Talking to, Talking Back

Sex/Gender as a Dialogic Process

Abstract

Debates have grown regarding the meaning and usage of the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ in the UK. There is an influential ‘gender-critical’ movement that views sex as immutable biological reality, and advocates for this understanding to guide policymaking and politics. In contrast, this article argues that theories of sex and gender should account for both biological and sociocultural aspects, as well as interactions between the subject and the social world. To highlight interactions between biology, society and culture, this article takes sex/gender as one concept. It outlines how sex/gender can be viewed as a dialogic process of constant engagement with, and response to, the other. It centres Bakhtin’s concept of the ‘dialogic’, which denotes the continuous unfinished dialogue with others that moulds all language and cognition. The article first explores how some feminist theorists have addressed these questions. It builds especially on Butler, Moi and Young’s works, particularly the notion that gender can be viewed not as a set of shared features but a personal experiential response. Likewise, this article argues that subjects are born into prevailing sex/gender structures, shaped by societal norms and expectations, and can only respond to these. However, each response also generates the potential for change. In illustrating these points, the article explores one type of response, ‘embodied texts’, which construct narratives from lived experience. Focusing on trans writing, these texts can create space for trans writers to resist erasure and challenge mainstream discourses. As an effective example of such resistance, the article analyses Harry Josephine Giles’s transfeminist zine, Wages for Transition (2019).