Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer notes that the issue of gender differentiation is a highly contentious one. The writer points out that this involves not only questions of how the process occurs in humans, but also its political associations in terms of power relations between the sexes, and institutional power in western societies in general. In order to understand the significance of the textual construction of gender differentiation the writer maintains that it would be useful to consider Foucault's analysis of how the medical community has played a major role in exploring this issue. Foucault's analysis is important for he does not simply consider the debates over gender differentiation to involve simply questions of biology and psychology, or even gender relations between the sexes. Instead, the writer notes that Foucault asks that we consider the textual explorations themselves as instruments of power by which medical institutions and society define and control sexuality.

From the Paper:

"This "debate" between Chodorow and Freud with regard to the differentiation of gender can thus be seen as a struggle for gender power in society as a whole. The capacity to define one or the other gender as a normative state of humanity is clearly an assertion of power. However, in a larger analysis, Foucault would suggest that we see both researchers as been fundamentally similar in that they both partake of an institutional approach to infantile sexuality in the medical and scientific community which has, as its ultimate purpose, the assertion of control and domination over children's sexuality through processes of surveillance and behaviour modification. These processes with regard to the development of gender differentiation, Foucault argues, can be seen in the rendering as "perverse" such gendered states as "homosexuality" in children. This is revealing of the instrumentality through which western societies have, for at least the past few centuries, applied significant efforts to the control of individuals through the control of sexuality and - in particular - the power to define sexuality according to the interests of institutional powers."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Chodorow, Nancy. "Gender, Relation, and Difference in Psychoanalytic Perspective." in Course Kit: Psychology and Politics. Ed. Shannon Bell. Toronto: York University, 2007.
• Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. Trans. James Strachey. New York: W.W. Norton, 1961.
• Freud, Sigmund. Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Trans. James Strachey. New York: W.W. Norton, 1910.
• Foucault, Michel. History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1990.

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