Key Concepts in Gender Studies - DICHOTOMY

DICHOTOMY
A dichotomy means a division into two. The concept is especially used when a
firm or polarised distinction is made between two entities. In the seventeenth
century, Descartes based his philosophy of knowledge on the idea of a funda-
mental difference between mind and body, a distinction that has come to be
known as ‘Cartesian dualism’. This philosophical principle is widely regarded as
having a crucial influence on the development of Western theories of knowledge,
where reality is understood as if it comprised sets of ‘either/or’ pairings. Some
examples of dichotomous (or, as it is sometimes called, binary) thinking are reason/
emotion, normal/deviant, culture/nature or science/nature, public/private, self/
other, objectivity/subjectivity, female/male and feminine/masculine.
Prokhovnik (2002) identifies four key features of dichotomous thinking. The
first feature of dichotomy is the extension of a difference between two entities
into an opposition. Each part is dependent on the other part for its position,
and each part is defined by its not being the other. A second feature of dichot-
omy is the hierarchical ordering of a pair. The part ranked or valued more
highly has gained its position through the prior exclusion of the subordinate
part. The third feature is the assumption that, between them, the dichotomous
pair encapsulates and defines a whole. In other words, together they sum up
the range of possibilities. Fourth, a key feature of dichotomous thinking is that
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the subordinate entity can only gain value or move upwards by transcending
itself. In other words, by becoming like the dominant part of the dichotomy.
Feminist writers have been at the forefront of the critique of dichotomous
thinking, not least because of their broader concern to develop new under-
standings of what counts as knowledge. A general criticism of dichotomous
thinking is that it is rigid, and so does not allow for dynamic relations between
entities or for the multitude of possible connections between them. In other
words, it operates to preclude the recognition of plurality and heterogeneity.
Feminist writers are especially critical of dichotomous thinking because of the
tendency for the dominant element of any dichotomous pairing to be associ-
ated with masculinity, whilst the subordinate element is associated with
femininity. As Prokhovnik (2002) argues, dichotomous thinking inherently
underlies a range of social practices and cultural values that result in the
subordination of women. For feminist writers, then, the habit of thinking in
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32 Key Concepts in Gender Studies
dichotomies is not a neutral or benign way of understanding the world. Rather,

it is a way of thinking within which patriarchy, and other relations of domination,
are fundamentally embedded. ‘In short, the political significance of dichotomous
thinking is that it maintains inequalities of power’ (Squires 1999: 127).
A number of theorists have sought to develop new, non-dichotomous ways of
thinking. Although varying in detail, such theories share in common an emphasis
on thinking relationally. The relational mode of theorising ‘places the either/or
position, which implies dominance/subordination …, in the wider context of a
both–and position which recognises interconnection and interdependence’
(Prokhovnik 2002: 50). Moreover, it recognises complexity, plurality and hetero-
geneity (or ‘difference’), rather than simple, mutually exhaustive dualisms. One
classic example is the work of Stanley and Wise (1993). Their ‘feminist ontology’
(or theory of reality) is concerned with ways of understanding the relations
between the body, the mind and the emotions, as an alternative to Cartesian
ontology in which mind and body are dichotomised. Stanley and Wise argue that
their feminist ontology challenges ‘masculinist’ Cartesian dualism in a number of
ways, including through recognising and valuing difference, conceived in non-
oppositional terms, and through understanding the body as ‘embodiment’, a
cultural process through which the body becomes a site of culturally ascribed
and disputed meanings, feelings and experiences (1993: 194–6). The work of
Judith Butler (1999) is at the forefront of efforts to reject dichotomous thinking,
particularly in relation to the distinction between gender and sex. In developing
her arguments, Butler follows a poststructuralist approach in which the material
(nature, the body, sex) is seen to be interrelated with the discursive (culture,
embodiment, gender). One of Butler’s key points is that sex itself is a social con-
struction, because of the ways cultural values and practices interrelate with
‘natural’ biology, and so inherently affect the classification of bodies as either
‘male’ or ‘female’. She writes that gender
ought not to be conceived merely as the cultural inscription of meaning

on a pre-given sex; gender must also designate the very apparatus of
production whereby the sexes themselves are established. As a result,

gender is not to culture as sex is to nature; gender is also the discursive/
cultural means by which ‘sexed nature’, or ‘a natural sex’ is produced
and established as ‘prediscursive’, ‘prior to culture’. (1999: 11)
Prokhovnik (2002) develops a critique of dichotomous thinking which locates

reason or rationality in the (masculine) mind and emotions or relegates irra-
tionality to the (feminine) body. She aims to challenge the priority this way of
thinking gives ‘to a narrow cognitive understanding of the mind as separate
from lived and inscribed corporeality’ (2002: 10). Prokhovnik claims to under-
mine the mind/body dualism, through developing her argument that emotions
are located principally in the mind, which is itself part of the body.
See also: body/embodiment, (the) Other, public/private, transgender
Dichotomy 33
Further reading
Lane (2009) considers how feminist and transgender theories, along with recent biol-
ogy and neurology research, help overcome dichotomous thinking about sex/gender
by allowing an understanding of gender development as an intertwined biological and
social process of transformation and of gender variance, not as pathology or disorder,
but as a healthy part of human variation. A volume edited by Jenks (1998) provides a
more general discussion of dichotomies, whilst Prokhovnik (2002) provides a detailed
critique of dichotomy from a feminist perspective.

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DICHOTOMY

dichotomies is not a neutral or benign way of understanding the world. Rather,

ought not to be conceived merely as the cultural inscription of meaning

production whereby the sexes themselves are established. As a result,

Prokhovnik (2002) develops a critique of dichotomous thinking which locates

See also: body/embodiment, (the) Other, public/private, transgender

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