luaren reblogged
In fact, any of these terms that are based on notions such as alternate, ambiguous, either/or, neither/ nor and so on are problematic because they imply the status of a hybrid constellation for the non-normative and in the same vein install the non-hybrid or pure, real, and normal character of the two sexes_genders.
-Intersexualization: The Clinic and the Colony, Lena Eckert, pg 187-8.
Moreover, as philosopher of science Myra Hird argues, “replacing a two-sex model with a 10-sex (or 20 or 30) model does not in itself secure the abolition of gender discrimination, only perhaps that the mental gymnastics required to justify such discrimination becomes more complex” (2000: 358). The supposed discovery of third, fourth, or even more genders reifies the binary opposition of man and woman rather than disrupting it, and hence imposes sex(ualiz)ed and gendered constructs that may be inapplicable.
-Intersexualization: The Clinic and the Colony, Lena Eckert, pg 188.
Being bound to the Third as a morphological, psychological, or identificatory category disciplines the perception of the huge variety of identities, practices, and processes according to the coordinates of a binary and heteronormative sex-gender-sexuality-system.
-Intersexualization: The Clinic and the Colony, Lena Eckert, pg 189.
However, the history of the concept of hybridity makes its employment problematic because hybridity is historically a violent term describing people who are ‘mixed-breeds,’ so-called products of ‘miscegenation.’ It is deeply intertwined with nineteenth-century eugenicist and scientific- racist discourse (Mitchell, 1997; Werbner & Modood, 1997; Young, 1995). Therefore, I do see problems with using it because the references it combines reaffirm the two entities, which are supposedly more ‘pure’ and then merge into the hybrid. The notion of the hybrid in itself implies that there is such a thing as purity, whether it is in relation to identity, gender, body, nationality, ethnicity, or origin in general. Moreover, whenever there is a third (no matter if it is an identity, a body, or a space) the first two are implicit and are thought of and listed according to a specific hierarchy. This hierarchy makes one of the two entities the more dominant, hegemonically more justified, debatably more important part and the second one less influential, less important, and more likely to be disregarded. The Third is always based on a first and a second and these are not free from their hierarchical reference system. Theorizing the hybrid means to recognize that there is no such thing in the first place because everything is hybrid—is difference—difference and composition.
-Intersexualization: The Clinic and the Colony, Lena Eckert, pg 193-4.
