthony Charuvastra, Amanda Derryck, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Karl Lauzanne, Ellen Lee), American Journal of Human Biology, Apr. 2000, 12 (2), pp. 151-166. One to two births per thousand result in corrective surgery (ibid.).[↩]
  31. In this common but usually benign and easily treatable anomaly, the opening of the penis (the urethral opening) is located on the shaft of the penis or, more rarely, on the scrotum or in the perineum.[↩]
  32. Anencephaly, Spina bifida, Transposition of the great arteries, Tetralogy of Fallot, Left ventricular hypoplasia, Coarctation of the aorta, Cleft lip and palate, Cleft palate, Esophageal atresia, Anorectal atresia, Diaphragmatic hernia, Laparocystis, Omphalocele, Bilateral renal agenesis, Hypospadias, Limb reduction, and chromosomal abnormalities: trisomy 21 (Down syndrome), trisomy 18 (Edwards syndrome), trisomy 13 (Patou syndrome), Turner syndrome, Klinefelter syndrome, as reported by Santé publique France.[↩]
  33. Cf. Philippe Testard-Vaillant, « Combien y a-t-il de sexes ? » (How many sexes are they?”), lejournal.cnrs.fr, 2 août 2016. See also: Thierry Hoquet, Des sexes innombrables, le genre à l’épreuve de la biologie (“Countless sexes: gender put to the test of biology”), Paris : Seuil, 2016.[↩]
  34. Philippe Testard-Vaillant, ibid. ‘‘Scientific efforts to fix sex definitively, as in the Olympic Committee’s testing of the chromosomal configuration of buccal cavity cells, leads to ludicrous results” (Scientific efforts to definitively determine gender, such as the Olympic Committee’s tests of oral cavity cell configurations, lead to ridiculous results), Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex. Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, Cambridge: HUP, 1990, p. VIII.[↩]
  35. Philippe Testard-Vaillant, ibid. Therefore, steroid hormone levels (neutral term) become natural characteristics (excluding doping) in the same way as long legs or big arms, depending on the sport practiced.[↩]
  36. Cf. Anne Fausto-Sterling, Corps en tous genres : La dualité des sexes à l’épreuve de la science, trad. Oristelle Bonis et Françoise Bouillot, Paris : La Découverte, 2012, esp. on the history of so-called “sex” hormones: ch. VI, VII et VIII. See also her critique of the golden age of endocrinology, where chemistry “permeates the body, from head to toe, with gendered meanings.” (p. 171).[↩]
  37. Éric Vilain (from the Epigenetics Laboratory, data, Unit policy of CNRS/UCLA), cited by Philippe Testard-Vaillant, ibid.[↩]
  38. Just as a deaf person, a blind person, or anyone else with a disability, whether congenital or not, remains a human being. And if infertility is considered a disability, in the same way as impotence or frigidity—to stay within the sexual realm—any “other” gender identity is not necessarily a disability, just as having large feet or small ears is not necessarily a disability.[↩]
  39. Également chez la biologiste Joëlle Wiels: “Patriarchal ideology […] permeates most societies. From the late 1950s to the early 1990s, biology—which is not, and never will be, a neutral science—focused on the genes involved in the formation of testicles and completely ignored those likely to be involved in the development of ovaries. Until recently, the prevailing idea was that girls are born because they lack certain genes associated with masculinity, and that the Y chromosome plays a dominant role in sex determination”, Joëlle Wiels, cited by Philippe Testard-Vaillant, ibid. Or the unisex model preceded by the gender as per Thomas Laqueur, as we have seen.[↩]
  40. Anne Fausto-Sterling, Corps en tous genres : La dualité des sexes à l’épreuve de la science, op. cit., p. 134.[↩]
  41. As example, in Malta, the recent law from 2015 : A Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sex Characteristics, “explicitly prohibits sex reassignment treatments and/or surgical procedures that can be performed later, when the person is able to give informed consent, except in exceptional circumstances”, anonymous, “La condition des personnes intersexes à l’étranger”, lemonde.fr, 21 mars 2017.[↩]
  42. Disorders of Sex Development.[↩]
  43. The French Senate has proposed replacing “sexual development disorders” with “sexual development variations” in “Sexual Development Variations: Breaking the Taboo, Fighting Stigmatization and Exclusion”, an informational report by Maryvonne Blondin and Corinne Bouchoux, prepared on behalf of the delegation for women’s rights., n° 441 (2016-2017), 23 Feb. 2017.[↩]
  44. Le Monde.fr, 8 nov. 2017. We can see the reciprocal influence of language and culture, with German having a neuter gender, while French and Italian do not.[↩]
  45. “French law does not allow civil status records to indicate a gender other than male or female […], and this gender binary is necessary for social and legal organization”, decision of the Supreme Court, cited by Laurence Neuer, « La Cour de cassation refuse la mention ‘‘sexe neutre’’ à l’état civil », Lepoint.fr, 5 mai 2017. According to the plaintiff’s lawyer, “[… the Court] is hiding behind the upheaval that this would cause by invoking a purely technical aspect, the amendment of legislative provisions” (ibid.).[↩]
  46. Who “recognizes ‘a right to gender identity, a right linked to personal fulfillment, which is a fundamental aspect of the right to privacy’”, Isabelle Mourgère, « Troisième sexe, genre neutre ou intersexué : la France fait un premier pas, puis recule », information.TV5monde, 24 mars 2016.[↩]
  47. Laurence Neuer, ibid.[↩]
  48. Transsexuality has been removed from the Social Security Code, which previously considered it to be one of the “long-term psychiatric conditions.”, Achille Weinberg, « Nos quatre sexes », Sciences Humaines, 9 janv. 2017.[↩]
  49. See Human Rights Watch, “I Want to Be Like Nature Made Me. Medically Unnecessary Surgeries on Intersex Children in the US”, https://www.hrw.org/ report, 25 juil. 2017.[↩]
  50. « Sébastien, 35 ans, brûlé vif parce qu’homosexuel », Le Monde, 3 février 2004 ; but also in Iraq, Uganda, and elsewhere.[↩]
  51. for example, Germany: “a thousand treatments per year,” but is considering banning them; Ninon Renaud, « L’Allemagne veut interdire les thérapies anti-homosexuels », lesechos.fr, 12 juin 2019.[↩]
  52. Denise Riley, “Summary of Preamble to Interwar Feminist History Work”, unpublished article presented at the Pembroke Center Seminar, mai 1985, p. 11 ; cited by Joan Scott, Éléni Varikas, “Genre : Une catégorie utile d’analyse historique”, Les Cahiers du GRIF, n° 37-38, “Le genre de l’histoire”, 1988 (pp. 125-153), p. 138 ; also in Jeanne Bisilliat, Christine Verschuur (dir.), “Le genre : un outil nécessaire : Introduction à une problématique”, Cahiers Genre et développement n° 1, Paris : L’Harmattan, 2000, p. 53.[↩]
  53. Pierre Bourdieu, Le sens pratique, Paris : éd. de Minuit, 1980 ; cited par Joan Scott, op. cit., p. 143.[↩]