the Female Body GOVERNING

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books, one of the best known was perhaps John Gray’s (1993) self-help
relationship bestseller Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. This
portrays women and men as being from different planets and speaking
different languages, inferring that this stemmed from a biological difference
between the two sexes. I argue that genetic sex as a technology of
action frames the identities of genetic females and males in terms of
confl ict and the “genetic battle.” This battle rests on a process called
cellular imprinting, a process which involves parent-specifi c methylation.
When an embryo forms, it receives half of its chromosomes from the
female and half from the male, and is thus diploid. The embryo has two
copies of every gene on the nonsex chromosomes. Which copy is used
by the cell appears random; however, this is not the case with imprinted
genes. When the chromosomes are being packaged into sperm or egg
cells, the cellular machinery “covers over” certain genes with a chemical
modifi cation of the DNA backbone, which “hides” or whitens out that
gene from the cellular mechanism. This process, called imprinting,
accounts for the fact that in some cases the cell uses specifi c genes
because they are inherited either paternally or maternally.
The main framework for understanding the evolution of this cellular
mechanism is “genetic confl ict theory,” which relies heavily on the
binary sex model where the female and male are two distinct kinds
with opposing genetic interests. Dr. Shirley Tilghman, the researcher
who fi rst discovered an imprinted mammalian gene in 1999, explains
the general idea of the theory thusly, “This is an arms race where the
weapons in the race are genes, where the protagonists are the parents,
and where the battlefi eld is the placenta and the uterus” (quoted in
Potier, 2002). The imprinted mammalian gene Tilghman discovered is
supportive of this gendered assumption because it produces the protein
insulin-like growth factor II, a growth-stimulating hormone that plays
an important role in embryonic growth. Researchers fi rst discovered
imprinting in insect genetics, but in mammalian genetics it was quickly
translated into supporting the culturally laden assumption that a mother
wishes for the offspring to be small to minimize her burden, while the
father wants a large offspring to maximize the potential of his genes to
survive. The spread of this theory into the mass media can be seen in
the BBC’s article, “Gene Battle ‘May Cause Small Babies’” (BBC, 2002).
This article fi rst discussed the health application of screening mothers,
and then developed the gene confl ict view, stating:
the more babies a woman has, the more chance there is that her
genes will pass on to a further generation. However, having a[n]
infant places immense stresses on the body, and in times of poorer