I don't agree with "gender is a social construct"

[Newfie]

Asche, that's actually something I was going to talk about in a follow-up post, but then deleted it because I found myself having to write an apology at the end

Basically, you can separate 'gender' into two things: the biological phenomenon, and our classification of people based on that gender phenomenon. That classification (i.e., our understanding of genders) necessarily is a social construct because we're the ones who created the classification. Male, female, bigender, agender, neutrois, third-gender, etc. are all names we applied to the biological phenomenon - there's nothing that we know of in the biology that says that they are distinct to the point where they are complementary sets of people.

For example, an agender individual could identify strongly with being agender. But what about the agender individual who, if they had to choose, would say they identify more with female than male? Or who might identify slightly with bigender? I think we can all agree that the biological phenomenon creates a spectrum - there's no one way to be agender, just like there's no one way to be a trans woman. So why treat our classifications as an absolute in the natural world?

And I suppose I'll add the clarification that caused me to delete the original post: I am in no way denying anyone's identity, much less my own.

[JMJW]

Yeahhhh, a few things:

1) I wouldn't take TERFists to represent feminism.

I didn't. Which is why I called them TERFS and not just feminists. First post was about feminists, second was about TERFS.

However: It is apparent that both terfs and most non terf feminists believe gender is just a social construct, constructed in a patriarchy that oppresses women and privileges men by marginalizing women. TERFS just take the next short move of saying transwomen too are patriarchal oppressors by claiming the very title and identity of "woman" which is viewed as the ultimate in marginalization and invasiveness. Which if you already believe in the two underlying axioms, isn't that radical of a conclusion.

For example, rather than attacking people for being 'male,'

I didn't say that. I said and I quote:

2)To attack masculinity as we know it, when "performed" (their word) by straight cis males. a form of masculinity they consider "toxic". 

Attacking the current masculinity of straight cis males is not the same as attacking them for being male.

2) What are these behaviors that are hormonally and anatomically induced?

The kind of behavioural changes transwomen report when going on E, the kind transmen report when going on T. They vary with the individual. As for anatomical, you have to abandon the idea of feminized brains in transwomen and masculinized brains in transmen to abandon the idea of anatomical influence on behaviour. 

Isn't that an even worst argument against trans people?

Nope.

3) There is a logical fallacy here: TERF might use that argument to support their views, but those arguments don't necessitate those views. Hence there being radical feminists who are not TERFists. The implication that if you believe gender is a social construct then you support TERFism is absolutely incorrect.

You're making implications out of statements I didn't make.

[Kylo]

This is probably the best place to post this, but if there's somewhere better, please move it.

This has been bothering me for a bit now. When other trans people say gender is a social construct, I guess I don't really get it. Gender roles, yes, are a social construct. But gender in itself? I don't think so... because if gender was a social construct, it almost makes it sound like we're choosing to be trans, which isn't the case. And then cis people go ahead and say, "Well, if gender is a social construct, then why do you feel the need to conform yourself to said constructs because your birth sex doesn't match them?" and then they accuse us of trying to enforce gender roles. It bugs me, because I could care less about gender roles, I just wish I was born in a male body. (And yes, I understand 'born in the wrong body' doesn't apply to everyone, but it does apply to me.)

I feel like what makes the most sense is that our brains were hardwired this way before birth, and I'm pretty sure estrogen/testosterone levels have a play in gender identity as well.

If gender was a social construct all of us could think ourselves out of being trans right now by telling ourselves it's just a silly social construct we can ditch. Now I'd love to be able to do that and not have to transition. But I can't, because postmodern ideas about gender and the body don't account at all for the fact that some aspects of gender are demonstrably innate.

How is gender a social construct? I just can't wrap my head around the concept.

I'd like to see a discussion on this. Do you think gender is a social construct? Why or why not?

It's a social construct in the minds of people who want to believe it is a solely a social construct and want to ignore that there are cases, many cases, of people who need to express their innate gender and often die trying. They will happily ignore the cases in which socialization of a person as a particular gender failed spectacularly, because they had an innate one that could not be suppressed.

Some aspects of gender expression are socially constructed yes. But by no means all. Trans people are pretty much proof that there is something deeper than "nurture" at work in gender.

[Reptillian]

I would say that there's biological component to gender as well as social component to gender. My evidence? You have transgender individuals, cis-by-default individuals, and strongly feeling cis people along with my other evidence which is people having different definitions of gender. There's also brain researches, but at the moment, mosaic model is gaining ground while male/female binary is losing ground, but male/female binary model still is the best model at the moment. As far as behaviors goes, that's a lot more controversial since gender similarities hypothesis is just as great as the gender difference hypothesis since conclusions is entirely dependent on the method you apply to find the degree of differences between the binary gender. The strongest evidence regarding behaviors involves 23+ million samples, and it has concluded there are very little difference between males and females, and I have yet to see any challenges to the study. All of those support the idea that gender has a social, and biological component.

Also, I am cis-by-default or cis-genderless or even agender with cis-identity, but my reason to why I identify that way has nothing to do with socialization or feelings or anything, it mainly has to do with the least assumption approach which I find works when it applied to me. It's not an approach that works for everybody. In fact, every approach to identity is problematic. Think of every approach and question them, you'll see what I mean. Furthermore, that only shows that gender has a lot to do with social, and biological component seeing as people have different definitions of gender and different approach to identity.

However, as a thought experiment, if you take away the roles, presentations, and stereotypes, what is gender? It's not sex - that's clearly distinct. Is it brain chemistry? Hormone levels? Is gender simply a physical phenomenon? Can we measure it? If we could map the parts of the brain and say, "okay, if you have this brain you fall into this type of transgender category, and this type of brain you're in this category, and this type of brain you're cis" would you feel comfortable denying someone's identity who didn't fall into their expected category?

You will still have people who will identify as trans under hypothetical egalitarian earth. Brain-body map has a very powerful influence on one's identity.

[Stevie]

 We are just like other women we tend to conform to the roles society has evolved for us. We act like women because we are women.

[Newfie]

You will still have people who will identify as trans under hypothetical egalitarian earth. Brain-body map has a very powerful influence on one's identity.

I feel that you misunderstood my thought experiment. I never said we wouldn't have trans people if gender roles, presentations, and stereotypes were eliminated, just that the categories we created are necessarily social constructs. After all, we created them. We don't have a way of deterministically mapping people to genders, and even if we could map everything that causes the biological phenomenon of transgender, our grouping of people into categories would still be subjective.

[Dee Marshall]

I feel that you misunderstood my thought experiment. I never said we wouldn't have trans people if gender roles, presentations, and stereotypes were eliminated, just that the categories we created are necessarily social constructs. After all, we created them. We don't have a way of deterministically mapping people to genders, and even if we could map everything that causes the biological phenomenon of transgender, our grouping of people into categories would still be subjective.

I don't disagree with your argument, but gender isn't special. All categorisation is like that. Every distinction humans make is arbitrary with grey areas at the edges. Categorizing is how we attempt to make sense of the world but it's never a perfect map.

[Gemini]

I'm inclined to say, "you don't have to agree that 'gender is a social construct'."  Of course, you don't have to agree that the Earth revolves around the sun, either.  But people who spend large chunks of their lives to studying either tend to agree with those statements.

The thing is, most of the things we talk about are social constructs.  E.g., languages are social constructs. 

Much of the structure of human language is constrained by biology. Stephen Pinker has a number of books about how the cognitive revolution changed our understanding of language (and many other aspects of human behavior, including gender), and I think it's apparent that looking at something like this as being either a social construct or biological is naive. As with language, some aspects of gender are a social construct, others aren't.

It works the same way with sexual orientation. There is a certain extent to which socialization determines the kind of features we find attractive; at the same time, an androphile is attracted to men because of biology, and this is not a social construct.

So with gender, yeah, many expectations about gender expression and the roles that men and women play are culture-dependent and pretty arbitrary, but many scientists today believe that gender identities themselves are ultimately determined by biology.

[Reptillian]

No one is willing to bring up the point of how gender and sexual orientation is relative to each individuals except myself... And yes, people have different definitions of gender, and sexual orientation, and to a extent those influence their identities.

[Asche]

Stephen Pinker has a number of books about how the cognitive revolution changed our understanding of language (and many other aspects of human behavior, including gender), and I think it's apparent that looking at something like this as being either a social construct or biological is naive.

I would be leery of regarding Stephen Pinker as an authority.  I'm sure some of what he writes is correct, but I've read some stuff of his where what he said was so far off from what most people in the field say that I couldn't take him seriously.  Unfortunately, he simply gives what he thinks is the right answer and you either believe it because he says so or you write him off.

So with gender, yeah, many expectations about gender expression and the roles that men and women play are culture-dependent and pretty arbitrary, but many scientists today believe that gender identities themselves are ultimately determined by biology.

Given the state of the field and the enormous difficulty of avoiding being led astray by one's socially ingrained prejudices and assumptions, I wouldn't take any of "what scientists believe" too seriously.  The history if the field is littered with cultural prejudices presented as scientific fact.

[Newfie]

I don't disagree with your argument, but gender isn't special. All categorisation is like that. Every distinction humans make is arbitrary with grey areas at the edges. Categorizing is how we attempt to make sense of the world but it's never a perfect map.

I don't disagree necessarly, but that's why in the original post I drew the distinction at complementary sets for categorization. As it stands, our understanding of gender identities overlaps significantly. To take an extreme case in the other direction, we can categorize geometrical shapes by the number of points they have - they are complementary sets.

I say that gender is a social construct in particular because it seems to be almost entirely gray area. What we do as a society is pick apart those gray areas and classify them, but it's extremely subjective where we draw the boundaries.

To bring it back to the biology, there are quite a few transgender people who visit this site. If you looked at our brains, you'd see we each look very different. If we limit our scope to the theoretical gender markers, we'd expect to still have different brains. If you looked between groups within a gender classification we'd expect that they'll be different, and if you compare between gender classifications, we'd expect that they'd be different. They'll have similarities too, of course, given a large enough sample size. But what are the chances that our gender classifications actually match the closeness of brain composition, much less with enough separation for them to be distinct? If you could show that it did, you'd win a Nobel prize in medicine, and possibly the peace prize as well.

[Kylo]

And yet some areas of gender are absolutely concrete and every human society knows it. Biological women for example are the only gender who can successfully gestate and birth children. There is no grey area here. Society knows you typically must have a male and a female with working parts to create offspring. Hasn't been a grey area there for millions of years. In the future there might be biological male birth or artificial wombs or same sex couples routinely having kids by medical intervention or whatever but for now, this is realistic.

Most of the traditional cultural constructs surrounding gender are informed by biology and human generalizations of biology. The term gender itself is a generalization. People generalize stuff because it's been efficient for them to do so in the past I guess.

[Newfie]

And yet some areas of gender are absolutely concrete and every human society knows it. Biological women for example are the only gender who can successfully gestate and birth children. There is no grey area here. Society knows you typically must have a male and a female with working parts to create offspring. Hasn't been a grey area there for millions of years. In the future there might be biological male birth or artificial wombs or same sex couples routinely having kids by medical intervention or whatever but for now, this is realistic.

Most of the traditional cultural constructs surrounding gender are informed by biology and human generalizations of biology. The term gender itself is a generalization. People generalize stuff because it's been efficient for them to do so in the past I guess.

Um... are you sure you know what the word 'gender' means? I ask because the ability to have children is entirely irrelevant. Also, that was pretty offensive, as you just basically denied many of our genders on the basis of our genitals.

[MisterQueer]

This was very interesting to read so far! It's nice to see in-depth discussions and explanations from both sides of the debate.

[RobynD]

And yet some areas of gender are absolutely concrete and every human society knows it. Biological women for example are the only gender who can successfully gestate and birth children. There is no grey area here. Society knows you typically must have a male and a female with working parts to create offspring. Hasn't been a grey area there for millions of years. In the future there might be biological male birth or artificial wombs or same sex couples routinely having kids by medical intervention or whatever but for now, this is realistic.

Most of the traditional cultural constructs surrounding gender are informed by biology and human generalizations of biology. The term gender itself is a generalization. People generalize stuff because it's been efficient for them to do so in the past I guess.

Gender and biological sex are very different things. An assignment is made and pink or blue onesies are purchased after the doctor says " Congrats Amy you have a baby girl " or via the ultrasound before hand, because that is all people have to assign from.

Imagine a world where everything is gender neutral until Amy's baby has the opportunity to begin expressing himself/herself. Either gender may result, or some place on the spectrum.

[SadieBlake]

This has been bothering me for a bit now. When other trans people say gender is a social construct, I guess I don't really get it. Gender roles, yes, are a social construct. But gender in itself?
....
I feel like what makes the most sense is that our brains were hardwired this way before birth, and I'm pretty sure estrogen/testosterone levels have a play in gender identity as well.

How is gender a social construct? I just can't wrap my head around the concept.

I'm sure I don't see it as a 'debate' per se because that sets up the whole 'who's right' thing.

The way I first heard the distinctions expressed, 20 years ago btw, was:

Gender is not the same as biological sex. I still believe this and it's my way of thinking about all aspects of gender, social roles, visual and other expression etc.

So I think you're sort of misstating the concept as I understand it. Both gender and biological sex identity have a lot of complexities and we've (IMO) come a long way in not conflating the myriad aspects. However they are still conflated in so many ways:

MTFs may physically pass and yet get clocked for any variety of expression, habitual assumption of male privilege etc etc etc. There's a lot of re-learning that goes into successfully passing which is mostly about gender-roles and gender-expression.

'Gender' as a concept therefor to me bridges roles, brain wiring .... a lot of things, most of which are yes, social constructs.

Biological sex seems more straightforward, albeit certainly not black and white.

As far as brain wiring, as far as I know that's all set in-utero. These were at first very unpopular studies and yet follow-on science seems to bear out the initial findings. I think most agree our brains respond to hormone levels - mine certainly has, however the innate wiring as far as I know isn't affected. That said, the brain is a hugely mutable system so saying anything with certainty ain't easy.

How I experience this is complex and yet simple. I'm a classic late-onset and learned a LOT of male behaviors to pass as male, now I'm un-learning those ... well have been for 20 years now.