Shifting Sexes, Moving Stories:

Feminist/Constructivist Dialogues

Stefan Hirschauer
University of Bielefeld
Annemarie Mol
University of Limburg

How can constructivism and feminism inform and strengthen one another? The author
of this text is a constructivist-feminist hermaphrodite, and so s/he addresses this question in
the form of an inner dialogue. Instead of taking sex as a characteristic of individuals, s/he
analyzes it as something performed locally in ways that vary from one situation to
another. Investigating these performances offers constructivism an interesting theoreti-
cal opportunity and a chance to turn away from a sterile anti-epistemological stance.
For feminism, a radicalized notion of the construction of sexes opens up new political
spaces and strategies. Constructivist texts, moreover, have the potential to "do" both the
contingency and the necessity of our forms of life in their very style.

Prologue
A: Let us begin by giving the reader some information about our sex, race, class,
and maybe some other things, too. We had better make it clear right from the
start from which standpoint we are speaking.
B: But this isnt a statement to the police, is it?
A: What do you mean? I dont like you to make fun of me.
B: I am dead serious. Why cant I just write without being asked for my identity
papers?
A: Because you cant! People read differently when they know who is addressing
them. They want to know. And they especially want to know whether you are
a man or a woman.
B: Do they? Not always. It must depend on the specific case. Do you think this is
so for readers of Science, Technology, & Human Values? Lets see.

AUTHORS NOTE: We thank the participants of the Conference on Constructivism and

Feminism in Brunel, September 1993, especially Janet Rachel for her encouragement and
Malcolm Ashmore for his subtlety. We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers of this journal
for their comments and to John Law for facilitating our submission to the English language

Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol 20 No 3, Summer 1995 368-385

@ 1995 Sage Publications Inc
368

Downloaded from sth.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN LIBRARY on March 15,

2015
 369

1
He: I suggest that before we get started, we negotiate about our sexes.
She: Only a man could ever come up with an idea like that!
He: Why? An open negotiation ...
She: Listen, over and over again, women experience the fact that there is no choice
at all in these matters. And you will never get that. You have never had the
experience of being turned into a woman. By others. So we cant just freely
chat and &dquo;decide&dquo; about something like our sexes.
He: Do I hear a complaint in your tone of voice? You are not suddenly into
victim-talk, are you? Please, stop it! Isnt it about time to try something new?
She: Hmm. All right. As an experiment. On one condition: that the outcome of the
negotiation is that I take the male voice.
He: Thats fine with me. Good luck.

She: I suggest that before we get started, we negotiate about our sexes.
He: Only a woman could ever come up with an idea like that!
She: Why? It could be nice, couldnt it?
He: Nice! Listen, you feminists have gone too far. You have really started to believe
these theories of yours. Dissolving the sex-gender distinction. Sociologizing
&dquo;sex&dquo; to an impossible degree.... I mean, you cant deny the biological facts
of life and claim everything is possible, a matter of choice, something to be
negotiated about.
She: Do I hear conservative undertones, even anxiety, in your voice? Please, dont.
Stop it. Isnt it about time to try something new?
He: Hmm. All right. As an experiment. On one condition: that the outcome of the
negotiation is that I take the female voice.
She: Thats fine with me. Good luck.

Introduction

If I write this article as a contribution to a dialogue between feminism and

constructivism, I am in the confusing situation that I must first split myself
up analytically into the two parts I will have to put together later. If construc-
tivists and feminists are invited to write in this journal, I feel I am being
offered a choice that generates anatomical problems.

He: Do we really want to make such a confessional start? To talk about who and
what we feel ourselves to be? We just tried to confuse our readers about our
identity, and now we are offering them yet another set of labels that they might
use to categorize us.
She: Youve missed the point. In refusing the choice between being a
constructivist and being a feminist, we claim to be a hybrid. And, like changing
sides in a system that has only two categories, being a hybrid also subverts
categorizations.

Downloaded from sth.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN LIBRARY on March 15,

2015
370

He: Okay, Im sorry I need to have this to Fine. Lets go But it

hurts in my pnvate parts ... it really
explained
does.
me. on.

A few years of fieldwork in the subcultures of both science and technology

studies and womens studies allows me to present a list of attributions
circulating in each of these circles about the other. These labels are not
necessarily written down in the literature, which is often less frank than the
spoken word.
Feminists state that the constructivist mainstream in science and technol-
ogy studies is gender blind. It does not see that men and women, not &dquo;people,&dquo;
work in the laboratories. Or that &dquo;users&dquo; also have a sex. And constructivism
is elitist. It has no political relevance. Or it is simply far too liberal. Or, yet
again, it is not serious.
Constructivists complain that feminist work is boring and predictable. You
always know &dquo;whodunit&dquo; right from the start; the plot is far too flat. Feminist
epistemology, moreover, contains oddities that are the sad outcome of its
political preoccupations-for example, selective relativism. Some things
may be made, but not others. Oppression and domination are assumed from
the outset, and they are serious.
I do not plan to explore the extent to which these attributions are true.
Instead, I want to take them as a point of departure. And move ahead.

He: Do you think our readers will believe our ethnographic account? Maybe they
will insist that we explore further the arguments used. And give proper
quotations and citations. There must be some.
She: Of course there are. But the readers know perfectly well what we are talking
about! After all, they are ethnographers and members of these tribes them-
selves. Moreover, they know all about the way in which footnotes are a
3
legitimating practice.
He: I dont doubt that they do, but just knowing that something is constructed,
contingent, a power game, does not mean that you can do away with it so easily.
4
Nobody will read us unless we show that we have done our homework.
She: So this is another version of our problem, isnt it: does knowing that
something is &dquo;constructed&dquo; make a pohtical difference or not? To what extent
are constructions malleable?
He. Good question, but what to do here and now? If we create footnotes, is this a
political defeat? A loss of origmality?5 Or a nice, helpful gesture to our
readers ?6

Even if constructivism and feminism are not always good friends, we want
to argue here that they are not necessarily contradictory. They might even
inform and strengthen one another.

Downloaded from sth.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN LIBRARY on March 15,

2015
 371

Sex Is Everywhere-Different

If, despite exceptions, feminists are usually right in reproaching science

and technology studies for forgetting about the sexes, then something strange
is going on: not a lack of political correctness, but a flaw in the quality of
observation. In addition, science and technology studies are missing out on
a good opportunity for theorizing.
There is so much &dquo;sex difference&dquo; around. How do all these intelligent
scholars manage to overlook it? If you have met people and you try to
remember them, you may have forgotten their names and their addresses,
their contributions to a funny event, and even their interesting theoretical
arguments, however much you wanted to keep that in your head. But, in each
instance, you will remember whether you met a man or a woman. Sex is the
very last thing people forget about each other. To have ones sex forgotten is
tantamount to disappearing from someones memory.

He: I wonder why so many of these laboratory anthropologists overlook the sexes
of the scientists and technicians they study-or that of the secretaries they do
not study, for that matter.
She: They also overlook the sex of non-humans: skeletons, storms, nature, toilets.
But, then again, lets remember: sex isnt quite everywhere. English language
elevators, for instance, have no sex.
He: Elevators?!
She: Didnt I tell you? I think that the way various languages use pronouns largely
explains the international quarrel about non-human actors. This idea struck me
in the United States in an elevator. I tried to be as sociable as the natives. So I
said, &dquo;Gee, he goes very slow, doesnt he.&dquo; And nobody understood that I was
talking about the elevator. In English, an elevator is not a &dquo;he.&dquo; After a long
while, someone said, &dquo;Oh, you mean it goes slowly; yes, it does.&dquo; An English
speaking elevator is an &dquo;it.&dquo; In French, elevators have a sex. They are &dquo;ils,&dquo;
which makes it far easier to attribute laziness or activity to them.

The relevance of having a sex is variable. The sex of an individual is harder

to forget than that of a storm. The sex of a lover will matter more than that
of a neighbor in the train. But this relevance is contingent. To know about
the relevance of sex, one has to go out and investigate the movements of the
bodies of male and female students at a bench doing laboratory work; the
attribution of clever remarks to some people and not others; the metaphors
of war, knitting, and house cleaning.

She: But listen. Emily Martins (1994) story describes how immunology contains
different ways of talking about the immune system. One is violent: the immune

Downloaded from sth.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN LIBRARY on March 15,

2015
372

system is like a defensive army or a secret police that has to keep strangers out
or detectthem once they are inside. And the other is to talk of household duties:
the mast cells that eat the dirt away and clean the mess in every comer of the
body.
He: You are trying to credit science studies with that, are you? Martin is an
not
anthropologist. She is a feminist, isnt she? So that story may be about science,
but it comes right out of feminism.
She: Arent you creating anatomical problems for someone else now?

If constructivist studies of science and technology have not explored sex as

much as they might have, this could be changed in the future. Constructivism,
after all, is a strong tool. It can tell about the construction of anything:
neutrinos, microbes, airplanes, scallops, genes, hormones, bicycles, and so
on. The construction of any object can be traced. So why not that of the sexes?
But the issue is not one of completeness. Just adding the sexes to the list of
constructed objects would be too easy. Arent these lists losing their appeal?
They become longer and longer each year. Every new Ph.D. student, every
new summer grant, adds another case. But what is at stake? Not the neutrinos,

microbes, airplanes, scallops, genes, hormones, and bicycles that are made,
but the process of making them scientifically. Only epistemology is ques-
tioned. Each story tells in yet another way that knowledge does not emerge
from its object, that representation is a laborious process, that facts are
artifacts, that artifacts are put together, and that efficiency is not the driving
force but is something that takes shape along the way.
This has become so true that repeating it begins to look like a formality.
So where do we go from here? Focusing on the sexes may help to shift the
attention of constructivists from method to object. It is not the fact that the
sexes are constructed that makes them intriguing, haunting, and important
but rather what they are made to be. This is what gives them their political
relevance-but also offers theoretical promise. The sexes are made to be so
many things. There are sexes everywhere, or almost so, but they are different
everywhere, or almost so. Studying this construct in various places may
reveal links between these places-but also may reveal fractures, alliances
and conflicts, resonance and dissonance.

An Example
Anatomy tells us that there are two sexes. Every body can be categorized
as one or the other. If you look between their legs, you may see that some
bodies have penises whereas others have vaginas. The former, or so anatomy
tells us, fit into the category &dquo;male&dquo; and the latter into the category &dquo;female.&dquo;

Downloaded from sth.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN LIBRARY on March 15,

2015
 373

If you are armed with some knowledge of genetics and histology and
examine through an electron microscope the nuclei of some cells scraped out
of the oral cavity of humans, you may see that in some cases the nuclei contain
a structure that looks somewhat like the letters XY, whereas in other cases
there will be a structure that looks like the letters XX: two classes of
chromosomes, two categories.
Endocrinology works differently again. It tells about two kinds of hor-
mone levels, the balances between them, and the rhythms with which they
change. If you want to determine the sex of individuals by endocrinological
means, you take samples of their blood and put them through a chemical test
called &dquo;radioimmunoassay.&dquo;
An important strand of psychiatry argues that sex is a question of self-
identity. You are what, deep down, you believe yourself to be. You can find
out what individuals believe themselves to be by interviewing them about
their biographies and feelings or by giving them questionnaires full of
indiscreet questions.8
What kinds of relations obtain among these practices? In some instances,
we find dependence: anatomy is instrumental in making endocrinological
sex. When normal values for blood samples in radioimmunoassays are set

up, the samples are classified in terms of the anatomical sex of the donors.
Conflict may, however, arise later: once the normal values are established, an
individual may be categorized as an endocrinological male even though s/he
has a vagina or as an endocrinological female even though s/he has a penis.
There are also relations of supremacy: whether one may compete in the
Olympic Games as a woman or not depends on ones genes. Individuals with
Y chromosomes could not pass as women even if they had female anatomies.9
Complicated relations between various constructions are also found in the
treatment trajectories of people who want to change the sex attributed to them
at birth. To move officially from one side of the sex boundary to the other,
one first has to fit into the psychiatric category of the opposite sex. She has
to feel a he, and he has to make the therapist believe he is a she inside by
telling stories and displaying &dquo;appropriate&dquo; appearance and conduct. If this
is successful, then the endocrinologists look to see whether one is endocri-
nologically normal and, if so, then endocrinological sex is changed by
hormone pills. Finally, surgeons may complete the job with an anatomical
alteration of the genitals.
Here the various constructs of sex relate in a sequence, although not one
that is obligatory. For some transsexuals, the psychiatric (re-)conception of
their sex is strong enough to define their sex for all practical purposes. They
do not need hormones and scalpels. Others use psychiatry only to establish
their rights to another (&dquo;the other&dquo;) body as the symbol of their true sex. These

Downloaded from sth.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN LIBRARY on March 15,

2015
374

differences are linked to legal constructions of the sexes, which may vary
from country to country. A transsexual woman in Germany who wants to
change sex legally and who wants to have a new official name has to have
major surgery. No legal females with penises are allowed. Dutch law does
not rely on anatomy but on the persons ability to procreate. In the Nether-
lands, a woman may have a penis as long as she does not produce fertile
semen. Juridical males, meanwhile, may have any organ they wish in both
countries-as long as they are unable to get pregnant. 10

She: Do you think our readers will catch the political significance of these

examples? They might think hybrids and transsexuals are too special.
He: I dont know. Maybe you are right. Insofar as they are sex normals, they might
find it easier to recognize the political nature of a different medical judgment
that is disappearing but that existed until very recently in South Africa.
She: You mean racial determination at birth, do you?
He: Yes. Try and list the differences and similarities between race and sex

determination!

So who are we made to be? What are the alternatives? There are links and
fractures: between anatomy and endocrinology, the law and chromosome
determination, a therapeutic session and the act of childbirth. Sexes are made
in so many ways, and because they may clash or reinforce one another, the
picture becomes astonishingly complicated. It makes no sense even to try
clustering these ways of defining sex into large domains such as &dquo;science&dquo;
and &dquo;society,&dquo; or &dquo;biology&dquo; and &dquo;sociology,&dquo; or &dquo;public&dquo; and &dquo;private.&dquo;
Because the constructions of the sexes are so diverse, it is also difficult to
make a single factor, such as &dquo;patriarchy,&dquo; responsible for them alL 11 Even if
there are patterns in the diversity. Even if there is not only dissonance but
resonance as well. How should we explain this theoretically? Are the sexes
not a good subject for those who want to try to articulate alliances and
frictions between a variety of practices without framing their questions in
terms of how science and society influence one another?

What Is Made, Can Change

The radical constructivist critique suggests that too many feminists cling
too much to theoretical positions that seem to offer security in politically
insecure places. But this is strange, as it implies that, for the sake of security,
feminists embrace a conservative strategy and give up rather than develop an
enormous political potential.

Downloaded from sth.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN LIBRARY on March 15,

2015
 375

Most feminist strategies assume some constructivism, but all too often in
a weak form.I2 They assert that even if the individuals sex is given with their

bodies, their gender is constructed. This construction happened a long time

ago, in the dark ages of early childhood. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experi-
ence, beyond words, forever after out of reach. Psychoanalysis is mobilized
against anatomical, genetic, endocrinological, and other biological strategies
for defining sex. Biology is marginalized, not challenged. The factual status
of a persons gender is restated in the deployment of psychoanalytic terms:
you werent born a woman, but you became one, and now you are one.3
During the 1950s, turning gendered souls into substitutes for sexed bodies
might have been a good idea, but the sex-gender distinction is no longer
necessary. Instead of marginalizing biology, constructivism has the theoreti-
cal and practical tools to open it up and to show that anatomy, genetics,
endocrinology, and so on do not add up to form a solid biology, because they
also clash. Biology is no longer a safe place for non-feminists to hide and
count their well-established facts about the sexes.
Moreover, weak constructivism treats history as a time, now past, when
things were still unstable, whereas now they are black-boxed and stabilized.
But one may look at history as a chain of events that never comes to an end.
At any time, unexpected contingencies may divert the process of the con-
struction of the sexes into a new direction and make its outcome difficult to
predict. Therefore, individuals never safely &dquo;contain&dquo; their sex, and we
cannot treat it as an independent variable that explains others. Instead, we
can ask how sexes might vary or, if they do not, what kind of work is put into

keeping them stable or, again, how the process of making sexes is kept
going-for if it were not, the sexes might disappear altogether.I4
If one believed that individuals contained their sex, one might think that
male scientists seek objective knowledge because their mothers forced the
future scientists to become independent from them when they were babies,
or that an insecure search for autonomy leads men to make machines that
allow them to dominate the world around them.I5 But such explanations are
abandoned in radical constructivism. Look at that scientist or engineer over
there. Is this person a man? Nothing is certain. Maybe he is a man because
he became an engineer or because scientists constitute each other as males in
their homosocial culture.I6 But maybe she is not because she was never any
good at playing football. Or maybe, when s/he is a biologist, he is more male
than a sociologist but she is less so than a physicist. And, then again, our
scientist/engineer may have no sex at all. To escape from the position of the
potential object of male heterosexual desire-at least while working--he/she
has managed to neutralize himselflherself. Or s/he is neutralized by behaving
as the servant of an instrument and thus turned into an object.

Downloaded from sth.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN LIBRARY on March 15,

2015
376

It is all a matter of empirical detail. The sex of an individual may vary

from one site, and from one moment, to the next. It is something to go out
and investigate, not something on which to found an epistemology, especially
not a feminist one. If this radical movement means that security has been lost,
then something more interesting has been gained. The sex of individuals is
turned from a matter of fact into a contested performance, from a historical
given into something that is open to change, from something on which to
found a politics to something that is intrinsically political itself.

He: Some readers could misread us here, for to say that the sex of individuals is
an interesting variable does not mean it can be chosen at will.
She: Indeed. There may be resistance. We needed to negotiate a little at the
beginning.
He: Yeah, but that is not the whole story. Some aspects of the construction of two
sexes are pretty dense. The habit of distinguishing between two categories of

persons is incorporated into institutions and materialities, and this may stabilize
the construct to such an extent that it is not open to negotiation or individual
strategies at all.17
She: Sure, but that does not force us to fix a history and assume its stability. Lets
separate the idea of historical contingency and political struggle from that of
material stability and engineering control. 18 For instance, nobody orchestrated
the pulling down of the Berlin Wall, but it fell. And even if nobody was in
command, some political activities are likely to have helped. 19
I am not advocating now that feminists go out and investigate how individuals
are put into sex categories. It is not just that an individual may, at any specific
time and place, be put into one category, the other, or neither. These very
categories are not stable. If life histories may be full of open ends, shifts, and
changes, the same holds true for the history of categories.
The example of hermaphroditism shows nicely the instability of sex
categories over time. Hermaphroditism is an old Greek notion, suggesting
the existence of a double sex. It is lost. Since the eighteenth century,
anatomists have conceptually polarized the sexes, leaving no space for a
double sex.2 It became inconceivable that persons or bodies could integrate
both sexes. Therefore, people who previously would have been called her-
maphrodites were given the status of a male, a female, or someone between
the two sexes. In the latter case, they could not be both, but were in between:
an intersex. With this change, the law changed, too. Western European
countries lost a legal practice common up to the nineteenth century: that
people whose sex could not be decided at birth were to decide about their sex
themselves at the age of 18 in a court of law, swearing to remain true to their
choice thereafter. 21

Downloaded from sth.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN LIBRARY on March 15,

2015
 377

So individuals may move from one category to the other, and categories
may change. But belonging to a category is not always the same thing either.
Whereas disciplines such as anatomy and genetics decide the sex of individu-
als by looking at them one by one, it is not always decided that way. Other
disciplines deal with bodies, but not with individual bodies.
Take anemia. There is nothing inherently sexed about this disease. In
hematology textbooks, anemia is defined as a hemoglobin level too low to
provide an adequate supply of oxygen to the tissues. Put in these pathophysi-
ological terms, a normal hemoglobin level differs from one person to the next
and has no sex. In current medical practice, however, anemia is not ap-
proached in a pathophysiological way but by means of statistics. Statistics
turns anemia into a sexed disease. Statistical practice builds on the anatomical
differentiation between the sexes and clusters hemoglobin levels of hundreds
of people identified anatomically as either males or females. Two curves
emerge. The median and cut-off point of the first are a little higher than those
of the second. Thus &dquo;men&dquo; have a higher normal hemoglobin level than do
&dquo;women. ,,22
No individuals sex can be determined by such statistical techniques. The
sex generated in this way is not one of bodies but is one of populations.
Individuals relate to it because their normality is often assessed by comparing
their hemoglobin levels to some population value or other. As a result, what
it means to be a woman is informed by the statistical knowledge that the
population of women has a lower hemoglobin value than does the population
of men.23
There is no stable and non-political place left. All variables-the individ-
ual, the category, the way of fitting into a category-may vary. The entity
that is given a sex also varies; it need not even be human. It may be an
institution, a word, a writing style, or an object. Take scientific concepts or
tools. Maybe statistics, hermeneutics, and semiotics are, indeed, &dquo;male
traditions.&dquo; Maybe it is worthwhile to ask for &dquo;female alternatives.&dquo; But
maybe one could also try to change his or her sex. Could the tools of
theoretical traditions be feminized one by one by being used differently?
Personally, I must admit, I often have a hard time telling whether a particular
argument, concept, or theory is &dquo;male&dquo; or not. But I do believe that the sex
of such entities is not inherent and that it can always be changed.24
There was a time when science was male business. No woman could be
expected to observe objectively.25 Later, method was said to be strong enough
to delete the subject making the observation, and sex was said to be irrelevant.
Science was neuter. However, feminists pointed out that the pictures accom-
panying such stories show mainly male faces. Behind the neutral facade, they
found science to be a male institution. What to do? It is possible to conclude

Downloaded from sth.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN LIBRARY on March 15,

2015
378

that science has to be made (more) female. One version of epistemology

argues that if more women become scientists and more feminine methods are
used, truth and objectivity would finally be attained?6
Constructivists, meanwhile, have made another move. They have said that
a scientist such as Pasteur did not use complicated arguments if people

disagreed with him. He simply said they had not done their washing up
properly!2 Thus they began to portray science more as ad hoc bricolage and
tinkering and less as grand theory and thinking. Science is not a matter of the
mind but is, first and foremost, a matter of the body, a mundane and material
matter, full of local idiosyncrasies and spontaneous moves. 28 In the great list
of dichotomies, all of these qualities belong to &dquo;women.&dquo; Nobody ever said
it in so many words, but in constructivism science is portrayed as a woman.

She: Something ironic is going on here, and I am not very sure whether our author
is keeping his or her neutrality-I mean, not that of an intersex, of course, but
of a constructivist-feminist hermaphrodite.
He: Yes. The rhetorical strategy is a bit dangerous. But it might be a good way to
draw the constructivists in.
She: How? By showing them that deep down they have been concerned about sex
all along?
He: Thats it. If you cant beat them, tell them they have joined you.
She: Boy, you are wicked.
He: Dont boy me!
She: So you do not like female power, do you? But we should not pretend we are
a tension-free zone, should we?

Intellectual Politics

Let me put together the two points I have made so far. For constructivism,
the topic of the sexes is a theoretical opportunity to turn from a persistent
anti-epistemological orientation to a fresh analysis of the frictions, reso-
nances, and alliances among sites and situations. And if feminism takes the
construction of the sexes more seriously, then empirical awareness of the
enormous variation of every dimension of sex will increase and new political

possibilities will emerge. One possibility would be altering the sex of science
by analyzing it as a mundane material practice.
But dont these suggestions conceal a bigger gap between feminism and
constructivism: the gap between doing politics and doing theory? Political
radicals often suspect theoretical radicals of political quietism. They use
&dquo;relativism&dquo; as a term of abuse, portraying relativists as failed political actors

Downloaded from sth.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN LIBRARY on March 15,

2015
 379

and suggesting that those who have not failed can &dquo;reveal the truth&dquo; and
&dquo;change the world.&dquo; This suggestion presupposes that there is a place where
all knowledge might come together and from which effective, progressive
orders may be issued.
Talking about politics, I prefer to be more precise. I do not want to claim
too much. I have a traditional argument for this: there is, indeed, such a thing
as the specificity of tasks. The engagement of a politician, a transsexual, a

theorist, a writer of novels-all these differ. None may be outside politics,

but their political styles are not the same. Nor should one try to melt their
various merits into a single heroic figure, that of the &dquo;universal intellectual.&dquo;29
So if the feminist constructivism/constructivist feminism that I advocate
seems to take intellectual work rather far from what is relevant in everyday

life, I am not too worried. The drawback of exposing volatility in theory is

that it may leave the world as it is. But are revelations of the sadness of
everyday lives so much more revolutionary? It may very well be that one
contributes just as much to keeping the world the way it is by putting too
much &dquo;lived reality&dquo; into ones theories. There is a danger that critical
comments may be no more than a way of flagging values with which nobody
would think of disagreeing. All this does is reaffirm the place of morality in
this world as the constant companion of misery.
There is a gap between the politics of constructivism and feminism, but
there is a similarity, too. When it comes to interweaving political and
theoretical radicalism, feminist theory and constructivist studies of science
and technology share a common problem. Both risk getting stuck in mimick-
ing their objects. Like their objects, many &dquo;applied&dquo; science and technology
studies tell the truth or try to solve problems efficiently. They find facts, but
they love little and certainly never state their hatreds explicitly. They are
formal and accurate, not committed and passionate. Many feminist studies
of sex and gender suffer along with the women they go out to liberate. Their
theories are sad, reflecting the unpromising political situation of women-
and, quite unwillingly, thereby reinforcing it.

He: What I would like to mimic is the volatility of the objects. That you need not
be the same from one day to the next. That you may argue for one thing here
and now and for another later on or elsewhere.
She: What do you want? Good old liberal freedom to think? Or some fancy
postmodern version of it, like &dquo;being untrustworthy&dquo;?
He: I just wonder whether intellectuals should not insist more on their right to
change their minds continuously instead of raising the consciousness of others.
The right to be, lets say, &dquo;inauthentic.&dquo;
She: I will make you stick to that, then, shall I?

Downloaded from sth.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN LIBRARY on March 15,

2015
380

Constructivism risks becoming too formalistic, feminism too gloomy. I do

not doubt anyones political intentions, but I worry about their political
effects. Hybridization may be wise. When constructivism becomes con-
cerned, it holds a promise for feminism. When nothing is beyond construc-
tion, politics never hits on a boundary that says &dquo;do not enter, this is forbidden
terrain.&dquo; It never has to stop short on the fringes of a field that has been closed
off by scientific objectivity or the linear flow of passing time. Politics may
be tracked down everywhere. In other words, the political potential of
constructivism is that it may demonstrate quite radically the contingency of
our forms of life. So how could we, the writers of analytical texts, explore
this potential? How can the demonstration of contingency move beyond the
mere negation of facticity? How might we do contingency in writing? I have
some suggestions.
possibility is to write corrosive stories that do not submit to a
The first
theory by testing a hypothesis and do not submit to a policy by finding proof:
by performing the same pattern of dominance everywhere. Corrosive stories
do not try to make their readers change their minds by critical means.
Instead they try, by seduction, to alter their readers senses. They make
one see, hear, feel, and smell differently. What are the writing styles that

might have the sensual quality needed to do this? How might we get under
the readers skin?
It certainly will not be any good writing from a single standpoint or
&dquo;speaking for&dquo; the marginalized by carrying the moral weight of the suffering
of others. Instead of writing in a righteous way, it seems more promising to
try to articulate ambivalence, to address political sentiments not by loudly
advocating the truth in a single voice but by staging several voices of those
involved. And instead of having each of these affirm its standpoints, it
might be better to show what their questions are, what they think or worry
about. Texts about the multiple construction of the sexes may have
consequences only if they take risks. If they do not seek to control what
they achieve. Perhaps they will move the world only if they themselves are
also moving.
Finally, contingency can hardly be achieved if the status quo is confronted
with norms and values that come from outside. It seems wiser to try to dissect
selves and self-representations from the inside. Do not comment; interrupt.
Get into your objects, and become part of them. Go native, and do not worry
that it might take away your voice. You will be one voice among many; the
natives are divided among themselves. Come out and make something new.
Think of construction in a positive way. Do not be constructivist; be construc-
tive. Make! Make stories-with so many enemies, allies, and surprised
bystanders inscribed in them that they are strong enough to stand up when

Downloaded from sth.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN LIBRARY on March 15,

2015
 381

you reintroduce them to the field you studied. They may then enhance this
fields own reflexivity. And change it.
Having dethroned epistemology, constructivists may take part in any
number of political fights. But constructivism may also develop its own
agenda(s) in a politics of knowledge. Which is what I have suggested here.
In mingling with the world, feminism needs a wide variety of strategies,
each one specific to its site and task. But in those places where a governing
knowledge needs to be contested and reshaped, it helps to be proudly
heretical, unstable, and of many sexes. It helps to move from one sex, one
identity, and one language to another.

Epilogue
She: Do you think we might still say something about language? About the fact
that we cannot write in German or Dutch and still be &dquo;international&dquo;? About
the imperialism implicated in that?
He: But that is a completely different political problem!
She: Are you sure? Let me confess that I find shifting from my own language into
English far more difficult than crossing the boundary between the sexes. And
the way this master language dominates us reminds me of the virtues of
old-fashioned theories that point at the patriarchal power of so-called male
institutions.
He: Oh, well, yes, sure. You are right. Language politics might hold some lessons
for feminists.
She: Heh, there you go again, man. Only thinking about yourself. Not only for
feminists, but for constructivists, too. You never seem to learn.
He: You are severe, very severe. Can I be the woman now for a while, please?

Notes

1. InEnglish, one has inevitably to choose between framing the difference between men
and women in a biological or a psychosocial way, between talking sex or talking gender (for a
twentieth-century history of this dichotomy, see Haraway 1991). As I make clear later, I do not
want to go along with this (for more extensive arguments, see Mol 1991 and Hirschauer 1993).
The German word Geschlecht and the Dutch word geslacht do not force me to choose. Because
the English language does, I go for the most disturbing option and write sex wherever I can.
2. For an attempt to make readers hurt in their private parts, see Hirschauer (1991).
3. One can presume that they have read this in Science in Action where Latour (1987, 33)
phrases it so beautifully: "A paper that does not have references is like a child without an escort
walking at night in a big city it does not know: isolated, lost, anything may happen to it."
4. The first version of this article had no footnotes. For one of the reviewers, this was a
reason to discard it: By not grounding the piece in the scholarly literature, it just does not meet

Downloaded from sth.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN LIBRARY on March 15,

2015
382

minimal standards of a journal article. Thus, as such, the piece becomes impossible to review
seriously."
5. Another reviewer, after all, wrote, "The authors cute decision to eschew references in
favor of a mere listing of literature (meaning that books and articles are detached from places
where their contents are used
) serves to heighten the appearance of originality."
6. Whereas constructivists seem to avoid having their unease printed, feminist criticisms
of gender blindness in science studies can be found, for instance, in Delamont (1987), Keller
(1988), Harding (1991), and Star (1992). For an affirmative version of selective relativism as
"having it both ways," see Harding (1993). For non-feminist intellectual strands criticizing
constructivism as being "elitist" or "unpolitical," see the debates in this journal between Lynch and
Fuhrmann (1991) and Lynch (1992), Winner (1993) and Elam (1994), and the essay of Martin
(1993)
7. At least it is for meteorologists and bisexuals. For the latter, see the life stories reported
in Wolff (1977). A good and early example of a study showing the shifts and layers in the
attribution of gender (in their case, to nature and culture) is Bloch and Bloch (1980).
8. For a more detailed description of these methods of sex determination, see Hirschauer
(forthcoming).
9. For an early version of the argument that the relations between these performances of
the sexes show such complexities, see Mol (1985).
10. For an extensive analysis of treatment programs for transsexuals, see Hirschauer (1993).
Also see Orobio de Castro (1993) and King (1993).
11. For an insightful history of the term patriarchy, tracing its articulation in nineteenth-
century Marxism, anthropology, and psychoanalysis and undermining its present-day feminist
value, see Coward (1983).
12. The constructivism of feminism differs greatly from one country to another. In the
Netherlands, for instance, feminists absorbed Foucault during the early 1980s. In Germany, they
hardly did and now are starting to embrace Butler. It seems as if, in Britain, psychoanalysis
survived better than did constructivism after the journal M/S stopped appearing. It would be
interesting to compare these different patterns of feminist sensitivity to constructivism with the
sensitivities to feminism in circles of science and technology studies in different countries.
13. This is an allusion, indeed, to De Beauvoir (1949).
14. I am elaborating here the notion of sex as an ongoing accomplishment that was introduced
by Garfinkel (1967). A late, postmodern echo of this position is Butler (1990).
15. Admittedly, I go a bit fast here. For more extended and subtle versions, see the
contributions to Harding and Hintikka (1983); for a more recent position, see Harding (1991);
and, regarding technology, see Cockburn (1985).
16. A good example of a non-individualistic perspective on homosocial epistemic cultures
is Shapins (1988) analysis of the rooting of knowledge claims in the conventions regulating
relations among "gentlemen" m seventeenth-century England.
17. The relationship between contingency and stability of the construction of two sexes—that
is, the relation between "undoing gender" and the institutional reproduction of the difference—is
tackled in Hirschauer (1994).
18. On the topic of material instability, see also Law and Mol (forthcoming).
19 For the use of the metaphor of the Berlin Wall as a symbol of boundaries that seemed
solid and yet melted, see Latour (1992).
20. For one of the versions of this history, see Laqueur (1990). For a slightly different
histoncal account, see Jordanova (1989)
21. A more extensive version of this history is presented in Hirschauer (1993, 69 ff.).

Downloaded from sth.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN LIBRARY on March 15,

2015
 383

22. Some of the various ways in which anemia may be performed and the complicated
relations between them are discussed in Mol and Berg (1994).
23. Some preprinted lab forms make it more complicated. They first separate out children,
without sex. And for adults, they have three boxes or categories in which a doctor may put a
cross: men, women, pregnants.
24. I agree with Hawkesworth (1989), who recommends that feminism, instead of criticizing
the masculine character of intellectual traditions, should actively use and change the multiple
and always contested traditions for its own purpose.
25. There are several good books documenting this history (see, e.g., Schiebinger 1989).
26. This position not only essentializes gender as a trait of scientists but, moreover,
essentializes "method" as a core of science (see Richards and Schuster 1989). Hardings (1993)
"Mertonian" suggestion to understand traditional objectivity of science in terms of moral values
such as fairness, honesty, and detachment is another version of this essentialism.
27. The example is from Latour (1984).
28. See Knorr-Cetina (1981).
29. As Foucault (1977) has called this hero; he was asked and yet refused to be.

References

Bloch, Maurice, and Jean Bloch. 1980. Women and the dialectics of nature. In Nature, culture
and gender, edited by C. MacCormack and M. Strathern, pp. 25-41. Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press.
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. London:
Routledge.
Cockburn, Cynthia. 1985. Machinery of dominance: Women, men and technical know-how.
Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Coward, Rosalind. 1983. Patriarchal precedents: Sexuality and social relations. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
De Beauvoir, Simone. 1949. La deuxième sexe. Paris: Gallimard.
Delamont, Sara. 1987. Three blind spots? A comment on the sociology of science by a puzzled
outsider. Social Studies of Science 17:163-70.
Elam, Mark. 1994. Anti anticonstructivism or laying the fears of a Langdon Winner to rest.
Science, Technology & Human Values 19:101-6.
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Language, counter-memory, practice: Selected essays and interviews.
Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell.
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Passing and the managed achievement of sex status in an "intersexed"
person. In Studies in ethnomethodology, pp. 116-85. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Haraway, Donna. 1991. Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. London: Free
Association Books.
Harding, Sandra. 1991. Whose science? Whose knowledge? Milton Keynes, England: Open
University Press.
—. 1993. Rethinking standpoint epistemology: What is "strong objectivity"? In Feminist
epistemologies, edited by L. Alcoff and E. Potter. London: Routledge.
Harding, Sandra, and Merrill Hintikka, eds. 1983. Discovering reality: Feminist perspectives on
epistemology, metaphysics, methodology and philosophy . of science Dordrecht, Netherlands
Kluwer.

Downloaded from sth.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN LIBRARY on March 15,

2015
384

Hawkesworth, Mary. 1989. Knowers, knowing, and known: Feminist theories and claims of
truth. Signs 14:533-57.
Hirschauer, Stefan. 1991. The manufacture of bodies in surgery. Social Studies of Science
21:279-319.
—. 1993. Die soziale Konstruktion der Transsexualitat. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
—. 1994. Die soziale
Fortpflanzung der Zweigeschlechtlichkeit. Kolner Zeitschrift fur
Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 46:667-91.
-.
Forthcoming. Doing sex and doing gender in medical disciplines. In Differences in
medicine, edited by M. Berg and A. Mol.
Jordanova, Ludmilla. 1989. Sexual visions. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1988. Feminist perspectives on science studies. Science, Technology, &
Human Values 13:235-49.
King, Dave. 1993. The transvestite and the transsexual: A case study of public categories and
private identities. Avebury, U.K. Ashgate.
Knorr-Cetina, Karin. 1981. The manufacture of knowledge. Oxford, England: Pergamon.
Laqueur, Thomas. 1990. Making sex: Body and gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 1984. Les microbes. Paris: Métailié.
—. 1987. Science in action. London: Open University Press.
—. 1992. Nous navons jamais été modernes. Paris: Editions de la Découverte.
Law, John, and Annemarie Mol. Forthcoming. Notes on materiality and sociality. Sociological
Review.
Lynch, Michael. 1992. Going full circle in the sociology of knowledge. Science, Technology, &
Human Values 17:228-33.
Lynch, William, and Ellsworth Fuhrmann.1991. Recovering and expanding the normative: Marx
and the new sociology of scientific knowledge. Science, Technology, & Human Values
16:233-48.
Martin, Brian. 1993. The critique of science becomes academic. Science, Technology, & Human
Values 18:247-59.
Martin, Emily. 1994. Flexible bodies: Tracking immunity in American culture: From the days
of polio to the age .
of AIDS Boston: Beacon.
Mol, Annemane. 1985. Wie weet wat een vrouw is ... Over de verschillen en de verhoudingen
tussen de wetenschappen. Tijdschrift voor Vrouwenstudies 21:10-22.
-. 1991. Wombs, pigmentation and pyramids: Should antiracists and feminists try to
confine "biology" to its proper place? In Sharing the difference, edited by A. van Lenning
and J. Hermsen, 149-63. London: Routledge.
Mol, Annemarie, and Marc Berg. 1994. Principles and practices of medicine: The co-existence
of various anemias. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 18:247-65.
Orobio de Castro, Ines. 1993. Made to order: Sex/gender in a transsexual perspective. Amster-
dam : Het Spinhuis.
Richards, Evelleen, and John Schuster. 1989. The feminine method as myth and accounting
resource Social Studies of Science 19:697-720.

Schiebinger, Londa. 1989 The mind has no sex? Women in the ongins of modern science.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Shapin, Steven. 1988. The house of experiment in seventeenth-century England. Isis 79:373-404.
Star, Susan Leigh. 1992. Power, technology and the phenomenology of conventions: On being
allergic to onions In A sociology of monsters, edited by John Law, pp. 26-56. London:
Routledge.

Downloaded from sth.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN LIBRARY on March 15,

2015
 385

Winner, Langdon.1993. Upon opening the black box and finding it empty. Scrence, Technology, &
Human Values 18:362-78.
Wolff, Charlotte. 1977. Bisexuality: A study. London: Quartet Books.

Stefan Hirschauer is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Bielefelt4 Germany

(PO. 100131, D-33501 Bielefeld). His research focuses on the social construction of sex
and gender He has recently published Die soziale Konstruktion der Transsexualitat [The
Social Construction of Transsexuality7 (Frankfurt, 1993). He is currently engaged m a
study on prenatal sex determination by mothers, midwives, and doctors.
Annemarie Mol is a Constantijn and Christiaan Huygens Fellow of the Netherlands

Organization for Scientific Research. She is affiliated with the Department of Philosophy
of the University of Limburg (P.O. 1600, 6200 MD Maastricht, Netherlands) and the
Department of Internal Medicine of the University of Utrecht. Her research focuses on
the co-existence of different ontologies and normative logics within Western medicine.

Downloaded from sth.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN LIBRARY on March 15,

2015