Gender as personality type?

[Taka]

I'm not sure what it means when people have said that "gender is nothing but a social construct". Could someone explain?

Does it mean that we identify with a gender because of the way people treat us socially?

basically that. a social construct is something which wouldn't exist unless that particular society made it up
some sociologists believe that all children are born similar and then molded by society, especially when it comes to gender

if you watch that episode i posted, you can see that woman who says that there is no difference at all between the male and female brain, and the reason kids grow up to believe that there are two different genders that tend to have different interests etc is only because of how they're treated by parents and other people in their environment

and as someone said, this is an invalidating thought, especially for transsexuals. if gender doesn't really exist in one's brain, but only in society, then how could anyone be a different gender than what they were treated as in childhood...

[suzifrommd]

basically that. a social construct is something which wouldn't exist unless that particular society made it up
...
if gender doesn't really exist in one's brain, but only in society, then how could anyone be a different gender than what they were treated as in childhood.

Thank you Taka and Edge. Now I feel like I can be a full-fledged member of this conversation.

So what if gender *is* a social construct. (I don't think so, but stay with me).

That shouldn't change how we treat transgendered folk. Unless the whole lot of us are lying, there is something distressing us. It doesn't matter whether it's inate, learned or socially constructed, we're unhappy, and we're real, and that makes our experiences real and valid. I challenge anyone who says my gender angst isn't real (or yours, or anyone's) to look into my brain and prove it's not there.

Basic human RESPECT dictates that even those saying there's no such thing as gender treat our concerns as valid, and ask us what the remedies might be.

[Edge]

I'm not sure I follow the reasoning there. Wouldn't the person's personality be such that it already exhibits post-change attributes? Otherwise why the need to physically change anything in the first place if not to allow for an environment better able to express that which is already there? It seems a bit counter-intuitive to me that one would change the mind to match the body rather than the other way around.

I agree.
I'm really mad right now and probably shouldn't be talking until I calm down.
Neuroplasticity refers to synapses and gender is not learned behaviour. If it was, I would be fine being female seeing as I wasn't raised with gender roles and didn't even know they still existed until I started looking into this trans thing. I still can't understand how anyone can believe in them.

[wendy]

I agree.
I'm really mad right now and probably shouldn't be talking until I calm down.
Neuroplasticity refers to synapses and gender is not learned behaviour. If it was, I would be fine being female seeing as I wasn't raised with gender roles and didn't even know they still existed until I started looking into this trans thing. I still can't understand how anyone can believe in them.

Synapses change until we die.  We can not learn without creation of new synapses.  In fact being happy or sad are not real.  Someone takes a pencil and I go ballistic.  Then they give me back pencil and I am happy.  Pencil had no relevance to my life yet I was angry!  Why?  Because I let it bother me.

Gender and autism are hard wired.  We can not change who we are but we can change our responses by learning new behaviors.  New behaviors are changes in our brains and our brains are malleable.

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Umm... why? Society is a collection of individuals. It changes constantly. The "rules" change dependant on where you are, when you are, what people think they know, what they don't know... if no one ever broke the "rules" and did anything different, we'd still all be swinging through the trees in Africa, picking flies off each others' butts. Maybe sometimes, society has to follow "our" rules in order to get anywhere.

I have defended people and put my career on line when I did not agree with a decision by senior management.  Sometimes it worked and sometimes I got to look for another job.  I am glad a few people had backbones of steel in trans comminity.  I do not.  "Our" rules mean nothing unless we are willing to lose all and we "bite".

Not sure I'd agree with that, at least from a personal viewpoint. Years of being treated like a man, or having male stereotypes applied to me has made me neither act more like, think more like, feel more like, or want to be more like one. And, to be honest, the reverse also holds true. I guess that's just something to do with my own mind, and probably everyone is different, and have different levels of integration of, and association with their personality as it relates to the world around it, be that social or biological.

Or maybe I just see personality as something different to most folks. Which wouldn't surprise me, I can be weird that way. I see the brain and the mind as two different things. Probably we're just using the same word to describe two different things. In which case, it's apples and oranges... so forget everything I just said.

I have never felt like a man and I no longer consider myself a man.  However I do not socialize with women so that I do not know how they feel.  I only know how I feel.  I discussed my feelings with one cismale and he wrote me on internet next morning, "I am no longer your friend."  My synapses have changed.  Community told me that happens.  I did not believe them.

I see mind as "spirit".  I see brain and spirit (mind?) as two distinct entities.  My brain is a "drama queen" that will die and needs to feel useful.  My spirit is immortal and my brain serves my spirit.  I have lost ability to "turn my brain off".  My brain runs at full tilt in middle of night.  I can not sleep.  I argue constantly with myself.  I find no peace or solution.

I am Pisces and I swim upstream.  I have read of salmon changing their gender while swimming upstream.
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https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=18454;type=avatar

Seph that avatar is so cute!

[foosnark]

I agree with AG on this.  I don't see why the *cause* or *source* of gender identity would invalidate anything, or make anyone angry.

I don't believe humans have any sense of who they are, any consciousness, any idea that their minds and bodies are separate from the rest of the universe at birth.  It develops in the first weeks of life, and continues to develop more slowly and subtly over the next months, years, even decades.  And that includes gender identity.

If you never knew there was a difference between male and female, how could you have a sense of being one (or both, or neither)?

None of this, *none* of it, means that a person won't grow up being told they are a girl but feeling the entire time that they are not; it does *not* say those feelings are wrong or mistaken or should be overridden by other people.

"Gender is a social construct" does not mean that society gets to decide for you who you are.  It will *try*, but it can be wrong.

Imagine if society took astrology very, very seriously.  Imagine it believed and taught that your personality is determined by your birth month.  Imagine it discriminated against people differently based on their sign, and expected each sign to behave a certain way.  Most people just accept this without question, but there are some people born in mid-November who feel like an Aquarius, and other people who don't feel like the whole system fits them at all.  Do these beliefs actually change who you are as a person?  No! (*)  But you cannot be said to have an "astrological sign identity" as an Aquarius if people hadn't invented astrology and perpetuated the belief in it.

(*) conformity is a strong force, and there is some influence to perform as the sign/gender you are expected to, and that *will* change you one way or another -- whether it means you fake it, hide who you are, rebel against it, just feel the stress of it, are attacked and discriminated against because of it, or simply find society absurd for trying to force it on you.

[Edge]

Imagine if society took astrology very, very seriously.

lol For some reason, I'm reminded of this:

[Pica Pica]

Class and national identity are also social constructs, it doesn't make them invalid.

[wendy]

Imagine if society took astrology very, very seriously.  Imagine it believed and taught that your personality is determined by your birth month.  Imagine it discriminated against people differently based on their sign, and expected each sign to behave a certain way.  Most people just accept this without question, but there are some people born in mid-November who feel like an Aquarius, and other people who don't feel like the whole system fits them at all.  Do these beliefs actually change who you are as a person?  No! (*)  But you cannot be said to have an "astrological sign identity" as an Aquarius if people hadn't invented astrology and perpetuated the belief in it.

(*) conformity is a strong force, and there is some influence to perform as the sign/gender you are expected to, and that *will* change you one way or another -- whether it means you fake it, hide who you are, rebel against it, just feel the stress of it, are attacked and discriminated against because of it, or simply find society absurd for trying to force it on you.

What do you mean "if"?  I can not get theme song of Hair out of my head.  I keep singing Aquarius.

I do agree we are trained to conform to societal pressures and it contributes to some in community having difficulty accepting their own gender variations.

[aleon515]

I agree that hormones, social interaction, brain structures all influence what we call gender.  If a female were to take testosterone and still present female, it would influence personality type.   Therefore our gender influences our personality type.  If a female lives as a man for one year in our society it will influence "his" personality even if "he" remains what we call feminine.
Hormones influence our personality.

They might but then we know there is much more to it than that. If one were to take hormones wouldn't that be the same as a transfemale (MAAB) who has testerone in the veins but is not, in fact, really male. It will certainly have an effect, I wouldn't deny that.

Living as the opposite gender would change you. But it wouldn't make you that gender. Females have lived as male more than once in history. I don't know if they felt they were finally doing what they should be doing. (Joan of Arc comes to mind).

BTW, I don't think that IF gender were a social construct it would really invalidate it. Social class as Pica mentioned has potentially life altering effects (determines how you are born and even if you get enough to eat, in some cases). Race is another one, some people do not really believe there are any real racial differences of any consequences. But no one says it has no effect.

--Jay Jay

[DrillQuip]

ROFL! Edge I love the video. If I was an out atheist with my family I'd be posting that all over my fb.

~~

I think at this point it might be a good idea to compare gender to personality types again. I have read from some magazine articles from Time that an introverted person can be the way they are because of physical factors (such as heart disease causing someone to tire out easily and then becoming more reclusive as a way of dealing with this physical issue)

IF the above is true, would it not be appropriate to expect some people who have a lot of testosterone and energy to burn to be more masculine? And thus their personality type, if you will, to be a masculine one overall?

There's something about thinking of things this way that urks me a bit but I can't put my finger on it. If I take this route of thinking it seems like the concept of 'personality' just describes what someone turns out like because of solely physical factors. Like it's just a result of dealing with the way your body functions. But if I accept a personality type like introverted or extroverted as simply a description of someone who behaves a certain way, regardless of the cause, then is it not appropriate to think of gender in a similar way?

I hope that made sense. Let me know if I sound confusing. I'm really tired right now.

[Edge]

At the moment, we don't really know how much of our personalities are caused by which factors. We are continuously learning more though and it is very fascinating.
My main issue with gender roles is that they make about as much sense to me as homeopathy and I hold them in the same regard.
To be honest, I used to believe in a sort of gender roles. Aggressive and assertive females are very common in mythology not to mention various famous historical figures. However, I realized that is also silly since there are plenty of males who are just as aggressive. I recently learned that, apparently, the current stereotypes suggest the opposite. That blows my mind. I mean, seriously, how?

[wendy]

IF the above is true, would it not be appropriate to expect some people who have a lot of testosterone and energy to burn to be more masculine? And thus their personality type, if you will, to be a masculine one overall?

There's something about thinking of things this way that urks me a bit but I can't put my finger on it. If I take this route of thinking it seems like the concept of 'personality' just describes what someone turns out like because of solely physical factors. Like it's just a result of dealing with the way your body functions. But if I accept a personality type like introverted or extroverted as simply a description of someone who behaves a certain way, regardless of the cause, then is it not appropriate to think of gender in a similar way?

I hope that made sense. Let me know if I sound confusing. I'm really tired right now.

Physical features are calling card for gender and appropriate hormones amplify those features.  If a genetic woman exhibits behavior that might be construed as masculine then she would be labeled a masculine female.  Her gender would still be female but her personality would be masculine.

Behavior tends to dictate a personality; however a physical attribute can cause you to modify your behavior.