the Female Body GOVERNING

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biologically constructed sex. Sex has since become seen as the “raw”
natural biology, which contrasted with the culturally “cooked” gender
(Butler, 1990). The naturalness of binary sex is supported by the “fact”
that the human species seem comprised of two genetically distinct
kinds. 2 The examples of birth registration, marriage, and passport
seem to indicate that the dialectic between gender and sex has enabled
the state to retain the static institutionalization of female and males.
However, the current heterosexual system of biopolitics, which holds sex
as biological, natural, binary, and fi xed, is being challenged by a variety
of unconventionally sexed actors, including those people with intersex
conditions, homosexual couples who wish to marry, and transsexuals
who aim to assume a new sex as well as gender.
As noted, the belief that humans exist in two distinct forms, female
and male, is critical to the idea of a fi xed sex. Yet, feminists have deconstructed
this seemingly “biological fact” and shown that the human body
and its phenotype of sex are not static or fi xed into two distinct classes
of humans (i.e., Dreger, 1998; Fausto-Sterling, 2000). Both Dreger,
who has focused on the historical account of hermaphrodites, and
Fausto-Sterling, who has detailed the recent methods of constructing sex,
have challenged the authority of the medical community to determine
a person’s sex. Both have shown that in many cases the gonads and
sex chromosomes were generally disregarded in favor of surgically
constructing a body that could “function” in the heterosexual sex act.
Thus, the medical gaze reads the body within cultural and social situations,
and observes and measures the gonads, genitals, and chromosomes
in relation to the social expectations of reproduction and sexual life.
This has led some feminists to question the very existence of a binary sex
model as representing a scientifi c reality because what counts within the
laboratory as female or male is tightly connected with what society holds
as woman and man, with the result that sex itself is always a gendered
category (Butler, 1990). As a result, many feminists argue that the sex
binary, which science seems to reveal, is the consequence of scientists
presupposing gender binary upon their research (Butler 1990, 1993;
Fausto-Sterling, 2000) and that the sex/gender division is not a feasible
theoretical framework (Hood-Williams, 1996).
This chapter explores and questions what is often considered the
ultimate guarantee or blueprint for the biological origin of maleness and
femaleness: genetic sex. Through analysis of newly emerging research on
X chromosome inactivation and imprinting, I examine how the historically
cemented framework of the sex-binary has guided genetic science
and how new scientifi c advances challenge this framework. A clearer
understanding of how the concept of “genetic sex” is constrained by