“Let’s put an end to binaryism as a way of writing science”: Lu Ciccia

My critique of scientific discourse has to do with subjective experience and practice and, later, encountering the criticisms made by feminist epistemologists and the idea that there is an objective, neutral and universal production of knowledge. The articulation of the critique that I do is fundamentally intersectional”.

Lucía Ciccia, author and researcher.

The mind is more than the brain, and because destiny is not written in biology, Lu Ciccia, doctor in gender studies from the University of Buenos Aires and biotechnologist, presents her book The invention of the sexes (Siglo XXI Editores).

In the journey of modernity, binaryism was successively established in genitality, in hormones, in genetics and, finally, in the brain. Lucía Gabriela Ciccia (Argentina, 1987) explores from cognition and behavior to the biomedical field, and emphasizes the consequences that the androcentric gaze has had and has on the description of what diseases are, how and who they affect and how they are affected. treat. Without neglecting materialism, she questions the sharp distinction between nature and culture.

Is sex in nature? Who said there are two genders, or two sexual orientations? Are we the result of our hormones? How much biology is there in our behavior, our desires, our subjectivity? Are there pink and light blue brains? This book answers these questions by reviewing evidence and discussing interpretations, it goes through the history of science and breaks down the arguments with which the scientific discourse on sexual difference built legitimacy for the androcentric value system and the supremacy of the cis male, it also reviews the ways in which, throughout that history, feminisms questioned and questioned, with different emphases, the naturalization of hierarchies.

In an interview for El Economista, Ciccia assures that this text is for anyone who is willing to be uncomfortable and question their certainties, “I invite you to read it, because what it tries to do is reflect on what we are to the point of making us uncomfortable and doubt what we always took for granted, yielding our own experience to the production of scientific knowledge and epistemic authority par excellence”.

He said that this discomfort suggests rethinking who we are, why, what our interests and desires are and abandoning the biological anchors that suggest that there is something natural in what we are. “It proposes to understand the reality of what we are as an intertwining between discourse and matter.”

The researcher at the Center for Gender Research and Studies of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (CIEG-UNAM) explains that writing this book was not easy and had to do with an interdisciplinary path. A doctorate that she had begun in neurosciences ended in feminist epistemology at the Faculty of Philosophy in Buenos Aires, with these tools she makes an internal critique of how knowledge production works and then moves towards feminist epistemology.

Androcentric biases

Lu Ciccia explains that androcentric biases are reproduced in many people regardless of our gender identity and sexuality. “We must understand that science is contextualized and that it involves socioeconomic and political interests.” It refers to a deliberation of the truth by the scientific community where the theoretical load of the information are those theories or hypotheses that emanate from the production of knowledge, but that is not thinking of a theoretical load traversed by gender regulations, this is what that the author suggests in this book in tune with feminist epistemology.

He assures that in science there is no neutrality, because we know that we start from a priori scientific assumptions, an observation that results from how social life is structured, from gender roles and norms “and that structuring of social life becomes natural”, This is valid for any type of subjectivity, that is, it does not matter if they are women or people from the LGBT community, the assumption, instead of being based on an objective reality, is based on androcentric biases, with a heterosexual white male cis gaze and that they permeate the hypotheses, the interpretation of results, how we understand the particular cases and what will make us force the interpretation of those results to adjust them to the hypothesis that we want to corroborate.

Faced with this reality, the intention of the book is precisely to lose fear of what they teach us as “untouchable sciences.” Ciccia recalls that science is made by people and that those people are located outside of neutrality, that “we permeate values ​​to understand science.”

He adds that it is not about “setting fire to what has been done”, it is about critically reviewing what is said and done. The assumptions, hypotheses, experimental designs, how the data and results are interpreted; then rethink other ways of characterizing what today is supposed to be due to nature or what we call sex.

Lu Ciccia concludes that literacy is necessary in the sense of knowledge production for the population in general, but also for specialists, “because in academic training androcentric models continue to be reproduced (…) with this idea of ​​brilliant minds , white men who suddenly fell the “apple on their heads” and discovered the laws of the universe. This narrative decontextualizes how knowledge is produced and validates the hierarchy of bodies.

The invention of the sexes

• Author: Lu Ciccia
• Year: 2022
• Publisher: Siglo XXI Publishers
• Pages: 254
• Printed cost: 280 pesos
• E-book cost: 152 pesos

nelly.toche@eleconomista.mx