The FIve Sexses and Sexing the Body

As we discussed in last week’s class, Samuel Delany’s “Aye, and Gomorrah…” questions sexuality and breaks down its traditional constructs by adding the neutered spacers and the frelks to the traditional genders of male and female and by openly discussing homosexuality. Both Anne Fausto-Sterling’s “The Five Sexes” and “Sexing the Body” discuss gender as biologically undefined and demonstrate the possibility for genders other than male and female, similar to the fictional argument in Delany’s story.

A passage that stuck out to me in Sterling’s “The Five Sexes” is as follows: we are bothered by hermaphrodites because of “a cultural need to maintain clear distinctions between the sexes. Society mandates the control of intersexual bodies because they blur and bridge the great divide” (170). This is true. As Sterling goes on to state, many of the surgical procedures undergone to “fix” sexuality are deemed necessary because of the norms of society, and an inherent desire to fit in. She shows that about four percent of people are born in-between male and female and so the “great divide” is less of a strict division than most people think (167). But here Sterling makes a valid point, why should people feel they have to change who they are to fit in with society? Sterling’s hermaphrodites are similar to Delany’s spacers in that they both are ashamed of who they are and are pressured by society to be surgically altered in order to fit in to some class as designated and designed by society.

Similarly, in Sterling’s “Sexing the Body”, she states, “Humans are biological and thus in some sense natural beings AND social, and thus in some sense artificial, or, if you will, constructed entities”(20) again demonstrating society’s influence in defining sexuality. Sterling discusses how society essentially creates gender as babies are taught by the example of gendered adults who already follow societal norms, for instance, women doing domestic chores and men doing hard labor. Sterling says that humans are “constructed entities” because while humans are born with a sex, they learn how that sex is portrayed in gender from the world around them and so begin to act within those presented boundaries in order to fit into society, as is the desire of all children.

Sterling’s ideas that gender is created and that there are not necessarily only two genders, aligns with Delany’s story which not only adds two more genders but also shows how as societal values change, so too do the definitions of sexuality. In Delany’s world homosexuality is culturally permitted, however having no sex or having broad desires has become the new stigmatized sexuality, similar to how Sterling’s hermaphrodites are currently anything but free from society’s stigmas. Delany's story applies Sterling's wish that one day society can change to accept other genders. She hopes that hermaphrodites will be accepted as Delany's homosexuals are, however, Delany's story shows that society needs a group to look down upon (the spacers and frelks), and so is slightly cynical to the possibility of all people being accepted into society.