Genders are public, yet personal. A personâs gender involves both social role and self-identity. What relation do these aspects of gender bear to each other? Difficult question, to put it mildly, but hereâs an adumbrated answer: self-identification is accommodation to social role. One identifies as a woman by inhabiting feminine social constructions.1
Thatâs neat enough, but it raises a further question of how one might properly inhabit such constructions. In posing this question, we implicitly acknowledge that self-identification is not merely acceptance of a role, but rather embrace of it; we acknowledge also a potentially problematic difference between the practices that construct gender roles and the practices through which we embrace them. One can exist in a space that others have made, but one can only inhabit a space that one has made oneâs own.
The proposal I wish to explore in this paper is that thinking of gender roles and self-identity in terms of aesthetic practice can address this question of inhabitation. In the aesthetic domain, the very practices that constitute a gender role are those that we engage with in embracing it: genders are made with our involvement. Further, the aesthetic practices with which we engage essentially involve valuing ourselves, and giving reasons for others to do so. They thus have the shape of practices that we might actually want to embrace.2
To explore this proposal, Iâm going to explicate an aesthetic model of gender roles, according to which the feminine and masculine roles in a social context consist in aesthetic constraints, enablements and norms, which depend on rational, social, human-centred aesthetic practices, in which gender differentiation is essential. Gender differentiation is essential to a practice when it is constitutive of that practice that differently gendered people should engage in it differently. This explication of the model involves reading social role accounts of genders in terms of rational social practices (§§1â3), and then using that reading to explore how genders might depend on specifically aesthetic rational social practices (§§4â5). With the model explicated, I will then argue that identification with a gender can be fruitfully construed as embrace of the very same aesthetic constraints, enablements and norms that constitute the social role (§6). Iâll admit, however, that this putative argumentative conclusion is a McGuffin. My main aim is to urge the idea that aesthetic practice is fundamental both to the constitution of gender roles and to gender self-identity.
Of course, thatâs only worth doing if the importance of aesthetic practice isnât salient enough already. One might think that it isâthat many people have already argued that genders are fundamentally aesthetic entities, from Joan Riviereâs âWomanliness as a Masqueradeâ (1929), through the theory of Ă©criture fĂ©minine founded by HĂ©lĂšne Cixous (1976) and developed by (inter alia) Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva, to, especially, Judith Butlerâs work on performativity (1990).3
However, thereâs a significant difference between those projects and this paper. The foregoing authors explore and explicate the constitutive roles of particular aesthetic practices, such as writing, performing, and dressing. Rather than a rich account of particular practices, Iâm after a relatively thin, general, and abstract account of the way in which genders depend on diverse and numerous aesthetic social practices.
This general account isnât just a restatement of the banal observation that genders have aesthetic aspects. Thatâs obviously true, and much weaker than saying that genders are fundamentally dependent on aesthetic practice. This stronger thesis is, so far as I know, under-exploredâperhaps because gendersâ aesthetic aspects are often treated as derivative of something more fundamental in their constitution.4
Take Heather Widdowsâ 2018 book Perfect Me, in which she explores the role of beauty practices in peopleâs lives, arguing that they are important constituents of identities. Itâs compelling stuff, but Widdows doesnât argue that beauty practices contribute directly to the constitution of genders, and she explicitly grounds the importance of beauty in its role as an ethical ideal. By contrast, I want to explore the fundamental constitutive role of aesthetic practices, and I want to allow these practices their importance independent of other kinds of practice, value, or ideal.5
1. Social Roles and Social Practices
The aesthetic model of genders Iâm developing here is essentially a social role account of gender, with an emphasis on aesthetic practice. So a first step towards explication of the model is explication of social role accounts of gender in relation to social practice. Social role accounts say that genders are stable positions, defined by and within societies, that people can occupy. These positions consist in sets of norms, constraints, and enablements that describe how a person occupying a role can and should act, be treated, be judged, and so on (Ăsta 2018: 2; Jenkins 2023: ch. 3). If you occupy the social role of prime minister, there are things you can do (launch nuclear missiles), things you canât do (take six-month sabbaticals), and norms that shape your behaviour and othersâ expectations and interpretations of it (prime ministers are, or were, expected to be truthful, unlike estate agents).6
Social roles such as âprime ministerâ are occupied and vacated deliberately, if sometimes reluctantly. But many roles are not easily taken on or sloughed off by choice. Social role accounts of gender highlight the ways in which societies impose genders on people by treating them as bound by particular sets of constraints, enablements, and norms (Iâll often just use one of these words synecdochically for the trio). Often, social role accounts include explicit reference to a hierarchical relation between masculine and feminine roles.
Among social role accounts, one can find various proposals for what these constraints compose, and thus for what sort of thing genders are. For example, Ăsta (2018) treats genders as properties that are conferred on people. Such properties, on her view, consist in constraints and enablements. Ron Mallon (2016), meanwhile, treats people kinds, including genders, as entrenched representations of social roles, which describe stable clusters of properties. The contents of such representations encode constraints and so on. These approaches arenât contradictory; Ăsta describes them as âlargely compatibleâ (2018: 52).7 Perhaps one answers to a certain gender representation because one has a certain conferred property. I wish to remain silent on this ontological question, and instead follow Elizabeth Barnesâ recommendation that âthe substantial work of the metaphysics of gender ⊠should be in explaining the nature of [the] constraintsâ that compose genders (Barnes 2020: 724). Part of explaining their nature is explicating their dependence on the social world.
So where do the norms that constitute social roles originate? We can trace an answer by following Mallonâs account of how social roles come to exist (2016: ch. 2). A social role exists when there is a representation of it whose contents are âcommon knowledgeâ (58). Some social roles become entrenched: psychological, social, and environmental mechanisms create loops whereby features of the representation influence the world, and vice versa (Mallon 2016: ch. 3). A homeostatic property cluster arises, corresponding to the representation: properties co-occur non-accidentally and regularly, precisely because theyâre commonly thought to co-occur (Mallon 2016: 3.4). Take the social role of prime minister. Suppose that common knowledge about prime ministers says that theyâre unusually self-assured. This feature of the representation influences consideration of candidates: self-assured people are (self-)selected. So most prime ministerial candidates really are unusually self-assured. This both makes it non-accidentally true that prime ministers are unusually self-assured, and reinforces the common belief that they are. Not only do we now have part of an entrenched prime ministerial social role; we also now have a norm conditioning prime ministerial behaviour.8
On this picture, the norms that constitute social roles depend upon whatever drives the mechanisms that entrench them.9 Mallon characterizes these drivers as âhuman mental states, decisions, culture, and social practicesâ (5, 88, 95, 207). The generality of this characterisation is deliberate (5) and apposite for his purposes, but I want to concentrate on social practices, and in particular rational social practices.
According to Sally Haslanger, social practices are âpatterns of learned behaviourâ that allow coordination among group members with respect to management of things the group finds valuable. Coordination depends upon the responsiveness of group members to those valuable things and to each otherâs behaviour; that behaviour and those things are âinterpreted through shared meanings [or] cultural schemasâ (Haslanger 2018: 245).10
Some social practices are rational, and some arenât. By a rational practice, I mean one in which the âlearned behaviourâ consists in patterns of value-guided, reason-based inference issuing in judgements. The most obvious practices of this kind are those that are overtly concerned with argumentation or reasoning, such as scientific inquiry or legal proceedings. A number of other practices are less overtly rational, but are only comprehensible or explicable when considered as rational: think of collective moral judgements, art criticism, news analysis, astrological divination. And some social practices are simply not rational, in that they do not secure their valuable outcomes directly through reasoning: consider sport or religion. There may well be uncertain cases: is voting a rational practice or not? But all I need is the idea that some practices are rational and others not.
I should emphasize that I do not mean that a practice is only rational if there is good reason to do it. All social practices, by Haslangerâs definition, are oriented towards value, so there is at least some prima facie good reason for engaging in each. Conversely, a rational practice may well turn out to be irrational in the âgood reasonâ sense: perhaps the value at its centre turns out to be empty, or perhaps there is an overwhelming prudential reason not to pursue it. A practice is rational in my sense if it secures its valuable outcomes via reasoning, not if pursuing it is wise. Iâm not engaged in rationalizing explanations of social practices; Iâm engaged in exploration of social practices that are essentially rational(izing).
Many practices that contribute to construction of social roles are rational in this sense: they are concerned with judgements, reasons, and inferences. For example, the âconferralâ of social properties at the heart of Ăstaâs account of social roles is a rational practice: a society confers a social property on a person by engaging in a coordinated pattern of reason-driven judgement. Meanwhile, Mallonâs representations become entrenched through their repeated use in explanation and prediction of the behaviour of individuals: as he puts it, their involvement in âcausal pathwaysâ (2016: 3.5). Treating people as if their behaviour is explained by their gender makes genders real, and does so because of coordinated practices of reasoning.
These descriptions of the mechanisms of conferral and entrenchment illustrate why rational social practices are especially apt for reifying gender kinds. Treating facts or observations as the grounds of inference bestows on them the gravity of reasons; a conclusion derived from those reasons, or an observation apparently explained by them, acquires normative authority. Itâs one thing to simply say that women are more emotional than men; itâs another thing to âexplainâ this by reference to differentiated brain chemistry. The explanation places both the observation and the alleged explanation within the space of epistemic reasons, and so confers upon both special epistemic status. Similarly, itâs one thing to just assert that women should be excluded from leadership positions, and another to say that this is so because they are naturally conciliatory (and, perhaps, to further explain this with speculative reference to inscrutable pre-history). The practical conclusion and its apparent grounds are brought into the space of practical reasoning, and acquire normative weight. This is why rational social practices concerned with reasons and judgements about people are especially apt to generate norms, constraints, and enablements that demarcate gender roles: norms and constraints supported by reasons have force.
Thus far I have suggested that social roles consist in norms, constraints, and enablements, which depend upon social, rational, human-oriented practices (Iâll just call these âsocial practicesâ). These are collective, coordinated patterns of behaviour in which judgements are made about people, and reasons given for those judgements (whether implicitly or explicitly). I now want to use this framework to organize social role accounts of genders by interpreting two prominent accounts in its terms. I say âinterpretâ, because the readings I give move away from the intentions of the accountsâ authors; all the same, I will call them Mallonâs and Haslangerâs accounts.
2. Two Ways to Model Gender Kinds
Mallon investigates how human kinds can be constructed such that the kinds, and correlative categorizations of people, play substantive roles in âinduction, explanation, and predictionâ (2016: 93). He is concerned with the question of how something socially constituted can be causally efficacious, and hence explanatory of things like behaviour or health outcomes. He doesnât focus on genders, but his account is intended to encompass them. To apply Mallonâs approach to genders is to say that there are entrenched social roles of genders, with associated common-knowledge representations, consisting of norms and constraints; that features of representations of genders license and underwrite reliable explanations and predictions of relevant behaviour, characteristics, or outcomes, guided as these are by norms and constraints; that those features of the representations accurately reflect homeostatic clusters of properties possessed by kind members; and that the clustering and the possession of properties owe to the practices of explanation and prediction that they underwrite.
Genders, on this account, are fundamentally dependent on epistemic social practices. The account involves inferences premised on epistemic grounds: reasons to believe or predict things about people based on their presumed gender. The model says how such epistemic practices entrench representations of social roles, so that the predictions and explanations continue to be reliable. The constraints, enablements and norms that describe the social roles are to do with what explanations and predictions are appropriate for a person within that social role.
An alternative is to concentrate on how practical reasoning constitutes gender roles. For example, on the simple version of Haslangerâs account:
S functions as a woman in context C iffdf
S is observed or imagined in C to have certain bodily features presumed to be evidence of a femaleâs biological role in reproduction;
that S has these features marks S within the background ideology of C as someone who ought to occupy certain kinds of social position that are in fact subordinate (and so motivates and justifies Sâs occupying such a position); and
-
the fact that S satisfies (i) and (ii) plays a role in Sâs systematic subordination in C, that is, along some dimension, Sâs social position in C is oppressive, and Sâs satisfying (i) and (ii) plays a role in that dimension of subordination.
The first condition of the account describes ânaturalâ features generally taken to be criterial of kind membership. The second characterizes the kinds of practical inferences made on the basis of the features adduced in the first condition: kind members ought to be treated in certain ways, and their treatment is motivated and justified by ascription of those ânaturalâ properties. The third links these practical directives to actions and social positions.
The second and third conditions make clear that the account is predicated on rational social practices which involve making inferences about and giving reasons for ways in which people ought to be treated. To function as a woman in a certain social context is to be subject to these inferences, and thus to the kinds of subordinating treatment they license. The social role is demarcated by constraints and enablements related to the appropriate treatment of people occupying it. The gender social roles are what they are owing to the social practice of making practical inferences and working through their consequences.
I sketch these two accounts not to endorse or dispute their particularities, but rather to show similarities and thus exemplify generalities. On both accounts, gender social roles depend on rational social practices. The social roles exist because of social practices of explanation, prediction, and practical reasoning. People are subject to practical and explanatory inferences and judgements on the basis of their ascribed role, judgements which delineate role-related constraints, norms, and enablements. These things constitute the social roles. The roles and the rational practices on which they depend interact in a reinforcing loop: the roles influence the practices, which reinforce and reify the roles.
The fundamental difference between the two accounts concerns the kinds of practice with which each is concerned. According to Mallonâs account, gender roles depend on epistemic social practices, whereas according to Haslangerâs account, itâs practical social practices. So you might think that the two accounts are competitive. However, Mallon suggests that his approach and Haslangerâs are compatible (2016: 209â210). Haslanger, likewise, does not see her account as the only viable one, but rather as a way to make salient certain features of genders and their construction (Haslanger 2012d: 187â189). I now wish to amplify this suggestion, and in so doing clear space for an aesthetic approach.
3. The Space for an Aesthetic Model
The two exemplary accounts are compatible in two related ways. The first concerns the kind of task towards which theyâre directed. The second concerns the domains in which each pursues that task.
Both accounts are directed towards modelling gender roles. This is a different task from that of trying to determine the correct application conditions of gender terms, which is how the metaphysics of gender is sometimes approached. Like Barnes (2020), I am dubious that clear, consistent, and extensionally adequate conditions can be found, since the use of gender terms is complicated, confused, labile, and contextually sensitive. It is also a different task from that of providing an exhaustive description of all that genders are; unlike definitions or descriptions, models are explicitly and deliberately selective. The point of a model is to illuminate the target phenomenon by focusing attention on some aspect of it. Haslangerâs model characterizes the conclusions of the practical inferences it involves in terms of subordination and domination. This makes manifest the hierarchical relation between gender social roles. Mallon, however, concentrates on epistemic practice in order to explain how socially constructed kinds can be causally efficacious.11
In a weak sense, this explains already how the two accounts can be compatible: two selective models of a phenomenon can avoid inconsistency by selecting different things. But these two arenât just weakly consistent; theyâre more strongly compatible, even complementary. Itâs both possible and valuable to model complex phenomenaâweather, consciousness, migrationâin different, equally adequate ways that make salient different aspects. Itâs possible because the phenomena are complex, because models donât capture every detail, and because a modelâs adequacy is relative to explanatory ends. Itâs valuable because complex phenomena are hard to understand, and their aspects are so multifarious that we benefit from examining them from many angles. Genders are among these complex phenomena. They are so complicated, their constitution so convoluted, that they need to be repetitively, selectively modelled in order that we can make sense of them.12
The two models of genders illuminate important and distinct aspects of their objects. This is because they are concerned with different domains of reason and practice. A domain of reason consists in a nexus of inference, value, norm, and ground, that demarcates a distinctive form of rationalizing. Thereâs an epistemic domain of reason, in which epistemic inferences, governed by epistemic norms, which are conditioned by epistemic values, connect epistemic reasons to epistemic outcomes such as belief, knowledge, and understanding. Thereâs also a distinct practical domain of reason, within which inferences result in such things as goal-directed actions or moral judgements.13 Associated with each domain of reason is a domain of practice, a field of human activity. The domain of epistemic practice encompasses, for example, scientific inquiry, crossword puzzles, and criminal investigations; the practical domain encompasses, for example, political protest, funeral rites, and dietary decisions.
These domains of reason and practice are imbricated, not isolated; many activities belong in both, and norms and reasons can be similar or shared. You can do something practical by doing something epistemic: say, pursue justice by investigating a murder. Nonetheless, the distinction is useful. It makes forms of life legible by showing ways in which activitiesâ rational character makes them cogent and comprehensible. There is room for both an epistemic and a practical approach to genders because the rational practices that make up genders are various. Some practices only make sense given epistemic reasons, norms and values, some only make sense given practical ones. So, again, epistemic and practical models of genders are not directly competitive: they pertain to, make salient, and make comprehensible the constitutive role of practices belonging to different domains.
The story being told here will have the ring of familiarity, and perhaps even truth, to people acquainted with normative talk in theoretical and practical philosophy.14 Whatever the details, the general idea that there are these two discrete domains of rationality and practice has an ingrained plausibility. Iâm just going to trade on that plausibility; Iâm not going to argue further that these domains exist, nor that social role accounts of gender are illuminatingly interpreted by reference to them.
Now, if there are these two domains, and if genders can be valuably modelled within each, we might think it equally valuable to model genders in any comparable domain. And so, if there is a comparable aesthetic domain, it might be valuable to model genders within it. To conclude that it is valuable, we would need to be convinced that there is indeed an aesthetic domain of rationality and practice; that it includes rational, social practices centred on humans; and that these aesthetic practices really can delimit gender roles. My aims in the next two sections are to argue that there is such an aesthetic domain, that there are such aesthetic practices, and that they can construct genders.
4. Aesthetic Rational Practice
The aesthetic model of genders Iâm pursuing says that the feminine and masculine roles in a social context consist in aesthetic constraints, enablements and norms, which depend on rational, social, human-centred aesthetic practices, in which gender differentiation is essential. In this section and the next, Iâll try to establish the plausibility and cogency of this model by explaining its elements, concentrating here on aesthetic practice, and there on its constitutive relation to gender roles.
Iâll start by noting the confluence between the conception of a social practice outlined above and Dominic McIver Lopesâ ânetwork theoryâ of aesthetic practice (2018). In Haslangerâs terms, aesthetic social practices are patterns of learned behaviour allowing coordinated activities directed towards aesthetic value. Similarly, according to Lopes, âaesthetic practices are regularities in the performance of aesthetic agents that are explained by cognitive schemas and resourcesâ (2018: 120).15 Such practices structure peopleâs pursuit of aesthetic value: they âenable agents to develop specialized competence for [aesthetic] achievementâ (127). They do so by instituting norms that establish what is aesthetically valuable within them (120â121). Practices are oriented towards particular objects of value (133), around which norms of appreciation revolve and evolve.
Reading such practices in rational terms is easy enough. As Lopes describes them, aesthetic practices establish norms and standards that say what is aesthetically (dis)valuable about the objects at their centre. These norms and standards provide reasons for appreciation of objects. Aesthetic practices are structured around appreciation, including the elucidation of reasons to appreciate. To engage in a certain aesthetic practice, itâs essential to engage in the patterns of reasoning and appreciation distinctive of it. Itâs the fact that appreciation is at the centre of these practices, rather than belief, knowledge, or action, that make them aesthetic.16
This particular idea that there is a distinctively aesthetic kind of rational practice depends on the general idea that there is a distinctively aesthetic kind of rationality. A growing body of work explores just this idea.17 The aesthetic domain of reason parallels the epistemic and practical domains. It encompasses distinctive aesthetic values; distinctive aesthetic reasons that ground inferences; distinctive outcomes of such inference, including aesthetic judgements; and distinctive aesthetic norms that regulate inferences, such as norms of aesthetic testimony.18 This framework for thinking about aesthetic rationality allows us to explicate rational aesthetic social practices.
As an example, consider the community of people who make or appreciate jungle music. Theyâre engaged in creating works and appreciating them appropriately. What makes a jungle tune aesthetically valuable, what ought to be appreciated (or not) in such a tune, is established by what those creators and appreciators communally take to be aesthetically valuable. The norms and standards of appreciation both guide and follow appreciation and judgement by the community; they evolve as the practice they concern does so. To be a part of this community is to participate in the appreciation at its centre, and the elucidation of reasons for appreciation. In so doing, one contributes to the development of those reasons.19
This rational approach to the aesthetic domain is not the only one on offer.20 A contrasting approach conceives of the aesthetic as a domain of a special kind of experience. The broadest version of this approach says that any sensual experience is, or can be, an aesthetic experience given the right kind of attentive practice (Irvin 2008). A narrower version says that a distinctive kind of experience, perhaps a heightened version of everyday experiences, marks out the aesthetic (Dewey 1934).
I canât pursue the argument between these two approaches here, so Iâll just gesture towards two reasons for preferring the rational, practice-based approach. The first is to do with weighting pre-theoretical intuitions. Aesthetics is a field in which balances must be struck between the notion that there are such things as expertise, rightness, critical acumen in aesthetic judgement, and the notion that aesthetic engagement has some definitively subjective or personal character. The more one is tempted to emphasize the personal, the less one will be inclined to value expertise, and vice versa. I am inclined to value expertise, and so to favour the rational approach, because it promises to explain how judgements and values can have normative weight.21
The second is a thematic reason that should emerge in what follows: thinking of the aesthetic in terms of rational practice makes sense of the aesthetic constitution of genders in a way that thinking of it in terms of experience cannot. In this respect, the positions adopted in this paper are mutually reinforcing: we should buy the aesthetic model of genders in part because of the plausibility of the rational practice account of the aesthetic, and we should buy the rational practice account in part because of the plausibility of the aesthetic model.
Thus far I have explained the general notion of rational social aesthetic practice. Now it is time to focus on person-centred practices. Lopesâ view most clearly applies to making and appreciating art, but galleries are not the only sites of aesthetic activities: they also occur in tattoo parlours, coffee shops, nightclubs and national parks.22 Lopesâ account is explicitly pluralistic (127â129) about the possible objects of aesthetic practice and the possible values to be found in them. If norms for appreciation of a kind of object have been established, and if people engage in evaluation according to those norms, we have an aesthetic practice, never mind if the objects are biscuits, bicycles, boulders or books.
Aesthetic social practices pertaining to people clearly exist, and clearly fit Lopesâ schema. Widdows (2018) discusses in great detail practices concerned with a narrow conception of bodily âbeautyâ: grooming, adornment, comportment; the shaping of the body through diet, exercise, and surgery. There are also many person-centred aesthetic practices concerned with different kinds of aesthetic value: fashion, tattooing, bodybuilding, perfume, the cultivation of personal style.23 In each of these cases, we can understand the practice as one in which aesthetic norms are established and followed, taking humans as the objects of appreciation.
The harder question is whether human-oriented practices are rational in the sense required. One might accept that aesthetic judgement of artworks or landscapes has a rational character, and yet maintain that aesthetic judgement of humans does not. And this matters, because within the framework for thinking about gender roles outlined above, itâs the rationality of practices that lends normative force to the constitutive constraints, norms and enablements that they generate. So I had better meet this challenge.
The challenge begins from the observation that, in genuinely rational thought, the norms that govern the transition from reason to conclusion demand some degree of objectivity. You should not settle what you believe by what you want to believe, but rather by what you ought to believe. As in thought, so in genuinely rational practices: reasons ought to lead to conclusions impersonally.
So far there is no challenge, for this demand of objectivity has its counterpart in the aesthetic domain: the doctrine of disinterest. Disinterest is used to distinguish genuine aesthetic judgements from mere judgements of taste. The latter might be made with personal interests in mind, and might be connected to action: desire for the object under consideration, calculation of its monetary value, acquisitive action towards it. But genuine aesthetic judgements are coloured by no such interests: they are, purely, considerations of the aesthetic merits of the object in question.24 Given this, we can see how aesthetic judgements can respect the demands of objectivity: they must be structured and normed such that they can be made disinterestedly, with only aesthetic merit in mind.
But one might worry that aesthetic judgement of humans cannot be so structured, and so aesthetic practice centred on people canât be rational. After all, human aesthetic practices plausibly begin from presumptively sexed bodies: from differentiation of male and female, and adoption of different practices for each. This is alike for epistemic and practical practices (compare the first condition of Haslangerâs account). But a signal difference with aesthetic practices, or at least the most prominent ones, is that they also stay focused on bodies, and often on sexualized bodies. And now we do have a challenge. If aesthetic social practices are centred on sexualized bodies, surely they are also centrally concerned with desire: what it is to judge someone else aesthetically pleasing is precisely to express some kind of interested approbation of their appearance. And so there cannot be genuinely rational aesthetic practices focused on people.
Or so the objection goes. But it can be met. Its source is the observation that human aesthetic practices begin from bodies and their appearances. This is incontrovertibly true. But it is not true that all such practices are concerned with bodies, nor even that practices concerned with bodies are always imbued with desire. Further, the aesthetic rationalist can plausibly deny that judgements imbued with desire are genuinely aesthetic in character.
To the first point, note that many aesthetic practices centred on people go way beyond sexualized appearances. We can see this by considering the range of aesthetically evaluable aspects of people. Some are undoubtedly both perceptible and associated with attractiveness. Some are perceptible, but not (obviously) sexual: comportment, tone of voice, style of dress. Some are not perceptible. One can aesthetically evaluate the life choices of another: one can regard a life as well-lived and aesthetically commendable for being so.25 Of course, not every reason to value someone is an aesthetic reason to do so, but the aesthetic reasons and properties predicable of people are various, multiple, and range beyond the perceptible. So human-centred practices need not focus on the body.
To the second point, note that many judgements and practices that are body-based have nothing to do with sexual attractiveness, and so are not subject to the worry about the irrational influence of desire. Perfume is an excellent example. The appreciation of perfume is manifestly a gendered practice, both in the incidental sense that itâs mostly women who do it, and in the essential sense that itâs internally gendered (there are masculine scents, there are feminine ones). It is also manifestly aesthetic. But people do not, in the main, wear perfume to make themselves more desirable: as Larry Shiner says, âmuch advertising suggests perfumes are about sexual attraction, but the motives for wearing them are complex, including olfactory pleasure and personal identity as well as groomingâ (2015: 377). To the extent that the challenge links reasons in aesthetic body practice to sexual desire, this constitutes one among many counterexamples.26
Consider also that it is possible for an object to be the focus of both interested and disinterested judgement. One can judge the same thing to be both desirable and aesthetically pleasing. So the fact that humans are at the centre of aesthetic practices, and the fact that humans can be objects of desire, does not entail that aesthetic judgements within that practice are all judgements of sexual desirability. It might in practice be hard to tell apart a dispassionate judgement of aesthetic merit and a passionate judgement of, well, passion. But this is no mere formal separation: the two can come apart, and one sign of this is that they often donât when they should. Many aesthetic actions and activities become significant sites of cultural conflict exactly because they are intended by participants to invite genuine aesthetic appreciation within a practice, but are taken by outsiders as invitations to sexualized judgement. The most prominent of these are feminine beauty practices whose aesthetic significance is really for the self and others within the practice, but which are often critiqued in terms predicated on a sexualizing male gaze.
So, much aesthetic practice centred on people is not connected with desire, or at any rate should not be. The judgements involved in those practices can thus be disinterested; the judgements and the practices can thus be appropriately rational. However, for all that, the objection might be pressed. Granted that some practices do not essentially involve interest, it remains obvious that a significant number of human-aesthetic practices are concerned with sex and sexiness; with provoking and admitting desire, with judging desirable. And if these practices form the core of human aesthetics, aesthetic rationality runs out at the crucial point. For all such judgements are essentially personal, subjective, and unresponsive to reason.
The aesthetic rationalistâs response is that the pressed objection begs the question against their view. The rationalist advances a model of the aesthetic domain in which genuine aesthetic appreciation takes place within the strictures and norms established by communities and their practices. Further, the rationalist opposes the idea that aesthetic judgement is necessarily predicated on a particular kind of experience, still less experiences that might be concerned or confused with desire. The objection insists that, in fact, there are genuine aesthetic judgements that are wholly personal and subjective, not subject to reason, and this insistence is implicitly predicated on the notion that the basis of aesthetic judgement is a kind of incorrigible personal experience; specifically, an experience of pleasurable desire, or desirable pleasure. This is precisely what the rationalist denies, and insisting on it is no argument against.27 As Lopes says: âintuitions about aesthetic value are bound to be so heavily infused by aesthetic hedonism that we must not take them at face valueâ (2018: 137).
Let me sum up. The challenge was this: aesthetic practices centred on people canât be properly rational, because they are suffused with desire, because they are about bodies. I have countered, first, that many such practices have nothing to do with bodies; second, that even practices to do with bodies are often nothing to do with desire, or shouldnât be; third, that insisting on the aesthetic character of judgements of sexual attractiveness or desirability is begging the question against the aesthetic rationalist.
All this is aimed towards vindicating the idea that there can be genuinely rational aesthetic social practices centred on people. These practices provide reasons for appreciating people, for valuing their aesthetic achievements. People participating in the practices contribute directly to establishing what is valuable within them. What remains to be shown is that these practices are apt for generating the norms, constraints and enablements that constitute gender roles. So let us turn to that task.
5. Aesthetic Practice and Gender Roles
Of course, the claim cannot be that all aesthetic practices centred on humans make constitutive contributions to gender roles. The claim is that some do. My aim is to provide a programmatic framework for saying which do so, and how. I will first suggest that the constitutive practices are those that essentially differentiate between genders, and exemplify the ways in which such practices generate appropriate norms, constraints, and enablements. I will then suggest that the way the constitutive practices differentiate between genders is by presuming a classificatory distinction and then aestheticizing qualities accordingly.
Gender differentiation is essential to a practice when it is a constitutive norm of that practice that differently gendered people should engage in it differently. A way of telling whether a practice differentiates essentially is to ask whether the same basic features have different appreciative implications depending on gender classification.28 For example, a womanâs red lipstick might be thought of as conventional, or basic, or perhaps more positively classic; the same lipstick worn by a man might instead be provocative, shocking, or inappropriate.
This conception of what it means for practices to essentially differentiate genders is deliberately silent on gendered hierarchies. It is probably typical of practices that differentiate that they do so in a way that reinforces hierarchies. For example, feminine grooming practices are much more demanding of time, effort and money than masculine ones, and to that extent contribute to oppression. However, for present purposes it is enough to have in mind the idea that practices differentiate, without also adducing the oppressive effects of differentiation.29
The line between practices that differentiate essentially and those that do so incidentally is not sharp. There are some human-aesthetic practices whose appreciative standards clearly, constitutively depend on differentiation of genders and differential engagement (even if implicitly, by normative exclusion of one or some genders). Grooming and dress are clear examples. It is constitutive of the practice of formal dress that women and men engage in it differently: ball gowns for one, black tie for the other. Perhaps surprisingly, drag is another example. Granted that one of the expressive effects of drag performance is to undermine and complicate norms of gendered appearance, the practice all the same constitutively depends on there being differential appreciative standards for different genders in the first place, and it is essential to the practice that people of different genders engage in it differently.
There are also some human-aesthetic practices in which it is less clear that gender differentiation is essential. Modern dance performance is one example. Historically at least, dance performance invited differential appreciation of people of different genders (or, more precisely, of their movements). But it is less obvious that performances one might see today of works created recently invite one to appreciate differentially, and so it is less obvious that contemporary dance essentially differentiates among genders. So it is not constitutive of this aesthetic practice that people of different genders engage in it differently.
So some, but not all, human aesthetic practices gender-differentiate essentially.30 I will now start to make the case that such practices generate norms, constraints and enablements that are fundamental to gender roles by distinguishing two kinds of aesthetic practice.
Recall that aesthetic social practices depend on aesthetic networks or communities. People belong to various networks and communities of various sizes and scopes, and varying degrees of voluntarism. Joining the bridge club is entirely voluntary; being born British isnât; somewhere in between are various networks one might join incidentally (the network of parents of children attending a given school), or as a fait accompli or necessity (the homeownersâ association). As with networks in general, so with aesthetic networks. Some are large, some are small; some we join voluntarily, some we canât help but be enmeshed in. And as with aesthetic networks in general, so with those that establish the feminine and masculine roles in a given context.31
Large, broad, coarse-grain cultures, the kind of things referred to as âWestern cultureâ or âAmerican societyâ, undoubtedly establish gendered standards and norms of human aesthetics. The plain fact that we can refer to the âWestern beauty standardâ demonstrates this. Cultures have aesthetic practices that are devoted to making humans aesthetically valuable, such as dressing, grooming, adorning and embellishing (Davies 2020). Reasons to appreciate people and their presentation are established by collective appreciative actions within such practices. The standards are often vague, uncodified, even contradictory. The strictures they impose are loose, because so general, but nonetheless extant: apparent diversity often disguises deeper conformity. And the strictures, I claim, are substantial enough to constitute gender roles.
Itâs best to make this case by concentrating on obvious examples. So, take the particular practice of âprofessional dressâ for white-collar work in Northern Europe or the USA. Obviously, within this practice, there are different appreciative standards for men and women. And these standards generate substantive norms, constraints, and enablements. A womanâs professional dress should normatively be demure; she ought not to wear a tie; she may wear a wider range of colours than a man. A manâs dress should be plain; he ought not to expose his legs; he may wear much the same thing day after day. These are aesthetic constraints arising from aesthetic practice. They are aesthetic because the reasons they generate are reasons to appreciate, or not appreciate, people and their appearances. In fact, disapprobation is more telling in this context: the centrality of these aesthetic norms to gender is disclosed by the policing of violations more than by the approval of conformity.
That last point goes some way to answering the pressing question of whether norms such as those of professional dress are really substantial and serious enough to be constitutive of gender roles. Ask yourself: in any context where gender is salient, which are the norms and constraints whose transgression is most routinely punished? Which are the boundaries that are most rigorously enforced? Punishment and enforcement need not, of course, be meted out by authorities: they can consist in stares, frowns, cat calls, shunning. As per the modelling task Iâm engaged in, I donât take the aesthetic norms to be more fundamental than any others. But I do claim that, if we reflect on the questions about enforcement, we will find that the answer is aesthetic as much as it is practical or epistemic. This is the case for thinking that the coarse-grain cultures into which we are born, and from which it is hard to rescind ourselves, form aesthetic networks whose aesthetic practices essentially differentiate genders, and in so doing generate norms that constitute gender roles.
However, as I noted above, there are all sorts of communities and networks to which we belong, some more voluntary than others. Applied to aesthetic networks, this both enriches and challenges the picture being drawn.
The enrichment comes from the observation that many of the more voluntary networks and practices with which we might engage also essentially incorporate gender differentiation on aesthetic grounds. This is most apparent in explicitly aesthetic practices. For example, social media is rife with small, tightly-knit communities focused on looking a certain way, or aestheticizing certain features. These communities and the practices they support are often constitutively gendered, often implicitly by exclusion (try searching Instagram for words like âeyebrowsâ if this claim doesnât already strike you as obvious).
But many voluntary networks that are not explicitly aesthetic nonetheless engage in aesthetic practices and establish gendered aesthetic codes. There are gendered aesthetic codes for punks, furries, hippies; for parents, academics, politicians, actors. This means that there are gendered aesthetic practices associated with each of these communities. It is a nice question which of these practices are essentially gender-differentiated, and which are incidentally so. But I take it that there are examples on either side of that divide. And I take it that the voluntary practices that differentiate essentially generate norms, constraints and enablements just as much as the involuntary practices do.
The important enriching point, on which I will lean later, is that people who engage in voluntary aesthetic practices do so deliberately. In so doing, they actively embrace the aesthetic norms, value and standards that the practice encompasses, and they play an active role in establishing those norms. Furthermore, the practices that people engage in within their chosen aesthetic networks frequently influence how they work with the constraints of their involuntary networks. The way in which, say, someone who identifies as a goth inflects their professional dress to reflect that identity manifests an interaction and negotiation between the (gendered) elements of goth presentation and those of professional presentation.
How aesthetic communities and social roles overlap, contradict, and complement, how such relations affect appreciation, how individuals negotiate those relations; these are tricky topics. Being human is a complicated business. But the sheer pervasiveness of aesthetic gender differentiation across communities, large and small, emphasizes the point that gender is, at bottom, an aesthetic phenomenon as much as a practical or epistemic one: when you have gender differentiation, you have aesthetic differentiation of genders, and vice versa.32
But this pervasiveness and richness also challenges my picture. All these overlapping and distinct social roles, communities, networks and practices present many ways of âdoingâ gender, many ways of being a man or a woman, many aesthetic norms to which one could conform. And this raises the question of whether such widely heterogeneous practices can really be the foundations of gender roles. If the norms they present are so various, what do they have in common that makes all of them about gender? This is, in a sense, a problem for any social role account of gender. Whatever aspect of social role you focus on, the sheer variability of what gender has meant and does mean across time and space makes it difficult to say much concrete about what unites multifarious social roles as gender-constituting.
This brings us to the âhowâ question: how is it that the constitutive aesthetic practices differentiate genders? My answer has two parts: classification and aestheticization.
On classification, I return to Haslangerâs account of genders (2012a), which embeds a crucial role for presumptive judgement of biological sex. Roughly, if someone is presumed to have the biological reproductive features typical of females, they are marked out for feminine treatment on the basis of that very judgement. Similarly, in the aesthetic case, presumptive attribution of bodily features leads to classification as suitable for the aesthetic treatment typical of one gender or another. So the first thing that unites the various aesthetic practices as gendering is the fact that they are fundamentally predicated on presumptive classification by body.
In Haslangerâs account, feminine treatment is subordination. I will say something shortly about what feminine- and masculine-typical treatment is on the aesthetic model, but let me first forestall a possible objection to the recruitment of Haslangerâs condition to the aesthetic model. I said above that we should be wary of thinking of human aesthetic practices just in terms of bodies, since they are much broader than that. But Iâve now said that what they have in common is that theyâre applied to people based on body-identification. So is recruiting Haslangerâs condition a self-sabotaging move?
I think not. We can distinguish the content of gendered practices from the classificatory work that the practices presume. The classification is predicated on bodies, but that doesnât mean that the practices predicated on that classification need themselves involve bodies. This is so for practical models: oppression is predicated on body classification, but oppressive practices donât necessarily, or even often, have anything to do with bodies. As with practical models, so with the aesthetic model.
It might be worth noting, though, that this classification can be thought of in aesthetic terms. In Haslangerâs model, classification involves âobserving or imaginingâ bodily features. However, it is plausibly more often a matter of judgement, an inference from features of personal presentationâclothes, hair, comportment, and so forthâto presumed features of a body.33 This is usually a subconscious, automatic inference; correspondingly, it is usually lazy, biased, and heuristic. But itâs still an inference, issuing in a judgement.
If classification involves inferential judgements, we can ask about the domain of rationality to which they belong. There is reason to suppose that they are at least sometimes aesthetic, insofar as they involve descriptive-evaluative attribution of sex-typical properties. Consider, for example, judgements concerning peopleâs height. The claim that women should be between 5â and 5â8â tall can be normative both epistemicallyâwomen do, in fact, typically fall within this rangeâand aesthetically.34 It may well be that some properties or features are only present in archetypes as aesthetic or epistemic reasons: perhaps not every property does double duty. But the general thought is that gender appearance archetypes are both descriptive and normative, and it is hard to separate clearly two different archetypes, aesthetic and epistemic.
So I suggest that, at the least, the judgements on the basis of which people are classified into gender kinds are importantly influenced by aesthetic norms, standards and practices. This reinforces the suggestion that gender roles are fundamentally constituted by aesthetic reasoning.
Returning to the main line of argument, I promised to complete the âhowâ of differentiation by saying something general about feminine- and masculine-typical treatment, parallel to Haslangerâs claim that the practices that constitute genders and their differentiation are subordinating and domineering. This is a common thread that ties together a great many gendering practices and gender roles that are otherwise dissimilar. My claim is that the way in which aesthetic practices differentiate by gender is by aestheticizing features taken to be indicative and constitutive of gender membership. These might be the very presumed bodily features that lead to gender classification. For example, professional dress for men aestheticizes broad shoulders. They might also be features more broadly associated with genders. For example, insofar as submissiveness is a normatively feminine characteristic, an aesthetic practice might differentiate between genders by aestheticizing aspects of personal presentation or style that express submissiveness: specifically, by making it a feature of aesthetic approbation in women and disapprobation in men.
There is an obvious circularity to this suggestion. The proposal is that aesthetic practices constitute genders by differentiating between them, which they do by aestheticizing features that are somehow constitutive of genders. I could avoid this circularity by simply claiming that only bodily features are aestheticized. But truth trumps theoretical tidiness, and in truth, any replete descriptive model of what genders are today is going to involve something like this circularity. The gender roles we have now are accretions of practice building upon practice, of epistemic reasoning influencing aesthetic reasoning, of interactions across times and spaces complicating the gender roles prevalent in any given society. It would be surprising if the aesthetic (and other) practices that today constitute genders did not depend in some degree on the results of previous practices, and instead were built only upon the body.
A final point might help the reader to swallow this circular pill. I donât think that the aesthetic model describes how genders have always been. Itâs plausible that the aesthetic aspects of genders have become more salient in their construction over time: that we now treat genders as aesthetic entities more than people used to (cf. Widdows [2018: 1]). Two possible reasons for this are, first, that the idea that gender distinctions have a substantive basis in differences in sexed bodies that lead to justified epistemic and practical conclusions is being steadily undermined. If one thinks that, when challenged, systems of domination find ways to mutate, replicate and consolidate, one might think that an emphasis on the aesthetics of gender is a way to shore up these divisions in the light of their undermining; for aesthetics putatively provides a link to the sexed body, and thus to the supposed primitive basis of division between two genders.35 Second, perhaps the vastly more visual culture prevalent in the last 150 years, in terms of production and especially distribution of images, has contributed to the foregrounding of the aesthetic. One might also add that more people these days enjoy the level of material comfort that allows the âluxuryâ of consumer attention to appearance (cf., again, Widdows 2018).
In the space available, I canât do any more than this to prop up the aesthetic model. Iâve claimed that there are rational, human-centred aesthetic practices, which generate reasons to appreciate people. Iâve argued that these practices really are rational in the required sense. Iâve then suggested that some of these practices differentiate essentially among genders, and in so doing generate constraints, norms and enablements sufficiently substantial to constitute gender roles, in just the same way that constraints generated by epistemic or practical considerations do so. Iâve finally suggested that the way in which the constitutive practices differentiate genders involves a presumptive classification based on bodies and aestheticization of gender-typical features.
Iâve made a lot of claims about the aesthetic in my explication. You may disagree with many of them. But the main thing I wanted to establish is that the conceptual space available for an aesthetic model can be filled by a plausible candidate. If you agree that there is a separate aesthetic domain, and you agree that the model I have advanced is cogent and plausible within a credible conception of that domain, then the aesthetic model does the job I want it to do. You could, if you like, advance a model that conforms to your own preferred conception of the aesthetic domain. But we can agree that aesthetic practices somehow constitute gender roles.
However, even given the modelâs cogency and plausibility, youâll still want reasons to think that itâs useful, besides its general function of highlighting the pervasive way in which aesthetic practices inflect gender in so many aspects of life. Iâll now suggest that, by exploring the constitutive role of particular aesthetic practices in individualsâ identities, we can use the aesthetic model to close the gap between social role and self-identity accounts of gender.
6. Social Role and Self-Identity
The gap, recall, concerns inhabitation. Social role accounts of genders say, credibly, that genders are constructed by societies and imposed upon individuals. Self-identity accounts say, credibly, that individualsâ gender identities are nonetheless importantly bound up with how they themselves experience and express their genders. Given this, we might think that gender self-identity involves embrace of aspects of the roles created by societies: inhabiting those roles, not just existing within them. But this should lead us to ask what this inhabitation is. My suggestion is that this question can be fruitfully addressed by construing identification with a certain gender as embrace of the very same aesthetic constraints, enablements and norms that constitute that role: that is, active participation in the practices that are constitutive of the social role. In so participating, one asserts the appreciative norms that one wishes to be applied to oneself qua gendered individual, and also shapes the appreciative norms that apply to oneself and to others gendered similarly. Embracing a gender role involves active participation in, shaping of, and self-valuation within its constitutive aesthetic practices.
This isnât the only good way to square away social role and self-identity. But the story one can tell in aesthetic terms does have an appealingly fluent narrative about embrace. Many people really do treat genders as central to their identities. At the very least, people want other people to acknowledge their gender aright, and often they want more than that; they want to affirm it, express it. They demand the right to do so.36 Given this, we should want an account of our personal relation to gender roles that does not limit our options to sullen compliance or grim defiance. This is what the aesthetic story provides.
Iâll start telling the story by crystallizing the worry that motivates it. According to Katharine Jenkins, âto say that someone has a female gender identity is to say that she experiences the norms that are associated with women in her social context as relevant to herâ (2018: 728). This, she argues, is a better account than a dispositional view (one is a woman if one is disposed to act in ways oneâs society sees as womanly) and a mere-identity view (one is a woman if one sincerely identifies as such). I wonât rehash Jenkinsâ arguments, but briefly, her convincing case is that the norm relevancy account best meets some explanatory ends that an account of gender identity ought to have if it is to aid and advance trans rights.37
However, one might worry whether talking about âexperiencing norms as relevantâ is strong enough to capture the relation in which we ideally stand to our gender identity. Perhaps one experiences a norm as relevant if one is aware that compliance or non-compliance with it somehow speaks to oneâs gender identity. This certainly seems too weak. Such awareness is too vague to anchor a substantial identity, and it allows that almost any gender norm could be relevant to oneâs gender (since presumably one is either compliant or non-compliant with any given norm). We want something stronger: the norms at issue are those that one experiences as importantly relevant to oneâs identity, which somehow ground or structure oneâs sense of who one is qua gendered being. Further, to capture the relations in which people ideally stand to their gendered selves, we want the norms to be actively, affirmatively embraced.38
So, which kinds of norms, constraints and enablements are suitable for such embrace, for grounding and structuring a gendered self? Within the framework discussed above, the candidates are aesthetic, epistemic, and practical. Now, itâs unlikely that a single kind of norm grounds gendered identity. Genders and identities are too complicated. However, there are prima facie doubts about whether epistemic or practical norms, constraints or enablements are apt for embrace, and a prima facie case for saying that aesthetic norms are.
The doubts about epistemic and practical norms concern their typical contents and normative force. The epistemic model of genders is built around norms that dictate explanations of behaviour in terms of underlying properties. But if one comes to see that gender norms are social, labile, and violable, one might find that epistemic gender norms no longer provide good explanations of oneâs actions. There is little here to embrace as oneâs own. The practical model, meanwhile, is built around oppressive treatment of women. Why would one reasonably wish to be treated so? Why would a clear-sighted person embrace oppressive norms as central to their identity?39
The case for aesthetic norms also concerns their content and force. To adopt a feminine aesthetic norm is to invite aesthetic approbation for specific reasons. It is to partially structure your identity around a reason for valuing you. This lends such norms a positive personal force even when their contingency is apparent. This makes them apt for embrace.40
Let me explain in more detail how this is so, and in so doing relate the explanation to the account of social roles above. People present themselves through a multiplicity of practices. The most obvious are those related directly to the body: how we dress, adorn, groom, comport, perfume; how we use cosmetic surgery and exercise programmes to shape our bodies. A more extended sense of presentation might include the ways in which we shape our personal environments, like our homes, desks, and dashboards. It might also include the ways we express ourselves in text, talk, or TikToks.
These presentational practices are clearly social and clearly aesthetic. They are governed by aesthetic norms, and concerned with aesthetic properties, values, and reasons. The norms, reasons, and values are established and conditioned by the coordinated judgements and beliefs of aesthetic networks. The aesthetic values at which people aim through presentation are many and various. The same person might have different aesthetic aims in different contexts. But whatever the complexities of cases, personal presentation in general is a matter of showing qualities that are intended to meet with the approving aesthetic judgement of a relevant aesthetic network. To embrace an aesthetic norm as relevant to oneself is to (wish to) externalize its relevance; to wish to align oneâs presentation with it: to present oneself in a way that makes salient the things one wants to be appreciated for. This is to participate in an aesthetic practice.
Now, we already have the idea in place that embracing an aesthetic identity is a matter of engaging in the very aesthetic practices that make up a social role. But we can emphasize the importance of the aesthetic for gender identity by considering embrace under the auspices of expression.
Expression has often been explicated as the process that underlies artistic creation.41 But you can find the explications illuminating, and adaptable to the present matter, without committing to that thesis about creation. Consider R.G. Collingwoodâs explication in The Principles of Art (1938). In his view, expression is a process in which someone begins with an obscure, partially grasped feeling or idea, and works in a public, social medium to refine and clarify it, with the aim of being able to honestly claim both understanding and ownership of the idea. Importantly, the idea is not internally clarified and then externalized in a medium: working in a medium precisely is the process of clarification.42
We can move from art to genders via Nick Riggleâs work on personal style (2015). According to him, having a personal style is a matter of expressing your ideals. If you have style, your personal presentation embodies or communicates ideals that you genuinely hold. This view suggests that personal presentation and the practices within which it occurs can be media in Collingwoodâs sense: public and social means of expression that someone can manipulate in order to externalize an idea, an ideal, or an aspect of personality.
With respect to gender identity, the idea is that to embrace genderâto fully understand and take ownership of it as a part of oneâs selfâis to express that gender. To express a gender is to externalize oneâs sense of self-identity, understood in terms of the norms one embraces as oneâs own, in the medium of oneâs personal presentation and the particular aesthetic practices in which one engages. The norms that one seeks to express are aesthetic norms, and the process of expression is a process of working out and externalizing, making apparent, the aesthetic norms one wishes oneâs presentation to be appreciated under.43
Note that artistic expression is not necessarily deep, profound, or interesting. On Collingwoodâs view, most acts of expression are fairly trivial; this is a corollary of his insistence that expression is a commonplace achievement available to all, not only to a coterie of geniuses. Similarly, many people express their genders in ways that conform fairly straightforwardly with archetypical aesthetic norms. Such expression can be both unoriginal and genuine. But conversely, note that some acts of Collingwoodian expression are difficult, painful, experimental, and protracted. The starting point of expression can be inchoate, obscure, and poorly understood; it can take time, effort, and many false attempts to genuinely clarify the idea at issue (Collingwood 1938: 109â11). Similarly, gender expression can begin from a poorly understood sense of the norms that one wants to apply to oneself, and proceed slowly through a process of trying to get those norms straight via oneâs expression of them. One can experience some shadowy norms as somehow relevant, and gradually come to understand exactly what they are and how they belong to oneâs self. You make legible and salient to yourself the reasons for why you wish to be aesthetically valued, and do so by engaging in practices structured by those reasons.
This idea of expression exploits the resources of the aesthetics model of gender, insofar as it makes reference to personal presentation within socially established practices. But we shouldnât think that presentation is the only medium of aesthetic gender expression. Besides manipulating how one looks, one can also manipulate the norms, constraints, and enablements of the practices within which presentation happens. One can express oneâs gender identity not just by adopting those norms, but by deliberately manipulating them, playing with them, bending them, testing them. One can thereby treat those norms as oneâs medium of expression; presentation becomes a means to manipulate the medium, but is not the medium itself.44
So expression of gender identity within an aesthetic social practice can involve not just participation in that practice, but also active contribution to the shaping of its norms. This, in turn, provides further reason to think that embracing a gender identity is an aesthetic matter. Engaging in aesthetic practices provides one with reasons for self-valuation; it also provides one with the opportunity to shape those reasons, both for oneself and others. In these respects, aesthetic practices provide opportunities to truly inhabit social roles that are less obviously available in epistemic or practical domains. The reasons to be gendered that aesthetic practices provide are apt to be reasons for you in a way that epistemic and practical reasons are not.
This is obviously not a complete theory of gender expression and its relation to aesthetic practice. Again, the aim is to demonstrate in outline the programmatic viability of the thought that the aesthetic model of gender roles can illuminate the relation of gender self-identity to social role; in particular, it can help to explain what embrace of a gender role might be. Granted that much more could be said, I hope that the potential utility of the aesthetic model has been demonstrated.
Conclusion
In the preface to Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick disarmingly suggests that his philosophical method involves pushing recalcitrant material into an assemblage that holds together just long enough for an orderly-looking snapshot to be taken, then printing the photograph and suppressing the fact that the assemblage has since fallen apart (Nozick 1974 xii-xiii). I feel much the same about this paper. I have tried to assemble social role accounts of gender, an account of the aesthetic domain, and an account of gender identity and expression. There are ragged edges and awkward joints. All the same, the snapshot of the assemblage seems to me to show that there is promise in the idea that genders are fundamentally aesthetic entities.
If so, the work to be done is fulfilling that promise. Besides saying more about genders, one might wonder about other routes to fulfilment. Here are two. First, can the model adapt to other people kinds besides genders? I think so: I think that many people kinds are fundamentally constituted by aesthetic practice as much as they are by other kinds of practice. Which kinds are so constituted, and how exactly are, is a question that deserves consideration.45 Second, can the model contribute to amelioration of the deleterious effects of hierarchies of genders? Again, I think so. Charles Mills and Paul C. Taylor both argue that recognizing the constitutive role of aesthetic practice in the constitution of races is a necessary step towards amelioration (Mills 1997: 61â62; Taylor 2015: ch. 4).46 So it goes with gender, too; and perhaps, so it goes with many of the social kinds by means of which people are subordinated. The sooner we see clearly the constitutive role of aesthetic practices in people kinds, the sooner we can change them for the better.
Notes
- Loosely, this is the shape of some prominent views of gender identity, e.g. Bettcher (2009), Jenkins (2016). Even if you think (like Bettcher) that sincere self-identification suffices for gender identity, the thing with which people identify is a social thing. âź
- This emphasis on âembraceâ might seem to elide the identities of people belonging to what Robin Dembroff (2020) calls âcritical gender kindsâ, because such people adopt a relation to gender roles that destabilizes the usual gender binary, and perhaps you donât destabilize through embracing. However, I intend âembraceâ as a relatively neutral and wide term to cover most forms of active engagement with (rather than acceptance of) aesthetic practices, so I hope that much of what I say will apply to critical gender kinds too. All the same, I do concentrate on the usual two binary gender identities and roles. They are the most common and basic, so understanding them is fundamental to understanding gender. Perhaps this wonât be true sometime in the future: redundancy is the ultimate aspiration of work advocating change. âź
- See James (2013) for a brief summary. As James makes clear, there is also a good deal of work that centralizes the constitutive role of aesthetic practice in constructing races, rather than genders. Notable examples include Gilroy (1993), Roelofs (2014: ch. 2), and Taylor (2015). âź
- This is plausibly a corollary of the tendency in analytic philosophy to treat the aesthetic domain in general as secondary to theoretical or practical domains, or even as unserious. One telling example: Louise Hanson (2018: 43), who doesnât do this, quotes David Enoch, who apparently does: âthere is a sense in which taking morality seriously seems appropriate, but taking aesthetics seriously does notâ (Enoch 2011: 268). âź
- Once you start looking, itâs easy to notice work that apparently overlooks aesthetic considerations, even where theyâre clearly relevant. For example, Paula Kellerâs recent paper (2021) on sexual objectification, while interesting and persuasive, remarkably explicates a phenomenon centrally concerned with appearance in terms of âmoral, political and epistemic mechanisms,â but does not once mention aesthetic mechanisms. âź
- This last point illustrates why I add ânormsâ to the usual âconstraints and enablementsâ; the norms that delimit social roles shape behaviour and expectations in ways that extend beyond constraining and enabling, whatever the relations of dependency between norms and constraints. âź
- See also Jenkinsâ âpluralismâ about gender and race kinds (2023). âź
- Compare Haslangerâs complementary conception of social construction, which invokes âfeedback loopsâ by virtue of which something, be it an individual or a social role, âis the way it is ⊠because of what is attributed (and/or self-attributed) to itâ (Haslanger 2012c: 88â89). Ian Hacking is usually cited as the originator, or at least the important entrencher, of this idea that feedback loops play a constitutive role in constructing people kinds (e.g. Hacking 1986; 1995). âź
- I wish to leave open the precise nature of that dependence: whether it is, for example, grounding, constitution, constitutive construction or realization. For discussion, see Griffith (2017). For my purposes, mere dependence suffices. âź
- Thompson (2008: Pt. III) and Wolterstorff (2015: ch. 8) give congruent accounts. âź
- Two notes. First, Haslanger herself pitches her account as a definition, not a model. But, again, Iâm interpreting these accounts of gender, not taking them on board wholesale. Second, selection need not mean surprise. Haslangerâs account of genders is deliberately revisionary of everyday conceptions, and so delivers surprising results: some people who we might think count as (functioning as) women turn out not to do so (Haslanger 2012a: 222â25). Mallonâs account is equally selective, in that it concentrates on a particular aspect of gender, but its extension is not especially surprising. It is only revisionary insofar as it makes manifest the covertly constructed nature of genders (Mallon 2016: 49â53). âź
- See, again, Jenkinsâ pluralism about race and gender kinds, which is predicated on the different explanatory work that different varieties of kind can do (2023: ch.s 4â6). If Jenkinsâ book had been published earlier, the first three sections of this paper might have looked pretty different. But I think much of what I say is broadly compatible with what she says. âź
- Some people think moral reason is part of practical reason. Some think theyâre distinct. For my purposes the only important thing is that Haslangerâs account inhabits a domain distinct from the epistemic and aesthetic. âź
- See e.g. Scanlon (2014). âź
- This confluence isnât surprising, since Lopes draws on Haslangerâs work and they both draw on some of the same resources (Lopes 2018: 119â120). âź
- Iâll use âappreciationâ and âjudgementâ more or less interchangeably. I think appreciation is really the end-point of aesthetic reasoning, but saying âjudgementâ now and again helps to cement the idea that these are rational practices. âź
- For an overview, see King (2022). Gorodeisky & Marcus (2018) give an exemplar argument that aesthetic rationality is distinctive. For explorations of notions related to aesthetic rationality, including commitment, obligation, and akrasia, see Kubala (2018), Dyck (2021), Cross (2022), and MartĂnez MarĂn (2023). âź
- For an overview of the debate on aesthetic testimony, see Robson (2012). One origin of contemporary discussion is Hopkins (2011); for an example of more recent discussion, see Nguyen (2017). âź
- Two further thoughts: (1) perhaps the objects being appreciated and the standards of appreciation stand in a relation of discursive or dialectic construction. A record is a jungle record if and because it is made to be appreciated by this community; the standards of appreciation are established by what is accepted as a good (or bad) jungle record. Relative to human aesthetics, this is an intriguing thought that I cannot pursue here (but see Mikkola [2015] on feedback loops). (2) Perhaps aesthetic social practices bring into existence the very values towards which they are oriented. If so, by considering gendersâ dependency on such practices, we can make apparent the constructed nature of the values towards which gender practices orientate. Haslanger explores similar ideas in (2012b) and (2012e). I am not sure I want to endorse the idea that aesthetic value is constructed. âź
- And Iâve only described it quite generally; different people might fill out the framework differently. âź
- Cf. Lopes (2018: pt. I), and see King (2023) on aesthetic universalism versus personalism. âź
- Perhaps tattooing and coffee-cupping are artistic activities. But, whatever the ambit of art, some aesthetic practices fall outside it. âź
- âBeautyâ is sometimes used as a catch-all term for any kind of aesthetic value. Widdows is clearly using it to name a particular kind of aesthetic value or âidealâ. In fact, many of the practices that Widdows discusses are plausibly oriented both towards âideals of beautyâ and also towards other kinds of human aesthetic value; it is an open question whether people shape their bodies entirely in pursuit of beauty in Widdowsâ sense, or whether other aesthetic values figure (Shusterman 1999). Itâs also worth noting that many aesthetic practices that involve bodies are plausibly oriented both towards the aesthetics of people and also towards other bearers of aesthetic value: think of dance, martial arts, perhaps sports. However, discussing all these kinds of practices would be tortuous. âź
- Disinterest in aesthetic judgement is the subject of a huge literature, in which the idea is usually attributed to Kant. See e.g. Riggle (2016). âź
- Argued by Irvin (2010: 374â77); suggested passim by Nehamas (1998) and Goldie (2012). âź
- One might also note the fact that inculcation and imposition of gendered aesthetic practice begins early in childhoodâin many cultures, within hours of birth. It would be an astonishing perversity if people doing the imposing were doing so in accordance with the kind of sexually interested attention that the challenge claims is at the heart of gendered aesthetic practice. Rather, the social practice of aesthetically gendering children is sustained by judgements that appear dispassionate, and retain their force owing to their appearance as brute oughts. âź
- Note also that even personal, subjective, interested judgements of sexual attractiveness are subject to demands of rationality, at least insofar as they are corrigible and subject to criticism. See Eaton (2016), Lintott & Irvin (2016), Zheng (2016), and Irvin (2017). âź
- Compare Waltonâs famous thoughts about artistic categories (1970). A referee draws my attention to Alex Thiniusâ PhD thesis Genders as Genres, which seems germane here. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, the thesis is under embargo at the University of Amsterdam (until January 2025). âź
- Perhaps gender differentiation is itself essentially oppressive, though Haslanger (2012a: 243â245) suggests it need not be. âź
- Perhaps some aesthetic practices that do not centre on humans also essentially differentiate, and thus contribute to gender construction. For example, collecting is an aesthetic practice. Itâs also gendered (or was): men and women normatively collect(ed) different things, based perhaps on notions of sensitivity and sensibility (Goggin & Tobin 2009). So collecting contributes to gender construction; it helps to define feminine norms. And perhaps gender differentiation is essential to the practice of collecting. However, the most important differentiating practices are those centred on people as objects of aesthetic appreciation. âź
- Compare Ăsta (2018: ch. 4), and also Jenkins (2023: ch.3) on the âgranularityâ of kinds as a variable of their individuation. âź
- More carefully: when you have pervasive and systematic patterns of aesthetic differentiation of genders, you have gender differentiation. If, in a hundred years time, people in an otherwise genderless society occasionally go to Y2K fancy-dress parties in gender-role costumes, you have aesthetic differentiation without gender roles following along behind. âź
- Though see Tullmann (2017) for discussion of âgendered seeingâ, which is âthe capacity to visually perceive another personâs genderâ (475). âź
- Aesthetically, I suppose, for mostly Western, white women; epistemically, the typicality claim is true specifically for women in the USA. âź
- Consider, for example, the insidious phenomenon of aesthetic social practices or norms that purport to be âinspirationalâ, âhealthyâ or âbody-positiveâ while in fact recapitulating deleterious ideas about feminine beauty (Leboeuf 2019; Frazier & Mehdi 2021). âź
- As argued by, inter alia, Bettcher (2009). âź
- Jenkins has since revisited and nuanced this position (2023: ch. 6). In particular, she now emphasizes that the norm relevancy account cannot do all the necessary explanatory work, and needs to be complemented by a sense of identity as identification. Roughly, norm relevancy is needed to describe experience, while identification is needed to individuate identities. âź
- âIdeallyâ modulo the qualification entered in footnote 2. âź
- âClear-sightedâ does a lot of work here. I donât underestimate the pervasiveness of bad faith. Clarity of sight is a matter of degree. âź
- Here and throughout this section, compare Christine Korsgaardâs idea of oneâs âpractical identityâ as âa description under which you value yourself, a description under which you find your life to be worth living and your actions to be worth undertakingâ (1996: 101). âź
- By, e.g., Tolstoy (1897), Croce (1902), and Langer (1953). âź
- For more detailed discussion of Collingwood, see Ridley (1997; 1998), Kemp (2003), and Davies (2008). âź
- This is the best point to say why I am not explicating this view in terms of Judith Butlerâs work, especially the views famously expounded in Gender Trouble (1990). Briefly, itâs because (a) Butlerâs notion of performativity positions the subject just as an effect of gender, rather than a cause, whereas I tend to think itâs both; (b) Butler thinks sexed bodies are sexed purely by interpretation, whereas Iâm inclined to think that biology does play a fundamental role in gendering practices; (c) Iâm uneasy about the Austinian theoretical framework within which performativity is conceptualized as a kind of utterance. These are not novel criticisms (cf. Ăsta 2018, 67â68), but they are enough to seriously complicate the relation between performativity as Butler explains it and expression as I see it. Sorting out those complications would be an entire paper in itself. âź
- Note that manipulating norms of gender presentation is a prominent way for people to âdestabilize one or more pieces of dominant gender ideologyâ and develop genders and identities âbeyond the binaryâ (Dembroff 2020: 18). âź
- Such consideration might also go some way to addressing the lack of intersectional analysis in the present paper. See Jenkins (2023: 2.4) for a nice discussion of whether considerations of intersectionality obviate analysis of âsingle-monikerâ kinds such as gender kinds. âź
- See Zheng & Stear (2023) for related examination of the wrongs of blackface qua aesthetic practice. âź
Acknowledgements
I presented versions of this paper at Auburn University (November 2018), The Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association (July 2019), The British Society for Aesthetics annual conference (September 2019), Uppsala University (October 2019), The Southern Aesthetics Workshop (SAW, October 2020), and a conference on Art, Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Everyday Life at the University of PreĆĄov (November 2020). Thanks to audience members at all these events for helpful discussion. Particular thanks to CĂ©line Leboeuf for comments on the paper at SAW. Thanks to Guy Rohrbaugh, Heather Logue, Madeline Martin-Seaver, and Nils-Hennes Stear for comments on written drafts. Thanks to Ă sa Burman, Graeme A. Forbes, Katharine Jenkins, Gerald Lang, Hans Maes, Aaron Meskin, and Pekka VĂ€yrynen for suggestions and encouragement. Thanks to two anonymous referees for this journal for many helpful suggestions and challenges (too many to note individually). Apologies to everyone Iâve forgotten to acknowledgeâthis paper has taken ages and my record-keeping is sloppy.
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