I agree, I am taking this way out of the original context, but I think the joke is maybe a straw breaking the camel’s back here. I think Julia Serano’s article communicates this well enough:
If one more person tells me that “all gender is performance” I think I am going to strangle them. What’s most annoying about that sound-bite is how it is often recited in a somewhat snooty “I-took-a-gender-studies-class-and-you-didn’t” sort of way, which is ironic given the way that phrase dumbs down gender. It is a crass oversimplification that is as ridiculous as saying all gender is genitals, all gender is chromosomes, or all gender is socialization.
She’s frustrated, I’m frustrated. There is frustration that is generated by the “gender is just a social construct”. The joke is literally about how the dumb cis people really just need an hour long lecture from an academic on how gender is actually just a social construct. I can’t think of a better example of this condescending and ironically confidently-incorrect attitude.
Maybe I think too much, but I guess my whole point is that people are not thinking enough. When they say gender is just a social construct they may not be familiar with gender theory or understand the nuances, and maybe stamping out biological essentialism is worth the oversimplifying, but there is something that feels wrong to me about penalizing a trans person challenging a view that invalidates their gender as an arbitrary fiction. I understand the intentions are not to be invalidating, and that most people don’t understand the consequences of social constructionism, but that’s exactly why I’m raising the problems and challenging it.
To your point I could have done a much better job to not be confused with taking a biological essentialist view, but I think anyone who actually parses what I said and reads the articles I linked to will understand I am not endorsing biological essentialism. Still, that maybe is too high of a bar, and it would have been better if I did more to anticipate this knee-jerk reaction to my challenge. It’s always good to make sure you are easy to understand, and this is admittedly a mea culpa because I was rushing and didn’t have much time, so I wrote a much shorter comment and linked to articles to cover the extra ground for me (which was clearly not adequate).
I don’t know what to make of your claim that I shouldn’t interpret “gender is just a social construct” as supporting social constructionism … there is something compelling here about what people are trying to convey is more rooted in their intentions than any kind of theory, like a lot of times when people tell me “gender is just a social construct” it’s because they are trying to signal they are trans-accepting. That said, I don’t think there is any consistent or coherent view that we could really point to then, that is I’m not sure we could say “gender is just a social construct” actually communicates “the gender binary is not valid”, for example, because some people will take the social constructionism more seriously than others, some people use it to actually mean, “I think trans people are valid”, and others use it to mean “I will tolerate you as a trans person”, and others still might use it to mean “you are dumb and don’t understand gender, but I went to school and in my anthropology class we talked about how gender is cultural and sex is biological, blah blah blah”.
In summary, maybe you’re right that I am inappropriately hijacking this joke to attack social constructionism, but I still don’t think it’s that crazy that I thought “gender is a social construct” was espousing some form of social constructionism.
Thanks for putting up with me and reading my responses, and for challenging me - you have some compelling points that I should think about more.
I get that it can be frustrating to know a deeper and more nuanced definition of a thing and come up against people using a simpler, different or “hijacked” definition: I work in computer security and enjoy playing with machine learning. Most people get a very different impression if I say I do a lot of stuff with crypto and AI from what I mean. They hear finance bro and wasteful chatbots, and I mean user authentication, privacy and statistics.
A big point of friction I see is that it seems you’re reading the words people say, interpreting them as though they’re coming from the same background as you, and then responding in their terms.
If one more person tells me that “all gender is performance”
There is frustration that is generated by the “gender is just a social construct”.
hour long lecture from an academic on how gender is actually just a social construct
The “performance” and “just” a social construct interpretations are what you’re bringing, not the person typing.
Being told gender, that you had to struggle to find a way to make right, is reducible to how you were socialized or choose to act flies in the face of the existence of trans people and the difficulties they invariably have and is justifiably infuriating.
That the message is being given by people who very clearly, in both intent and action, believe the exact opposite should make it clear that there’s a dictionary mismatch somewhere.
I feel like it stems from the belief that “social construct” implies “social constructionism”.
Social constructionism is a specific theory involving social constructs , and acknowledging the existence of a social construct doesn’t imply acceptance of that theory.
I don’t think any reasonable person would argue that law is anything other than real by fiat of convention or collective agreement, but someone could easily disagree with the notion that scientific discovery is more about social convention than empirical reality.
I agree that the central problem here is that when the WHO or others refer to gender as a social construct, that it implies a social constructionist account of gender. However, I don’t see another interpretation that makes much sense. I do precisely think that people can have intentions opposite of the content of their statement, like if a person wanted to reassure a racial minority by telling them that they don’t even see race - it sounds supportive, but it communicates a racial eliminativist stance that undermines attempts at justice and repair. Sure, the well-meaning person may not be versed on the nuances of racial eliminativism vs racial constructivism, but it doesn’t mean the sentiment isn’t still problematic, or that the racial minority is just not understanding the interaction and there must be a mismatch somewhere.
I think the mismatch is between the view being espoused and that person’s understanding of the view. Sure, I might smile and nod trying to not soil the interaction, but I don’t think the problem is that actually I am mistaken and they aren’t communicating a social constructionist account of gender …
Also, the WHO article does communicate a social constructionist view of gender, and uses the typical gender/sex distinction on the typical basis that gender is social and sex is biological:
Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time.
Gender interacts with but is different from sex, which refers to the different biological and physiological characteristics of females, males and intersex persons, such as chromosomes, hormones and reproductive organs.
This distinction doesn’t hold up, as sex is more socially constructed than is acknowledged here, and gender has more of a biological basis than is acknowledged. It is just inaccurate and out of sync with current evidence, as far as I can tell.
Besides the readings I have suggested, another resource covering some of this territory is this lecture:
I don’t think that reading of the who page tracks, and I kinda struggle to see how you got what you did from it.
Gender [categories] refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed.
Gender interacts with but is different from sex
Gender and sex are related to but different from gender identity.
Gender identity refers to a person’s deeply felt, internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond to the person’s physiology or designated sex at birth.
(As an aside, I feel like picking on an overview that explicitly acknowledges intersex individuals for not addressing the social construction of sex, while simultaneously being critical of it for addressing the social construction of gender is a bit nit-picky)
I really feel like there’s this persistent conflation of gender categories and gender identity in your interpretation of what others are expressing, and an insistence that talking about social constructs is an endorsement of social constructionism as a whole.
It seems like we agree that the roles and attitudes we ascribe to gender categories are not objective, but socially constructed.
“Gender” is regularly used to refer to both the category and the individuals identity as being to some degree a member of that category, and it’s expected that people know which is being referred to by context.
In your example involving race, I don’t think that’s a good comparison. In your example the person is saying words that generally minimize the importance of race while attempting to convey that they’re not prejudiced. Critically, everyone agrees to what the words are referring to.
In the “gender is a social construct” case, I don’t think there’s agreement about what the word “gender” is referring to. The speaker means gender category, and the listener keeps understanding it as gender identity.
It’s like if someone says “gender isn’t a social construct” and I keep hearing them imply “women are naturally more differential and domestic, and men more forceful and outdoorsy”, even once they explain they meant an individuals identity is more than social convention.
I agree, I am taking this way out of the original context, but I think the joke is maybe a straw breaking the camel’s back here. I think Julia Serano’s article communicates this well enough:
She’s frustrated, I’m frustrated. There is frustration that is generated by the “gender is just a social construct”. The joke is literally about how the dumb cis people really just need an hour long lecture from an academic on how gender is actually just a social construct. I can’t think of a better example of this condescending and ironically confidently-incorrect attitude.
Maybe I think too much, but I guess my whole point is that people are not thinking enough. When they say gender is just a social construct they may not be familiar with gender theory or understand the nuances, and maybe stamping out biological essentialism is worth the oversimplifying, but there is something that feels wrong to me about penalizing a trans person challenging a view that invalidates their gender as an arbitrary fiction. I understand the intentions are not to be invalidating, and that most people don’t understand the consequences of social constructionism, but that’s exactly why I’m raising the problems and challenging it.
To your point I could have done a much better job to not be confused with taking a biological essentialist view, but I think anyone who actually parses what I said and reads the articles I linked to will understand I am not endorsing biological essentialism. Still, that maybe is too high of a bar, and it would have been better if I did more to anticipate this knee-jerk reaction to my challenge. It’s always good to make sure you are easy to understand, and this is admittedly a mea culpa because I was rushing and didn’t have much time, so I wrote a much shorter comment and linked to articles to cover the extra ground for me (which was clearly not adequate).
I don’t know what to make of your claim that I shouldn’t interpret “gender is just a social construct” as supporting social constructionism … there is something compelling here about what people are trying to convey is more rooted in their intentions than any kind of theory, like a lot of times when people tell me “gender is just a social construct” it’s because they are trying to signal they are trans-accepting. That said, I don’t think there is any consistent or coherent view that we could really point to then, that is I’m not sure we could say “gender is just a social construct” actually communicates “the gender binary is not valid”, for example, because some people will take the social constructionism more seriously than others, some people use it to actually mean, “I think trans people are valid”, and others use it to mean “I will tolerate you as a trans person”, and others still might use it to mean “you are dumb and don’t understand gender, but I went to school and in my anthropology class we talked about how gender is cultural and sex is biological, blah blah blah”.
In summary, maybe you’re right that I am inappropriately hijacking this joke to attack social constructionism, but I still don’t think it’s that crazy that I thought “gender is a social construct” was espousing some form of social constructionism.
Thanks for putting up with me and reading my responses, and for challenging me - you have some compelling points that I should think about more.
I get that it can be frustrating to know a deeper and more nuanced definition of a thing and come up against people using a simpler, different or “hijacked” definition: I work in computer security and enjoy playing with machine learning. Most people get a very different impression if I say I do a lot of stuff with crypto and AI from what I mean. They hear finance bro and wasteful chatbots, and I mean user authentication, privacy and statistics.
A big point of friction I see is that it seems you’re reading the words people say, interpreting them as though they’re coming from the same background as you, and then responding in their terms.
The “performance” and “just” a social construct interpretations are what you’re bringing, not the person typing.
Being told gender, that you had to struggle to find a way to make right, is reducible to how you were socialized or choose to act flies in the face of the existence of trans people and the difficulties they invariably have and is justifiably infuriating.
That the message is being given by people who very clearly, in both intent and action, believe the exact opposite should make it clear that there’s a dictionary mismatch somewhere.
I feel like it stems from the belief that “social construct” implies “social constructionism”.
Social constructionism is a specific theory involving social constructs , and acknowledging the existence of a social construct doesn’t imply acceptance of that theory.
I don’t think any reasonable person would argue that law is anything other than real by fiat of convention or collective agreement, but someone could easily disagree with the notion that scientific discovery is more about social convention than empirical reality.
Most people mean it in the sense that the WHO means it: https://www.who.int/health-topics/gender#tab=tab_1
I agree that the central problem here is that when the WHO or others refer to gender as a social construct, that it implies a social constructionist account of gender. However, I don’t see another interpretation that makes much sense. I do precisely think that people can have intentions opposite of the content of their statement, like if a person wanted to reassure a racial minority by telling them that they don’t even see race - it sounds supportive, but it communicates a racial eliminativist stance that undermines attempts at justice and repair. Sure, the well-meaning person may not be versed on the nuances of racial eliminativism vs racial constructivism, but it doesn’t mean the sentiment isn’t still problematic, or that the racial minority is just not understanding the interaction and there must be a mismatch somewhere.
I think the mismatch is between the view being espoused and that person’s understanding of the view. Sure, I might smile and nod trying to not soil the interaction, but I don’t think the problem is that actually I am mistaken and they aren’t communicating a social constructionist account of gender …
Also, the WHO article does communicate a social constructionist view of gender, and uses the typical gender/sex distinction on the typical basis that gender is social and sex is biological:
This distinction doesn’t hold up, as sex is more socially constructed than is acknowledged here, and gender has more of a biological basis than is acknowledged. It is just inaccurate and out of sync with current evidence, as far as I can tell.
Besides the readings I have suggested, another resource covering some of this territory is this lecture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZymYiwoRoC0
The chapter around 26 minutes in covers why the sex/gender distinction falls apart.
I don’t think that reading of the who page tracks, and I kinda struggle to see how you got what you did from it.
(As an aside, I feel like picking on an overview that explicitly acknowledges intersex individuals for not addressing the social construction of sex, while simultaneously being critical of it for addressing the social construction of gender is a bit nit-picky)
I really feel like there’s this persistent conflation of gender categories and gender identity in your interpretation of what others are expressing, and an insistence that talking about social constructs is an endorsement of social constructionism as a whole.
It seems like we agree that the roles and attitudes we ascribe to gender categories are not objective, but socially constructed.
“Gender” is regularly used to refer to both the category and the individuals identity as being to some degree a member of that category, and it’s expected that people know which is being referred to by context.
In your example involving race, I don’t think that’s a good comparison. In your example the person is saying words that generally minimize the importance of race while attempting to convey that they’re not prejudiced. Critically, everyone agrees to what the words are referring to.
In the “gender is a social construct” case, I don’t think there’s agreement about what the word “gender” is referring to. The speaker means gender category, and the listener keeps understanding it as gender identity.
It’s like if someone says “gender isn’t a social construct” and I keep hearing them imply “women are naturally more differential and domestic, and men more forceful and outdoorsy”, even once they explain they meant an individuals identity is more than social convention.