The discipline we’re talking about is neuroscience.
Neuroscience includes psychology, physics and medicine,
and the terminology we use is often borrowed from these subdisciplines –
usually without critical consideration at the level of gender studies –
– without an explict approach to the complex relations of sex and gender.
In biology and medicine we like to talk of “sex differences”
because the subject is the “biological matter” –
though in medicine, in public health,
a gender concept has been recognized, and implemented, for some time.
In psychology there is a quite clear distinction between sex and gender,
– like we have in gender studies –
and beyond that there is not much discussion in classical psychology.
That is separate, it stays separate, and that’s as it should be …
and then we have other sciences, such as biology.
And there we find a bit of everything,
including using ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ as synonyms.
We often see sex and gender being used within the same publication
without any great effort to distinguish between the two.
So in other words, I think …
the complexity of the relations between sex and gender
has not really arrived in the empirical –
I mean all natural sciences are empirical – but in neuroscience.
But in defence of neuroscience, I have to say:
it’s not all cut and dried in gender studies either.
I mean, this differentiation, or rather non-differentiation,
that sex is gender, is attributed to Butler and is 30 years old. We know it.
We learn it, we teach it, we pass it on and as far as it goes, that’s ok.
But that doesn’t mean … how should I say?
I don’t believe the situation is clear or unambiguous.
It is still really difficult to think clearly about this.
It is really hard to implement this, so that …
we still operate either with the one or the other.
And we tend to talk about it in rather abstract ways.
In other words, if someone asks “Are hormones sex or gender?”,
or “Are chromosomes sex or gender?”,
It’s not the case that gender studies has an absolutely clear, comprehensive answer.
Even in gender studies, we struggle with these prediscursives.
Things that allegedly exist or
things that we don’t know whether they exist or not.
… things that are lying latent in nature, etc.