Ben Morgan (The Uniuersity

tf O(f*d.)

The Limitsof HumanTogetherness

Zusammenfassung
Der Artikel stellt eine von Paulus bis zu Derrida reichenderadikale Tia-
dition vor, derzufolge geschlechtlichelJnterschiedeiiberwunden werden
konnen.Der Artikel zeigt,wie Einsichtender dlterenreligiosenTextein eine
Spracheumformuliert werden konnen, die einer sdkularen Offentlichkeit
vielleicht vertrauter erscheint,indem er Parallelen zwischen den biblischen
und den dekonstruktivistischenTexten aufirreist.In einem nichsten Schritt
wird gezeigt,wie Experimenteder heurigenNaturwissenschaftendie neu-
rologischenund hormonellen Mechanismenblofl legen, die ein mogliches
physiologischesSubstratzu den dekonstruktivistischenArgumentenliefern
konnten. Die Erorterung der moglichen Einwdnde gegendie Parallelisierung
der post-strukturalistischenund empirischenArgumente lenkt jedoch das
Augenmerk auf ein weitereskoblem: auf eineumiberwindbare Ungleichheit
in der menschlichenErfahrung des Miteinanderseins,die historischdurch
eineIdeologie der Geschlechtunterschiede missdeutetwurde.

L ReligiousPrecursors

This essaypresentsa tradition questioningideas of gender that stretches

from St Paul to Derrida and then usesparallelswith recent empirical work in
the field of social neuroscienceto explore the unexpectedimplications of the
argumentsthat discussionsof human togethernesscan transcendgender.
Contemporary challengesto the naturalnessof nature and in particular
to the naturalnessof gender can look back on an august history. Spirirual
traditions that aspireto forms of radical self-transformationhavelong ques-
tioned conventional gender roles, and appealedto human communalities
beyond masculinity and femininiry. Paul's episdeto the Galatians,nritten
around 54, famously includesgenderin the list of societaldistinctionsfrom
which the rirual of baptismreleasesthe neophyte:'There is neitherJewnor
Greek, neither slavenor free man, neither male nor female,for you are all
onc in Christ.fcsus"(Galatians 3:28; Meeks,88).A similarquestioning of
gcrr<lcr r<llcscarrllc [iltrrr<lirr ()ynic tcxts of thc sameperiod,an overlap
wlriclris rrotsrrr'prisirrggivt'rrtlrc irrfhrcncc which thc lifc of poverryand
 160 Ben Morgan
mendicancy propagatedby itinerant cynic sageshad on the earlyJesus
movement (Malherbe, 1f.). Thus a seriesof letters written during the first
or secondcenturyin the personaof the Cynic philosophercrates of rh.b.t
and addressedto his wife Hipparchia declaredthat women were nor'by
nature worse than men,,. and continued with an exhortation that punned
on the derivation of the tide cynic from the Greek word for dog:
"stand
fast, therefore, and live the Cy-.life with us (for you are not by narure
inferior to us, for female dogs are not by nature inferior to male dogs),in
order that you might be freed evenfrom narure [...].. (Malherbe,79).More
than a thousand years later, in the context of the life of poverty and men-
dicanry - the so called uita apostokca-that flourished in European cities of
the late medieval period, a comparablequestioningof genderroles can be
found. A text from the strasbourg of the early fourteenth century tells the
story of a beguinewho is looking for the quickestway ro God, and realizes
this will entail leaving behind her confessor and embarking on a journey
of apostolic poverty for which she must lay claim to qualitiesof strength
and potential for action that the text higtrlights as specificallymasculine
(Schweitzer, 351). If forms of behaviourare gendered,they are,for this text,
equally open to both sexes.
These examplessuggesta tradition of spirirual transformation for whic.h
gender roles could be challenged,inverted or cast aside.In all three cases,
a division of male and female behaviour is presupposed,but only to be
questioned and ffanscended.This may be achievedby re-configuring what
counts as natural (equality rather than hierarchy) as a firsr step towards
overcoming nature altogether, as in the Cy*. case;or alternatively by sug-
gesting that social roles can be re-appropriated or overcome, as in the case
of the beguine'sjourney or rhe early christian communiry addressedin
Paul's epistle.In all three examples,a level of experiencecan be appealed
to that challengesthe self-evidenceof the conventional division of the sexes.
Moreover, the examplesfrom the spirirual tradition suggestthat there is
something - in this easethe processof self-transformation- that we are
involved in at a more fundamental level than our genderedbehaviour pat-
terns and that can be promoted or hindered by the attitude we take to gendcr
roles. Genderedbehaviour patterns,for thesetexts, are a way of engaging
or not engagingwith our self-transformation.
This essaywill take up the challengepresentedby this tradition of religious
texts of conceprualizinga transformatory project beyond or beforegcndcr,
It will show how the inruitions bchind the older rexts can bc reforrrrulated
in a vocabulary which sounds lessalic' i. thc sccularizcdwortd .f thc
The Limits of Human Togethemess 161
rwenty-first century. The first step in this processwill be to point up parallels
between the religious texts and arguments developed byJacques Derrida.
Derrida's formulations remain abstract,however,so the secondhalf of the
argument will be devoted to a discussion of recent empirical work which
similarly points beyond gender. The essaywill finish with a reflection on
the confrontation with fininrde which the parallel between deconstructive
argumentsand current scientificresearchimposeson us.
ll. Moving Beyond Gender with Jacques Derrida
The parallels berweenDerrida's work and the religious tradition have often
beenremarkedupon (Coward/Foshay; Caputo).It's not suryrising,therefore,
that arguments similar to those of Gnostic and mystical traditions should
turn up in Derrida's writing. In the essay"Geschlechtu,which discusses
Heidegger'streatrnentof gender,Derrida developsa position that formulates
in a postmodem idiom the line of argument to be found in Paul, the Cynic
epistlesand the late medieval treatise.Derrida offers a closecommentary
on passagesfrom the essay',Vom Wesen des Grundes" (1929) and from
the last course of lectures Heidegger delivered at Marburg in the summer
semesterof 1928, and then relatestheseto the argumentsfrom Beingand
nnu $927) about the way Daseinmust be thought of as being necessarily
entangledwith and available to the world and other people. He draws out
the hesitationsin Heidegger'sargument when it comes to explaining the
neutraliry of the term Daseinand differentiating it from the term ,human
being. (Mnuch)or the two sexes.For Derrida, the hesitationsbetray the
suspicionthat there could be somethingbehind or before the fundamental
strucures of human identiry captured with the supposedly neutral concept
of Dasein(Derrida, 74).This somethingis not sexualiry at leastnot in the
form in which it is generally known. Heidegger marks this fact by putting
the sexuality he excludesin scarequotes. For Derrida, this opens up the
possibilitythat a form of sexuality that is not what we would normally sup-
poseit to be could be the force that destabilizesDasein(7a).This is what he
l{ocson to demonstrateas he expoundsHeidegger'sargumentsfrom Being
,uul ftna about the necessaryspacingor dispersingof Dasein(that is to say,
thc fact that, lor Heidegger,human beingsarealwaysinvolved in projectsin
thc world, and scltheir lives will alwaysbe spreadout in time and spaceand
will, sinrilarly,:rlwaysbc structurallyticd up with others).Derrida concludes:
''l}c 'transccndcntaldispcrsion, (asHcidcggcrstill narnesi$ thusbelongsto
r62 Ben Morgan
the essenceof Daseininits neutraliry. (78).Derrida has thus establishedan
order of prioides. Daseincomes beforegenderdivisions,but is itselfpreceded
by or made possible by our being-spread-outin activities and relations:
dispersion/being-withothers in the world --+Dasein--+gender.This means
that his closereadingof Heidegger'stextsfrom the late 1920shasraisedthe
possibiliry that sexualdifferenceas we generallyknow it is derivative.It is
one of the forms in which we live a more fundamentalrelatedness:'sexual
difference,or belonging to a genre,must be elucidatedstartingfrom being-
with, in other words, from the disseminalthrow [...].. (79).
Derrida thus usesHeidegger'sideas about human beings' necessaryand
structural involvementwith the world and with eachother to get back be-
hind the idea of sexualdifferenceas an unquesrionableduality. Indeed,his
argument preparesthe way for a far-reachingrethinking of sexuality because
his closereadingof Heideggerasksus ro suspendnot only ideasof gender,
but also those of Dasgin'sgender neutraliry and to conceiveinstead of a
powerful, originary relatednessthat has not yet been organizedas a simple
duality: oThis order of implications opensup thinking to a sexualdifference
that would not yet be sexual duality, differenceas dualu (82). Where paul
and the writer of the cynic epistleboth thought familiar genderdivisions
were in place but could be overcome,Derrida's argument suggeststhey
have always alreadybeen transcended.We are together (with others,with
the world, and, Paul would add, with God) and in a step that is logically,if
not practically,subsequentwe genderthis togetherness.
Derrida thus usesHeideggerto arguethathumans, in their involvementwith
the world and with others, are always dispersedbeyond themselves,and
that binary sexual difference is a way of controlling and limiting the energy
of this more primordial relationality.He suggeststhere is a self-differingor
selftranscendencemore fundamental than so<ualdifferenceof which gender
roles are the sociallystructured sediment.To somefeminist critics,such as
Elizabeth Grosz, his attempt to stepback behind sexedsubjectivitiesto an
indeterminate Ur-sexaalityhas seemedunconvincing. For Grosz, a fluid
pleasuredrive seemsfair enough but: 'rlt is not easy to seehow sexualiry
in the senseof sexualsubjectivity,male and female,can be understood as
indeterminate" (Grosz,121f.).Grosz'sargumentappealsto an individual's
everydaysensethat they are a mnn or a woman, and the socialpressuresto
identify unequivocallywith one genderor the other evenin casesof genital
or hormonal ambiguity, and underscoresthis appeal with the argument
that, at a fundamental,ontologicallevel: ,there must bc (at lcast,lxrt n<>t
necessarily only) two scxes<(122).In <lthcrwortls,lrcr rrrgrrrru.nts sllggcsr
The Limits of Human Togethemess 163
separated,sexedindividuals confronting each other and coming to terms
with their differences.
The force of Derrida and Heidegger's argument is precisely that these
separable,individual human atoms cannot be taken for granted, and ttrat
calling into question the atomist model of identity on which Grosz'sper-
plexiry dependswill make us also re-think the category of gender.Derrida
and Heidegge! as we have seen,make their argument at quite a rarefied
Ievel, talking in impersonalterms about a Daseinsubjectedto an originat-
ing "disseminalthrowu (Derrida, 79). However,we don't need to be overly
attachedto this level of transcendentalargument,sinceit's not clearwhere
we would be standingto make it. Rather, we can be more down to earth.
As we follow in Derrida and Heidegger'sfootstepsand attempt to get back
behind our deepestassumptionsabout gender,we can acknowledge,with
Charles Thylor, that we'll always be drawing on a )never fully articulableu
pre-understanding,or, with Dewey, that to changeone set of conventions
we'll haveto mobilizeothersGuylor, viii; Dewey,166f.).We're alwaysgoing
to be using the termsavailableto us, caughtup in an intellecrualframework
we're never going to be able to seethe full force of. So where Heidegger
rather disparagingly differentiatesthe argumentsof Beingand Timefrom
anthropologyand biology (Beingand fune,$ 10),I think insteadthat it's not
only useful but necessaryto make the transcendentalclaims, like those of
Heidegger and Derrida about being thrown into a communal world that
takesus beyond ourselves,as concreteand readily graspableaspossibleso
as to help us, deluded Daseiruthat we are, face up to and engagewith the
sharedpracticeswe're acually involved in. A bit of biology and anthropology
can promote an honestacknowledgementof our common predicament.It
can of coursealso encouragemythmaking aswe treat limited and contingent
practicesas if they were the very structureof human existence,but that's a
risk worth taking in the pursuit of being practicallyintelligible, and it's what
peer review and the critical interrogation of our own assumptionscan help
us guard against.Thus having used Derrida's arguments to suggestthat
we can question the self-evidenceof sexualdifferenceand the assumption
of an isolatedindividual identiry I want in the next sectionto look at some
of the recent work in the new field of socialneurosciencethat points in a
similar direction.
 164 Ben Morgan
lll' RecentEmpirical
Research
intotheMechanisms
of Human
Togetherness
. with others even before they have a separatesenseof self. They suggest
Empirical researchinto the mechanismsoperating to connecr people with
each other below the threshold of consciousawarenessgained a new focus
after the serendipitousdiscovery of mirror neurons in pigtail macaquemon-
keys at a laboratory in Parma in 1996 (Rizzolatriet al., >hemoto, co.to
and the Recogrution of Motor Actionsu). Mirror neurons fire both when we
perform purposeful actions ourselvesand when we seethem performed by
others, and so they allow us to participate in the actions of othirs. The effect
was first noted by accident in rwo monkeys who had had microelecrrodes
implanted in their brains to measure the firing of individual neurons and
y.!9 were observing their keepershandling objectsberweenexperiments.
wth the developmentof non-invasivemethodsfor monitoringbrain activiry
similar responsescould be ascertainedin humans.Thus mirroi nzuron activ-
ity has subsequendybeen recorded in humans in relation to simple forms of
movement, smells, touch, the affective component of pain, communicative
hand gestures,facial expressions,emorional reaccionsand language,and the
list continues to grow.l Mirror neurons suggesrthat human iidiiid.rul, *.
not as sepzrrateasthey might consciouslybelieve,but are rather permanently
participating in the actions of others to varying degrees,right up to and
including the fully fledged involuntary imitation of other p*pt.,r acrions
known as echopraxia.2For those theorists who pr"rnppori a fundamental
separationbetweenpeople,our participationtakesthe form of simulation:I
relate to your actions by having a reproduction in my own nervous system
of what you're going through (Galtese).But for other theorists the simula-
tion model is not the only starting point. some experiments suggestthat a
cogrutive processis in place to establish that we are indeed separatefrom
eachother.This processdistinguishesmyposition from thoseolothers and
so enablesme to distinguish my own reactionsfrom the reactions of o*rers
resonatingin me flean Decery). Moreover, it's not clear to what extent a
connection that occurs reflexively below the threshold of awarenesscan
meaningful be called a simulation (Gallagher). Rather, mirror neurons are
r microsecondsand within windows in which temporal order is not always
Th" b.rt account for the general reader is Iacoboni. For a more specialistreview of
literah.rreon mirror neurons and their relation to researchon empathy and mind-reading
see Singer. For a discussion of research on mirror neurons andlanguage see RizzolatJ
and Craigherg, hand-gesrures,seeMontgomery Isenberg and Hlaxiy.
-, fo1
For a possiblelink betweenmirror neuronsand echopraxiain schizophrcnicpaticnts,scc
Saxby kidmore et al.
The Limits of Human Togethemess 165
an example of the way in which humans can be thought of asbeing involved
that at a fundamental physiological level togethernessprecedesidentiry. If
this is true, the processef 5egializ.ationwould then have to be seenasbeing
as much about controlling participation and learning not to imitate those
around us, as about assimilating ourselvesto the culture we find ourselves
in freston/de Waal, 12f.).
Mirror neurons thus suggestone mecharrismby which we're subjectto what
Derrida called the disseminal*now. They help us understand how we might
be always already outside ourselves,participating in the shared affectivelife
of the human community into which we're born. The speed with which
they have been taken up by researchersis due partly to the fact that, from
the early 1990s,therewas renewedinterestin the mechanismsof emotional
contagion (for reviews seeHatfield at al.; Preston/deWaal). What these
pre-mirror neuron studiescan remind us is that, whatever the role played by
mirror neurons, there will be other mechanismsinvolved (keston/de Waal,
10). As well as particrpating in the reactionsof others and coordinating our
movementswith theirs, we touch them, and adjust our heartbeat and other
bodily rhythms to theirs ftIatfield et al., L6-47).We also smell them and
react emotionally to what we smell (Zhou). So we can still follow Hadeld's
and colleagues'suggestionthat we approachthe level of experiencethey call
emotional contagion as "a multiply determined farnily of social,psychophy-
siological, and behavioural phenomena..(Flatfield etaI.,7), rather than as a
simple, automatic mechanismwith a single neurological substrate.
This more varied view of possible substratesis methodoloscaly as well
as empirically important. If recent empirical work reveals something of
the complex physiological underpinnings of human connectedness,it also
makes it clear that this connection should not be understood as a magical
simultaneiry confirming Derrida's insistencein the 'Geschlecht< essaythat
human identity is always dispersed and spaced out ursopposed to being
present to itself with miraculous immediary (75-78).Below the threshold of
consciousawareness,our bodies and the bodies of others interact, resonating
with each other and shaping each other on different levels. These proc€sses
are mediated, continuous and happening in real time, albeit at the level of
functionally important (Derurett, L44-153).There is not a singlemoment, or
a singlelayer that explainsour being connectedwith eachother.That does
not, however,mean that we are never really connected.The Wittgenstein-
ian cavcatabout Dcrrida's argrrmcntsalsostands.The mediatedprocessof
 I
I
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166 Ben Morgan
being involved with others and coming to a senseof ourselvesand other
peopledoesnot, in its mediatedness, meanthat we never encounteranyone.
criticizing an unhe$fully pure idea of presenceneed nor mean thar we get
rid of presencealtogether (stone, wttgmsteinon Derrida).Rather we can
come to understandthat being presententailsa form of sharedunfolding;
the processof being involved with orhersand acknowledgrngthis to vary-
ing degrees.our entanglementwith the world and with other peoplehas a
rhythm or shapewhich producesthe phenomenologicalflow of meaningful
sharedexperiences,so, if we are connectedand taken beyond ourselves,we
are not simply lost in a pennanent exchangeof differences;we are people
who can tune in to the different layersof our being tuned in to people.
But where doesthat leavethe questionof gender?In his
"Gesctrlecht essay,
Derrida arguedthat our dispersalin the world and othersraisedthe possibil-
iry of a differencethat was sexualwithout being dual (82). But what could
sexualmean in thesecircumstances?Would sex be an 6lanuinl of the sort
Dewey criticizedin Bergsonbecauseit artificially separaredbodily impulse
from the existing habits and conventionsthrough which alone suchimpulses
will be encounteredand actedupon (Dewey,73)?I would assumenor. Der-
rida draws our attention to ways in which we encounterour body as sexed
but not in a way explicablein terms of a simple dichotomy; sexedin the
senseof physically alive and energericallydisposedtowardsothersbecause
of our subliminal, constantinvolvement with them; sexedin the senseof
yearningto be connected,not becausewe havebeendivided from our other
half like the mucilated,once androgynousbeings of Plato's Slmposium,but
becausewe are always already in touch with our fellow creatures.This
level of experiencechallengesthe binary gender divide in a similar way to
the religious tradition stretching from Paul to late medieval mystics,and,
like that tradition, the Derridean argumentsuggeststhat thereis something
we are involved in - a yearning beyond ourselves- that has a dynamic of
its own. We are part of an unfolding in a way that, both ontologically and
empirically speaking,is prior to any sensewe might have of being a separate,
sexed individual. At the same time, our accessto and experienceof this
dynamic unfolding before or beyond genderappearsitself to be gendered.
We are not all equally good at being connectedhuman beings,and there
is evidenceto suggestthat, statisticallyspeaking,women are a little better
at it than men. In the final section of the essay,I will review some of the
researchthat suggeststhis paradoxicaland slightly uncomfortableargrrment
and then draw out an evenmore uncomfortableimplicati<lnth;rtit hirsfrrr
an understandingof human togcthcrncss.
The Limits of Human Togetherness 167
lV. Gendering Human Togetherness
A number of studies have shown gender differences across a range of
behaviours, prompting further investigation into - as well as speculation
about - possiblecauses.I want briefly to presentsome of the evidencefor
possiblebiological causesbefore dealingwith somecaveatsabout the limits
of biological explanations.Differenceshavebeenrepeatedlyobservedin the
rype of play preferred by boys and girls (boys engaging in more rough and
tumble play); in toy choice (carsand weaponsvs. dolls and tea sets)and in
choiceof playmate (with gfulsand boys preferring to segregatealong lines
of sex).Moreoveq not only has the preferencefor rough and tumble play
beenfound in a number of mammals,but boys' toys have beenfound to be
preferredby male monkey aswell as human infants (Maccoby;Alexander;
Hassett).In adult life, men and women havebeen found to perform differ-
ently, amongstother things, in some motor tasks (throwing vs. fine motor
actions); in spatial tasks (where men are better at targeting and at seeing
objectsfrom different sidesin their imagination, women are better at recalling
the position of objectsand landmarks);and in languagetasks(wherewomen
perform better than men.pn fluency testsand verbal recall tests)(Kimura,
Sexand Cognition). These differenceshave been explained in evolutionary
termsby constructinga (hypotheticaland constandyrevisable)model of the
division of labour imposedby the selectionpressuresacting on human males
and females in the hunter-gatherer context in which the speciesdeveloped
(I(imura, Sexand Cognitinn; Kimura, uHuman SexDifferences").There has
also been investigation to determine the degreeto which male and female
brains could be said to be distinct, and to understandwhether or not sex
hormonesmight causethe differences;in particular the testosteronesurges
in the life of a boy in weeks 8-24 of gestationand months 1-6 of infancy,
and the neonataloestrogensurgein girls. There's mounting evidenceof a
link betweentestosteronelevelsin the amniotic fluid during pregnancyand
various forms of behaviour that show sex differences(Auyeung et al.). An
influenceof sexhormoneson the developmentof the cerebralcortex,which
grows rapidly in the first two years of infancy, is possiblebut still remains
to be fully explored (Hines,',Eu.ly Androgen Influences").
Simon Baron-Cohen has suggestedthat the various examplesof sexual
differentiationthat havebeen observedin modesof playing and in spatial,
motor and linguistic skills should be seenagainstthe wider background of
luscx cli{I'crcncccvi<lcntin the way the world and other people are related
to, witlr thc'nrirlclrrlrirrllcirrgl)cttcr at systematizing,
the femalebrain at
 168 Ben Morgan
empathizing. underpinning the difference between the sexesis the degree
to which the world of other people can be enteredinto, with an )extreme
male brain showing much less abiliry to engagewith others and producing
the sortsof behaviourassociatedwith autism @aron-cohen).As with rough
and tumble play, and toy choice,the differencesin empatheticskills have also
been linked to levelsof tesrosteroneto which the foetus is exposedduring
pregnancy (chapman et al.). As further evidencefor a somaticsubstratero
empathy, differenceshave been observedin the mirror neuron reactions of
men and women, with women mirroring the actions of othersmore strongly
than men, and having more grey matter in the areasof the brain where mir-
ror neuron activiry would be expected(Chenget al.
"Gender Differencesn;
Cheng et al., >SexDifferences").
Before going on to look at some of the ways in which the conclusionspar-
ticularly of Simon Baron-Cohenand his colleaguesat the Autism Research
centre in cambridge have been questioned,I want to highlight somepos-
sible implications of the findings for the argumentsabout genderand human
togethernessthat I have been developing so far so that we know which
issuesare particularly important when consideringpossibleobjections.Ln
both the traditions of spirinral transformation and Derrida's deconstructive
reading of Heidegger, we found the suggestionthat there could be a layer
of experience before or beyond gender, and we then briefly reviewed the
empirically-derivable model of a human subjectiviry that is always already
in the mediatedprocessof being connectedio others, indeed,which could
be said itself to be a product of the corurectionrarher than to pre-existit.
The disturbing factor which Baron-cohen's position introducesinto this
model is not so much the idea that there may be differencesbetween the
way men and women relate to human corurectednessas the idea that there
is a difference at all. Both the religious and the deconstructiveargument sug-
gesteda kind of radical equality beyond gender:God's grace,or the power
of an originary difference were, theoretically ar leasr, equally available to
everyone.In contrast,the Baron-Cohenposition is that togethernessis an
attribute, somethinglike musicality or shortsightedness, which individuals
have to varying degreesand that is dependent on the organization of our
brain. Amusicality or exffeme myopla do not call in question the physical
propertiesof sound and light. But they suggesrthe degreeto which the deep
stmctures of our world - that is to say,the ontology of our experienced
world - is dependentupon our ability to discloseits facets.There would
not be music or depth of visual field in a world populatcd only by the
unmusicaland myopic; similarly,if, as portrayedby Baron.(krhcn,rhcre
The Limits of Human Togethemess 169
are people who are constitutively less able to connect to others, thesewill
alwaysexperiencethe world differently from the empathizers,and therefore
shapeit differently,too. They might, perhaps,encountera world that is not
necessarilysharedand shareable,a world populatedby beingswho are eerily
unavailable. The point can be clarified and emphasizedby being rephrased
in different vocabularies.Underlying Baron-Cohen's position is the idea
that "God's grace is not equally available to all.. or in other words that we
live in worlds that are in someway irreconcilably diflerent becausefor some
the very abiliry to be in another person'sworld cannot be experienced,so
no amount of transcendentalargument showing the strucrural necessityof
being always already available to others could help them become part of
the world of human connectedness.
Compared with the ruprure which this structural inequality puts into the
fabric of the world, Baron-Cohen'sclaimsabout male vs' femaleattributes
arerelatively easyto deal with. Arguments of the sort he proposeshavebeen
challenged in a number of ways by theorists arguing that gender roles are
primarily socially constructedand so it is socialrather than biological factors
which affect motor and other skills. "Throwing Like a Girk is famously
the title of an essayby Iris Marion Young which uses a phenomenological
approach to explore the particular way a womtrn in industrialized, urban
socierylearns to relate to her own body, accompanying eachbodily 'rI cano
with a self-imposed>I cannot<ffoung, 27-45,esp.36).Recentexperiments
have confirmed that girls who objectiff themselvesmore and so relate to
themselvesby thinking "How do I look?" as opposed to ,,How do I feel?
What am I capable of?n are less likely to throw well (Fredrickson and
Harrison). If the influence of biological as opposed to social factors has
been questioned,so too have the terms in which the biological factors are
described.The concept of empathizing has been criticized for not being
properly defined, and for there being iruufficient evidenceof its being female
as opposed to male (Straver,47-49).
It is certainly true that Baron-Cohen collectsa wide variety of responses
and behaviour patterns under the heading of empathy, from involuntary
responsesthat might be discussedas emotionalcontagion ttrough to more
cognitive,intentionalattemptsto put oneselfin the shoesof anotherperson.
'I'he
characterizationof supposedly masculine behaviours could also be
qucstioned.The pursuit of socialdominancethat has been observedin the
way rnen use langrageor boys play (Baron-Cohen,52; Maccoby,56), may
rxrt rcquirc cmpathy, but it ncvcrthelessneedsan acute senseof how the
gnrup is lunctioning artd of who catr bc picked on, and so must be seen
 770 Ben Morgan
as- way of being involved with people no less than more caring forms
1 is compatible with that proposed by feminist phenomenologistssuch as
of interaction that Baron-cohen associateswith the female, .-puthirirrg
brain. Nevertheless,neither these criticisms of Baron-cohen's approach to
empathy, nor the insistenceon possiblesocial influences on genderedforms
of behaviour fundamentally changeshis argument. The .titi.ir-r can all
be accommodatedwithin a model similar to Baron-cohen's, such as that
of Melissa Hine, which acknowledgesthe interplay between environmental
and biological facrors, and which gives a more differentiated account of the
process of becoming masculine and feminine. As we shall see, the added
complexiry of the Hines's model does not alter the underlying claim that
people might live in worlds with incommensurable experiencesof what it
meansto relate to others.
Hines's account helps to pre-empr a misunderstanding that might arise from
Baron-Cohen'sposition,namely that sexualdifferenceis a one-dimensional
difference, that is to say that a person who is good at empathizing will be
lessgood at systematizing,or thar someonewho is more femalewill be less
male, and that thesetalents could be explained by the levels of testosterone
to which he or she was exposed in the womb. Hines has pointed out that
sexual differencesmust be understood in multiple dimensions.The factors
that effect masculinization operareindependently from thosethat determine
degreesof feminization, as has been demonstratedin experimentsin which
individual rats display simultaneously the sexualbehaviours characteristicof
both malesand females,that is to saymale mountingroutines aswell as the
lgrdo,sisor arching of the ba& rrpi."l of a femalerat in oesrrus.This suggesw
that for each aspectof behaviour for which there is a sex difference there
could be determining facrors operating independently from those affecting
other aspects.what emergesfrom this i*tsht is then a multidimensional
model of gender dilference for which sexual identity is a mosaicof different
elemerrtswhich can all vary independently (Ilines, Brain Gmdn,59-64).This
considerablycomplicatesBaron-Cohen'sopposition, as it would allow the
different aspectsof human interaction that he groups togetherunder the
generallabels of systematizingvs. empathizingto be broken up into their
constirudveparts, eachof which could be separatelyinfluenced,producing
individuals who did normap neady onto a simple gender divide. Neverthe-
less, what remairu is the claim that we relate to others and to the world
in a marurer which is biologically grounded and which, as a result of the
biological grounding, evinces distinctions that group human beings into
populations that are statisticallydistinct.
This differentiatedbut neverthelessbiologically anclrorcd vicw of gendcr
The Limits of Human Togethemess 17I
AnnJohnson andJoharuraOksala, but also Toril Moi, insofar as it suggess
a physical variery which is disclosed, engagedwith and understood - or
misunderstood - using the familiar social categoriesof male vs. female.
ArurJohnson studied the way children learn about gender, and came to the
conclusion that they negotiatebetween, on the one hand, the emotional
investrnents of grown-ups and older children, and, on the other hand, the
ambiguity of the people and behaviour that they actually encounter. Chil-
dren's experience of the variety of sexed behaviours - the individualized
mosaicsof attributes and behaviours dessibed by Hines - is shapedby the
emotional responsesof those around them, so they never encounter variety
neutrally but always as a reason for anxiery as a confusion that needsto be
disambiguated.Their senseof gender,theirs and other people's,thus arises
from physical experienceslived through the filter of the emotional invest-
ments of the peoplewith whom they grow up: ,rgenderis constructedby the
child - not privately, ,in the mind,, as cognitivistssuggest- but in the space
betweensubjects,in the lived moments of communicaliery flohruon, L47f.).
However, if in childhood we leam ways of emotionally avoiding the plurality
of what we encounter,for Oksala, studies of gender from a third-person or
external perspective,particularly those in anthropology and the history of
medicine, can help us to surprise ourselvesout of the disambiguatinghabits
we learnedin childhood and so to transform our relationship with the plural-
iry we actually live (Oksala,239). Indeed,Hines's more complexbiological
model offers an example of just this sort of third person perspecrivethat
re-introduces complexiry into everyday genderedlife, helping to transform
habits by recovering the physical variery that outstrips conventional assump-
tions, showing thereby that there need be no speciallink between biological
arguments and social conservatism, and confirming'Ioril Moi's suspicion
that the open-minded and pluralistic politics of sexuality proposed byJudith
Buder does not actually need Buder's insistencethat cultural norms alone
determine the form of the body, and does not therefore need the whole
intellectualapparatusof performativity (NIoi, 45-54).
lbr the phenomenologicalapproach,our sexedbody and the bodies of others
arc somethingwe come to tenns with as simultaneouslyrranscendingand
constrainingour everydaystrategiesfor dealingwith life. Our sexedbody
iurd the bodiesof othersare somethingwhich will be acknowledgedmore or
lcsshoncstly by our existinghabits, and that we c:rn come to acknowledge
'fhc
nrorc f<rrthrightly. pr<lcessof acknowledgmentwill take us beyond
siurplcoppositiorsto a riclrcr and pcrltapsmore frighteningexperienceof
172 Ben Morgan
complexity. But it will also confront us with finitude; with limits that we will
never overcome. In some cases,*re limit will simply be the fact ttrat time
has run out br changrng a particular behaviour pattern by the time we get
round to acknowledging it, in the sameway that, aged43, the time has run
out for rne to learn all the languagesI would like to becauseI will not be
able to physically organize my life in a way that would allow ir, and because
the capaciry of my brain to learn languageshas diminished. Other limits
will be those set by -y constitution, and it is at this point that we return to
the nub of the problem, which is not sexual difference so much as the fact
of an apparendy unbridgeable gap between experiencedworlds, a gap that
may sometimescoincide with but is not reducible to gender divisions.
The phenomenological model still allows for a grouping of behaviour par-
terns by sex.A more variegated combination of talents,whic.hwas the result
of the independentand themselvescomplex processesof masculinization
and feminization, could replace the simple opposition between systematiz-
i"S (*ale) vs. empathizing (female), but thesebehaviours might still form
rwo statistically distinct populations that mapped roughly onto men and
women. However, our relationship to these statistical norms changes.As
Baron-Cohen himseH insists, there would always be individuals who did
not fit the model of the statisticallytypical. Following Hines's model, mosr
of us would be faced with the businessof discovering and acknowledgng
how we do not fit the statistical nonns. The lack of fit which Hines's mosaic
model suggestsraisesthe question of why, if gender roles are so inadequate
for describing lived experience,they persistnevertheless;especiallysince,as
we have seenin the first century texts, it has been possibleto call them into
question for a very long time. This is a question for which there is unlikely
to be a single explanation,but one factor which should be taken into ac-
count is the possibiliry that the gender habits are a way of coping with the
incommensurabiliry of people's experiential worlds, an incommensurability
that has overlappedenough with sex differencesfor gender to be acceptedas
an explanation, albeit an explanation that keeps the problem atbay rather
than engaging with it. If this is the case,then our gender roles function as a
garbled acknowledgementthat people are only available to varying degrees
to the communality of human life. Gender roles are the placeholder for the
realization that we live in a world in which transcendental arguments are
at once necessaryand useless- necessarybecausethey help us understand
what we are presupposingin our world, at leastin the world that we share
with thosewith whom it is shareable;useless, becausefor thosefor whom
that world is not shareable,our argumentswill make no difference.They
The Limits of Human Togethemess 173
will at best mark the point at which experienceceasesto be shared or
shareable.
The argument startedwith a transformatory project that took us beyond the
stabfities of familiar socialcategories:beyondJew vs' Greek, slavevs. free
man, male vs. female.We saw how this transformation could be considered
to have always already begun, as human beings are necessarilythrown
beyond themselvesinto an entanglement with others that is grounded in
their reflexive responsesto the physical co-existencewith others. For some
theorists, this entanglement with others is gendered, with women "doing
empathyu better than men. But it emerged that our reflexive responsesin
faci promise to take us to a connectednessthat is beyond gendel since the
different talents from which it is constituted could be part of the mosaic
of an individual's identiry whatever the sex. But in overcoming gender,
we came across a problem not so easily transcended: some individuals
might be less able than others to form a corurection. Of course, there will
belimes when corurectedness breaks down simply becauseour ways of
life differ. Here there is room for negotiation, and for surprising ourselves
into acknowledging a communality in which we were already involved, but
which our routines prevented us from experiencing as suc.h.But it is also
possiblethat we confront limits that we cannot negotiate,points at which the
physiological substratefor connection is not sufliciently there. It is tempting
io use iniellectual somersaultsto overcome the gap, for could it not be said
rhat we would meet in the experience of not meeting? But this apParent
communality would only mask the disappointment and lonelinessof an
encounter with someonethat produced no response.This tailed encounter
is frightening enough, writing as someone for whom corurectednessis a
tungible .*p.ri"n... But imagine that I were t*itittg from the other side,
from the point of view of someone for whom other people were simply
inscrutably unavailable,mere oother minds" about which I might never
know the nrrth. would it not be tempting to defend myself by stylizingmy
isolation as a sort of necessaryheroism, and denigrating thosewho don't
fcel so isolated,but who cling and commune?
 174 Ben Morgan The Limits of Human Togethemess 175

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