fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3945 ]

[ SECRET POST #3945 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3945 ⌋

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nayrt but I have a huge problem with people saying "gender is a social construct" and saying it is defined by society's definition of man and woman. That really does mean that if you're biologically female and don't like dresses and prefer sports to dolls, your actual gender is now male. This is bullshit.

I agree that is bullshit as described. I think that our social conceptions about gender are *much* *much* *much* more complicated than that, first of all, and have much more variation and breadth than your account of them would have.

And also I would say just in general - I don't think there's ever a point where someone can externally define your identity. There's never a point where someone can say "your identity lines up better as a man than a woman, therefore you're a man." it doesn't make sense to talk in those terms. because existence precedes essence - your identity as a person, although understood and defined partly and unavoidably in socially defined terms, is still in some sense prior to those social constructions that are placed on top of it.

But gender IS sex until the moment you feel for you, it isn't.

Yes, I think this is the fundamental differentiating point between our two views. And I just fundamentally disagree. It seems to me that we can clearly and usefully talk about the way that gender exists as a social construct, the same way we can with any other social construct. And we can talk about how that impinges on and shapes our conception of our identity, again, the same way we can with any other social construct.

Gender as social construct is a lot deeper and more complicated than "girls like dolls, boys like sports." It's not just a collection of stereotypes. It can include things as seemingly natural as how we move our bodies and how we experience our emotions.

A lot of cisgender people don't fit into certain gender stereotypes but still have a gender identity that matches their biological sex. Women who love sports and hate cooking, men who hate sports and love cooking; they don't feel any less innately female or male for that, though they may have gotten external pressure to behave in more gender-conforming ways.

I don't want to speak for all trans people, because we're not all the same, and I'm not non-binary myself. But for me, it was partly about feeling like the category "woman" just did not fit me, even in areas where my preferences are culturally seen as feminine. I like to cook and I hate sports, but "woman" is something I never quite felt I was. It's hard to explain, because it's about a kind of deep self-perception that maybe a lot of languages don't have readily available words for, because language is a part of culture and most cultures still assume that people are simply and unproblematically female or male.

The other part of my gender identity is about my experience of my own body. I'm not comfortable in the body I was born in, which has female biology. I want, and would be comfortable in, a body with a penis and no breasts or vagina. Not every trans person feels the same level of dysphoria, but many of us feel some.

My point, I guess, is first of all that the social construction of gender isn't as shallow as you're making it sound, second that people don't decide they're trans or nonbinary just because they don't fit into a few gender stereotypes, and third that people's explanations of how they know they're trans or nonbinary can often sound awkward or even fake/unconvincing to cisgender people, because they don't know how it feels and it's very very hard to explain well.

My main issue with "gender is a social construct" is that while, as far as I know, all cultures recognize both male and female (and sometimes additional options), they do not share the same social constructs of what it means to be male or female. How men and women are expected to think and look and behave and what they do and take interest in vary a great deal between different cultures and has changed a great deal over time. Pink is not the universal girly color. Even cultures that currently think pink = girly didn't always think that.

I realize that it's probably assumed that your gender is a construct of the society you live in or grew up in, not of someone else's society, but since there's no one socially constructed way to be a man or woman that's true for everyone, that means what kinds of things you are into doesn't go very far towards representing your gender identity in any real way. I don't really know how to explain, but what I mean is that while other people will form opinions about you and your gender based on how you behave, opinions influenced by their cultural upbringing and stereotypes, those opinions do not dictate your gender.

Responding to the person you responded do, I don't think gender identity is separate from personal identity in that gender is constructed for you by society in a way that your personal identity is not. I think gender is part of personal identity and is influenced by your social context but also an inherent part of your identity. I agree with the person in this thread who said gender is in some way prior to those social constructs. (I also think parts of your identity that are not about gender are both inherent to you and influenced by society - e.g. think about how we might expect certain personalities, modes of behavior, and lifestyles based on what people do for a living.)

while, as far as I know, all cultures recognize both male and female (and sometimes additional options), they do not share the same social constructs of what it means to be male or female.

I agree, and this is a central part of what I mean when I talk about gender being a social construct, and I think a central part of what most people mean when they talk about it. It's a socially determined construct which means that it varies enormously from society to society and even within societies.

And I wouldn't necessarily talk about your personal gender identity being constructed for you by society. Rather, I would say that you have some kind of being, and that your self-understanding of that identity, your expression of that identity, your definition of that identity, all of those things, are influenced by and defined against the social construct that is gender.

It's a little like how language works. Language is something that's fundamentally a learned social convention - words don't really have any intrinsic meaning outside of the meaning that we construct for them. At the same time, those social constructs have an existence outside of any particular individual member of society, and for all that they're learned social constructs, they also provide fundamentally important tools for organizing, defining, and communicating our experiences and identities. We can talk usefully about words, and what they mean to us, and how we use them, and how we identify with them, even while we also know that all those meanings are in some sense socially defined. Maybe that doesn't make sense as an analogy, idk. But that's kind of how I feel about it.

>>My main issue with "gender is a social construct" is that while, as far as I know, all cultures recognize both male and female (and sometimes additional options), they do not share the same social constructs of what it means to be male or female. How men and women are expected to think and look and behave and what they do and take interest in vary a great deal between different cultures and has changed a great deal over time. <<

This is actually exactly what "social construct" means - that things which might seem universal/natural/inherent are highly variable and determined by time and place and culture. HOWEVER, social constructs are also real/powerful social forces within the cultures where they are operating.

I've been trying for a long time to work on an analogy based on language. The human *has a whole bunch of important chunks* that are devoted to learning language, will learn any language it is exposed to during the right developmental timeframe, will make a language out of almost nothing if it has the chance (see the history of Nicaraguan Sign Language) - but the actual words for (almost) everything in every language are ultimately arbitrary. There's nothing about a tree that makes the sound "tree" any more or less suited to it than the sound "arbor" or whatever. But your brain wants to have a language to work with, and it will develop in the context of whatever language it gets. But THEN - every generation also reacts to and modifies the language it inherits, creates new slang and breaks old rules.

With gender, I think, there is a similar thing happening - the brain wants some widgets for at least two categories, and every culture has different/overlapping tool boxes for what gender roles go where - but then people also have things they want to express that the inherited language/gender roles/social construct toolkit is inadequate for, so they break things and try new things. And with gender identity in particularly, you have the complication of the male/female divide. And some people just have a very deeply felt personal intuition - they've got an immoveable brain widget - that says 'this is the toolkit I am/want/need to start with,' even if they don't use every tool in that box, even if they aren't masculine or feminine and end up using those tools in creative and transgressive ways. There was an instinct to work with/against/through one of the available identities, an instinct just as strong as the one that pushes babies to learn language, but for social navigation instead.

I don't think most people's gender identity would change all that much if you went back in time, kidnapped them as babies, and plunked them down in a culture (whether in a different place or time) with different social constructs of gender and made them grow up in that culture. That is, people who identify as cis male or female would still likely grow up to identify as male or female even if expectations of male and female behavior were different than in the culture you took them from. (They may not like everything about being a man or a woman in that culture or be willing to meet all expectations, but that's not the same thing as not identifying as either of those genders.) People who would otherwise identify as trans or non-binary may not publicly do so if it would not be acceptable or if there is no concept of such a thing, but would probably still feel like something didn't fit with regards to the male or female gender society assigned them, even if what it means to be male or female is very different in this society. If this culture has a third gender or some other way of identifying/expressing oneself that is not strictly male or female, they may go for that (possibly even along with a few people who would otherwise identify as cis). I would not see this as a change in gender but rather in terminology. You're going to use whatever category available in your culture that feels like the best fit for you. The categories and all their associated concepts and stereotypes are social constructs, but the thing you're trying to find a "fit" for with them is not. (I think this is what you are trying to say about the brain widgets?)

I am not unconvinced that the internal thing we try to fit into socially constructed gender categories isn't what gender actually *is* - or at least isn't equally as important as the socially constructed categories, meaning that gender is not wholly a social construct but rather... I guess the interface between an inherent, internal thing and socially constructed categorizes, which we have no choice but to use in some way because we need things that are commonly understood for, as you said, social navigation.

I keep thinking of how there were ideas - I think in the 60s or 70s - that basically amounted to "gender is socially constructed... therefore gender can be arbitrarily assigned and it's all a matter of how you raise the kid" and my knee-jerk reaction to people declaring gender is a social construct is to wonder whether this is what they mean, rather than it's the categories people use for social navigation that are the constructs.

I think of that man from Canada - can't remember his name - who had his penis burned off during a botched circumcision as a baby and his parents were told by some psychologist or someone that it would be best if they raised him as a girl and it would totally work out fine because what makes us girls and boys is how we are raised. Despite years of being socialized as a girl (with a degree of intention that probably went well beyond the kind of socialization most cis girls experience) and, I think, hormone treatments also, he didn't feel comfortable as a girl and started identifying as a boy once he learned the truth. It's not that his biological sex won out, but that there was an internal thing that told him that "girl" just wasn't the right fit (and that would probably remain true if you dropped him down in another culture). The idea that he could be made into a girl didn't work, and in fact was kind of a disaster.

There was also that case in Michigan where adoptive parents sued the state because their adopted child had been born with hermaphroditic features or ambiguous genitalia or something like that and had been operated on as an infant (while still in state care) to create a more feminine-looking body but the child grew and at puberty stated identifying as male.

Humans are not blank slates onto which any gender identity can be applied with equal success. We should be mindful not to imply that this is so when we say "gender is socially constructed." You can raise a child as a particular gender, but it probably won't stick very well if it doesn't fit their internal thing. You can brainwash someone into thinking a socially constructed gender category is a great fit for their internal thing when it really isn't, but that's not society constructing the person's gender, that's creating a wall between that internal thing and the conscious mind. In other words, gender is socially constructed in that society creates categories and assigns them meaning, but "gender is socially constructed... therefore gender can be arbitrarily assigned and it's all a matter of how you raise the kid" is not how gender-as-social-construct works and isn't going to end well.

*is it just me or is "gender re-assignment surgery" kind of a weird term since it alters the outward appearance of biological sex and may be necessary for official recognition of a gender identity other than what was assigned at birth, but it does not actually re-assign the person's gender identity, which was already established, hence the desire to have surgery. I guess it's the official recognition part people are thinking of when they mean gender has been re-assigned.

I am not unconvinced that the internal thing we try to fit into socially constructed gender categories isn't what gender actually *is* - or at least isn't equally as important as the socially constructed categories, meaning that gender is not wholly a social construct but rather... I guess the interface between an inherent, internal thing and socially constructed categorizes, which we have no choice but to use in some way because we need things that are commonly understood for, as you said, social navigation.

NAYRT (although I think I share broadly similar views to AYRT) and I think i would say that what you are talking about here is what I would think of as gender identity, as distinct from gender as a construct.

If you like the language analogy, you could possibly say that the relationship between gender identity and gender is a bit like the relationship between meaning and words.

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[ SECRET POST #3945 ]

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