"The Sad Loss of Gender"

At the end of the 20th century, the modern myth of sexual equality has finally triumphed completely over the complementarity of gender, in which the plurality of cultures - distinct ways of living, dying and suffering - was rooted. The reign of vernacular gender marked a profoundly different mode of existence than what prevails under what I call the regime of economic sex. They are male/female dualities of a very different kind: Economic sex is the duality of one plus one, creating a coupling of exactly the same kind; gender is the duality of two parts that make a whole which is unique, novel, nonduplicable.

By "economic sex" I mean the duality that stretches toward the illusory goal of economic, political, legal and social equality. Male and female are neutered economic agents, stripped of any quality other than the functions of consumer and worker.

By "complementary gender" I mean the eminently local and time-bound duality that sets off men and women under circumstances that prevent them from saying, doing, desiring, or perceiving "the same thing." Together they create a whole which cannot be reduced to the sum of equal, merely interchangeable parts; a whole made of two hands, each of a different nature. To me, the fetus is a symbol of the corruption of hope, just as the medicalization of dying is the corruption of agony. Hope is transformed into expectation - the awaited results of technological intervention.

Now, with new medical technologies, the embryo becomes a "fetus"; the "notyet" loses its mystery as we see it in the sonogram. It becomes another patient, another disconnected part of a way of being to be managed. To me, the fetus is a symbol of the corruption of hope, just as the medicalization of dying is the corruption of agony. Hope is transformed into expectation - the awaited results of technological intervention.

The fetus thus serves as a new emblem of what the future will be. Every moment of existence, since it is all encompassed by the "system, " is a profaned domain open to intervention.
The final step of "systems thinking" is the elimination of time itself. With real-time computers that are never shut down, all potentiality will be subject to management, choice, selection and intervention. The future will hold no surprises because it will be part of the present.

Ivan Illich,

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