Neuroethics (2012) 5:211–215 DOI 10.1007/s12152-012-9165-5 EDITORIAL NOTE Neuroscience and Sex/Gender Isabelle Dussauge & Anelis Kaiser Received: 4 September 2012 /Accepted: 13 September 2012 /Published online: 2 October 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012 This special issue publishes interdisciplinary scholar- hosts very different epistemological approaches, a ship which aims to map and re-imagine the relations common knowledge of neuroscience and gender between neuroscience and gender studies. studies was a prerequisite for the group’stheoret- ical and methodological exchange. The participants lively debated crucial issues, from current research neuroGenderings: The Network on sex/gender difference in neuropsychology, through the implications of notions of sex/gender, The authors of the present special issue were all par- gender identity and sexuality used in neuroscien- ticipants in the workshop neuroGenderings: Critical tific experimentation, to the social workings of a Studies of the Sexed Brain (Uppsala, 2010). Then co- sexed/gendered brain. organizers, now guest editors, we work in gender More precisely, the neuroGenderings workshop studies, neuroscience, and science and technology achieved an impressive first mapping of the research studies. In 2010, we did not know for a fact that the on sex/gender in neurosciences and the methodological neuroGenderings initiative would grow and develop frames used in those sciences. We discussed, for in- into an international network and conference series. stance, the role assigned to “sexed” regions of the brain, Now we know. by analyzing the relevance of the notion of sexual di- In neuroGenderings, a transdisciplinary and inter- morphism, itself a system of significance that is always national group of researchers from the neurosciences, and solely framed by neuro-logical sexual dichotomy. the humanities and science studies working on and in Further, we elaborated on what kind of sex/gender facts, the neuroscience of gender convened to discuss the results, and understandings of the brain dominate in broad theme of sex/gender and the brain. As this neurosciences and how neuroscientific facts about sex/ specific interdisciplinary field of research usually gender are produced. We recapitulated how neuro-sex/ gender-facts are dependent on our contemporary his- torical and political context and we discussed some I. Dussauge (*) of the ethical and political consequences of neurosci- Center for Gender Research, University of Uppsala, entific knowledge production about sex/gender and Uppsala, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] sexuality. Not least, neuroGenderings explored the workings of neurosexism without dismissing neuro- A. Kaiser science altogether. Neurosexism is a term launched Center for Cognitive Science, Institute of Computer Science by psychologist Cordelia Fine [1], and it stands for and Social Research, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany the (mis)use of neuroscientific facts and factoids [2] e-mail: [email protected] to assert that women and men are categorically 212 I. Dussauge, A. Kaiser different by virtue of their brains, or to simply rehash methods but also in terminology. And because termi- available sex/gender stereotypes with the vocabulary nology is intrinsically intertwined with the object of of the brain. examination it is, to us, of primary relevance that we Like neuroGenderings, this special issue brings at- keep clarifying the notions of sex and gender in the tention to the imbalance within neuroscience between context of neuroscience. The editors and most of the a dominant neuroscience of sex/gender difference and authors represented here share the perspective that a less visible neuroscience of gender ambiguity and there does not exist a given, clear-cut distinction be- sex/gender similarities. The present publications also tween “sex” and “gender” (e.g. [6, 7]) and that what reflect the epistemic emergences coming from the culturally passes as sex is indeed already gender. In the empirical results of new brain imaging techniques such neurosciences too, it is becoming increasingly evident as fMRI, for instance the paths from raw data to sexed/ that the biological and social components of a gen- gendered brain images, in relation to the methods and dered brain function or structure cannot be separated. statistics mobilized during the process of investigation. Therefore feminist neuroscientists are still working to define an appropriate vocabulary for what is not in- separable but interlaced, not fixed but alterable. In the Related Critical Projects meantime we do not want to dismiss “sex” altogether (see also [8]), particularly since our research field is Of course, neuroGenderings does not stand alone. The inside the natural sciences or in interaction with them. recent years have been marked by attempts to define This is why we refer mostly to “sex/gender” [9] in this productive critical engagements with neuroscience. introduction. Especially two attempts have received quite some attention in neuroethical contexts: critical neurosci- ence [3] launched in the journal BioSocieties,and Generative Directions neuroskepticism [4] made visible, in print, in AJOB Neuroscience. The absence of feminist voices in these most visible However, the invisibility of gender—and other critical-ethical debates on neuroscience calls for dif- power orderings usually addressed in feminist studies, ferent simultaneous directions. The neuroGenderings such as sexuality or race—is striking in this ongoing encounters made visible the intellectual contours of establishment of critical engagements with the “neuro” the frontline critical research in the emerging field of in interdisciplinary settings. This is true even of the neuroscience of/and gender. Alongside with previous- scholarly events dominated by the humanities and ly published work (e.g. [1, 10–12]), the articles in the social sciences, such as the symposia organized by present special issue make three ongoing trends on the seminal ENSN. The lack of a feminist voice in that frontline salient: these critical initiatives is, in the long-term, hugely detrimental to the objectives of achieving a scholarly 1. The proposal of a feminist and gender sensitive counterweight to the threatening scenario of an unre- neuroscience flexively triumphant neuroscience. A newer and more A specifically feminist critical position is needed constructive alternative is the visionary “Neurocul- which conducts neuroscience on the basis of tures Manifesto” [5] which calls for critical feminist insights, perspectives and reflexivity from gender biocultural engagements with neuroscience and pro- studies and feminist theory. Feminist approaches, poses central tenets for that purpose. Pitts-Taylor's for instance from gender/queer studies or feminist Neurocultures Manifesto talks in many ways to the STS, are necessary for the implementation of scien- directions mapped out here. tifically sounder notions of sex/gender, sexuality and power in neuroscientific experiments. For instance, postmodern theories of sex/gender such as queer Sex and Gender theory have been deconstructing gender and have proposed theories of gender as performative for As an interdisciplinary research network, neuroGen- twenty years now [6]. Can gender-as-performative derings deals with a great diversity not only in be used in a neuroscientific experiment in order to Neuroscience and Sex/Gender 213 study gendered practices as embodied in the brain, for how gender science could engage more and what could such a neuroscientific experiment closely with biological notions of sex. look like? Moreover, what can we retain from the 2. The proposal of alternative accounts of the brain gender-studies based critics of a compulsory binary from outside the neurosciences. gender order in our analyses of sexually dimorphic Secondly, a more radical critical position is also aspects of the brain? Within this direction, a long- required which does not seek consensus, bridging term goal for feminist neuroscientists is to elaborate or communication between the social sciences and a new conceptual approach to the relation between the neurosciences with the purpose of improving sex/gender and the brain, one that could help to head the neurosciences. Rather, a position is crucially neuroscientists and gender theorists to an innovative needed now which retains the legitimacy to be interdisciplinary place, far away from social and critical of neuroscience’s cultural status, its under- biological determinisms but still engaging with the lying historical project, its financial advantage materiality of the brain. over social sciences, or its taking over of the In this issue, neurobiologist and gender studies objects of knowledge of the cultural and social scholar Deboleena Roy addresses neuroethics’ sciences. Perspectives presented in neuroGender- limited engagement with difference and proposes ings delineated such a feminist position which directions for a neuroscience informed by gender acknowledges and brings to the surface the polit- sciences. Roy argues that the question of differ- ical struggles and stakes of the neurosciences. The ence is a deeply ethical one. Roy calls for a direction offered by such a position is the produc- revalorisation of (neuro)biological complexity and tion of other goals, and other constructive-critical proposes that the neuroscientific studies of dif- standpoints about the human and about the brain, ference ought not