Gender is a Social Construct- But so is Everything Else

[cipher42]

Fair warning: while my main motivator to write this take was to explain how I view sex and gender, this is a super complicated issue, and as such needs a lot of background on social constructs as a concept prior to any actual explanation of sex and gender. So if you’re only here for the sex/gender discourse, I’d advise you to at least read the first segment explaining social constructs in general before skipping to the sex/gender section, to get at least some background on my position here. Also, I am by no means a complete expert on this subject (or any subject for that matter), so if you think I have made mistakes or left relevant information out, feel free to point that out. I only ask that if you want to seriously critique my points you first ensure you have fully read and understood my argument to the best of your ability.

So, why is (or why do I think) everything is a social construct?

First off, I need to make a distinction between the actual objective physical nature of things and the categories we build to understand those things. When I say everything is a social construct, I don’t actually mean absolutely everything, merely the categories and terms we use to describe everything. For instance, different colors existed long before human society, long before any ancestor of humans even. And while yes, there are objective differences between the color red and the color yellow, in this case the specific wavelengths of the light that creates that color, the colors themselves didn’t exactly sort themselves into neat little boxes and decide where “red” ends and where “orange” begins. That’s the part that we did, and that’s the social construct part of this. This kind of categorization applies to pretty much everything- where one species ends and where one begins, the difference between a tree and a grass, the difference between one race and another, and so forth. And while I understand that we like to look on science as purely objective and logical, that’s just not the case. At some point or another, it comes down to humans picking some arbitrary quality that decides whether we plonk something into this box or that one.

Man made physical social constructs

Now the more general idea is explained, we can move onto more fine distinctions. The particular distinction I want to focus on is between things that are wholly social constructs and things that are only partially such. So far, I’ve been talking about things that exist entirely independent of human society, largely physical things from the natural world. But there’s also plenty of things where even their objective form wouldn’t exist without humans. For instance, chairs, bowls, beds, things that humans invented as well as categorized. Those are social constructs both in the sense that the differences between them (say between a bowl and a cup) are arbitrarily determined, and in the sense that the objects themselves are created by humans. This is where things get especially interesting, because here it’s not just physical qualities that define things, but their intended purpose and their usage as well. For instance, if I were to have a relatively large glass and used it to drink water out of, it would be recognized as a glass and essentially would be a glass. But if I took the same glass and put flowers in it, it would suddenly be recognized as a vase and thus be a vase. One might argue that the difference is intended purpose, but then what about “chairs” or “benches” that are just conveniently shaped rocks or logs? Maybe they need to have been altered by human hands to be legitimately classified as chairs or benches? Maybe they just exist in multiple categories at once? Or maybe, and this is what I tend to believe, their definitions/categories are just whatever people understand them to be. If society at large decides there’s a difference between rocks that look like chairs and “actual” chairs, then there is. If society decides blue chairs aren’t chairs at all, and chairs must be a specific range of colors to be chairs and otherwise they’re referred to as another category/word entirely, then that’s how it is too.

Theoretical social constructs

Getting even deeper into this issue, there’s purely theoretical categories we create too, ones which have absolutely no basis in physical reality. These are the social constructs that are most referred to as social constructs, the abstract categories we sort people into based on certain usually non-physical traits. This would be things like religion or political affiliation, the differences between different religions or different religious sects within the same religion. Those kinds of categories tend to be the most malleable, as without physical characteristics to define something by people tend to have a far harder time, and disagree even more. A good example of this is the argument about what a religion is, and whether things like atheism can be categorized as religions, or whether Christians who hold beliefs contrary to classic Christian teachings can be considered “real” Christians. Another interesting example is political leanings, which in my society tend to be categorized in terms of liberal or conservative. There, certain political beliefs are categorized as “liberal” or “conservative” largely based on whether liberals or conservatives tend to hold them, and liberals and conservatives tend to be defined based on whether they hold liberal or conservative beliefs, creating a very circular definition.

Sex and Gender (Finally)

By my explanation so far, I hope it is already at least somewhat clear how sex and gender are socially constructed. However, since these are particularly controversial subjects, and decidedly complex, I’m going to go over both individually as well.

Sex

From what I’ve written so far, it’s pretty clear that the various sexes (male, female, and intersex) are social constructs in the first sense I explained- they are categories we use to describe the non-socially constructed objective nature of things. That said, sex is an especially complex category of this sort, and a very good one for explaining how seemingly obvious natural categories can actually be anything but obvious. This is because we define sex based on a number of different traits- external/internal genitalia, gonads, chromosomes, hormones, etc- any one of which can be out of alignment with the others. For instance, one of the most common traits by which sex is defined is external genetalia, as this is how people are assigned their sex at birth. A baby with a penis is categorized male, a baby with a vagina female, and a baby with unclear or oddly formed sexual organs is intersex. However, this sort of categorization is imperfect, as the male and female sexes are also defined by their hormones and their chromosomes, and it can occur that individuals are born with vaginas but with XY chromosomes, or with a penis but XXY chromosomes, making them technically intersex but still categorized at birth as male or female. Additionally, disorders can occur where people of a certain sex produce no hormones, or the “wrong” hormones. There’s even a village of people where children are born apparently female (having vaginas) but develop male sex organs at puberty. Though technically most of these apparent mismatches would cause a person to be classified as intersex, they often remain classified as either male or female but with some “anomaly”, proving the male/female categorization imperfect and somewhat arbitrary. And while some people might argue that their status as anomalies mean they do not harm the integrity of the categories, it’s worth noting that anomalies are often the start of entirely new categories in nature, and whether we consider something an anomaly or a wholly different category is to a large degree only a matter of prevalence.

Gender

While sex and gender are both socially constructed under my use of the term, gender is the category more commonly claimed to be socially constructed, as it is the more theoretical of the two, and lacks the objective biological grounding that sex has. The issue of gender is a complex one to begin with, as in the modern west people have only recently been recognizing it as distinct from sex (Though it is worth noting that gender being distinct from sex is by no means a wholly new concept, as there are several instances of historical and current cultures recognizing third genders and transgender people as legitimate categories). While gender is related to sex in that gender categories are typically based off sexual ones, gender remains distinct in that it is the expectations of “masculinity” or “femininity” built around the two primary sexes. Though sex is tied to gender, and male or female sex might be considered a gendered trait, sex is not the only gendered trait and thus not the defining feature of gender.

A good comparison to the construction of gender is the construction of the political spectrum. Whether a person is categorized as democrat or a republican (or other) is a function of a great variety of traits, such as party affiliation, economic beliefs, and positions on various social issues. Similarly to how sex is tied to gender, political alignment on specific issues is tied to party affiliation. However, as with sex and gender, political alignment on just one issue, even a major issue, does not determine party affiliation. For instance, someone might be against taxes (male sex), but support LGBTQ rights, be anti-gun, and have various other liberal social beliefs (feminine traits) and thus identify as a democrat (female), or support a third party (non binary). (Note that this is by no means a perfect comparison, but it’s the easiest to understand one I could come up with, so deal).

The End

Well, I hope this take explains things well enough, and if not feel free to ask further questions and I’ll do my best to answer. I realize this is a bit of a complicated issue, and there’s plenty more I could have said but left out in the interest of readability, so if you have specific issues with my explanation of things feel free to let me know.

[greenman26]

First of all, thanks for writing this and sharing this with us. This is well written and you have obviously taken some time thinking about the subject. Where I take issue is (a) with your distinction between theoretic social constructions and physical social constructs and (b) how the category of physical social constructs is too inclusive.

In terms of (a), you define theoretical social constructs as with no objective basis in reality. This would seem to be too restrictive to be accurate. While you rightly point out some social constructs that may not have any objective basis in reality, there are other theoretical constructs that have an objective basis in reality. For example, anthropologists may posit race as a means of classifying the species of Homo Sapiens. While they are able to use differences in anatomy to predict an individuals race, the classification itself is still a theoretical social construct that is posited to define subgroups within the species Homo Sapiens. Likewise, in terms of political parties there are physical voting behavior that we can measure that would allow us to predict with a high degree of accuracy one's pollination affiliation.

In terms of (b) you seem to put the classification of things like a chair or the classification of color, on the same level of the classification of sex. This seems to equivocate very different examples. Things like sex arguably have some very strong defining characteristics unlike colors and chairs. There are things we can point to to say this is where we can draw a line in the sand. Likewise the identification of water as H2O is not merely a social convention and falls out of the category of social construct entirely.

[cipher42]

That's fair. I recognize that even more abstract concepts like gender might have some basis in objective reality. However, the term gender is used to describe social behaviors and categories, and as such really is far more theoretical and less rooted in the natural world. As I noted, this is a very complicated issue, so it is possible for there to be some mixing between the different categories of social construct. Really, I mostly just make the distinction to explain the difference between social constructs the way most people view them, as both created and categorized by humans, and social constructs the way I use them, as just categories created by humans.

As for sex vs chairs, I don't quite see the difference. Sex is a category constructed of multiple objective physical traits, as is the category of chair. Now, chairs are different in that they do not occur naturally and as such lack the basis in natural patterns that the category of sex has, but still there's a similarity.

[cipher42]

As for H2O, that too is a social convention. There is no objective reason for hydrogen to be called hydrogen, or represented by the letter H. That's the social construct part. Admittedly, H2O and other chemicals are much less of social constructs than chairs for instance, as chemical categories can be objectively nailed down, and the categories don't rely on a set of arbitrarily defined and variable features.

[greenman26]

Agreed, the actual naming convention may be arbitrary, but it would seem that things like chemical classifications go beyond mere social constructs. Once we learned that "water" can be identified as H2O and we understand the meaning of water as such, we aren't in a position to essentially change our construct to make it more or less inclusive. I think this might be said of sex as well, although I would need to think about it more and probably make an argument for it. That sounds like a lot of work lol.

If you are feeling brave and are into the technical aspects of this sort of argument, Saul Kripke has a great book called Naming and Necessity. It's philosophy so it is dense, but I think it is relevant to this point. He points to a class of facts that are a posteriori necessities, things like "water is H20" and "the morning star is the evening star". These are rigid designators and once established and imbued with this meaning aren't subject to change.

[cipher42]

The thing about sex is that while the component traits are about as socially constructed as water, there's more than one factor that's considered in the construction of sex. As I mentioned, sex is categorized based on external genetalia, chromosomes, hormones, and so forth, making sex a far more complex category than chemical formulas. Also, the thing about chemical formulas is that we have a separate category for every individual combination of chemicals, which is simply unfeasible for humans. We could of course change the way sex is defined to only involve one factor, but then that itself would still be socially constructing the category.

And that definitely does sound like an interesting book, though I can't really guarantee I'll read it, since I have a hard time keeping up with my existing mandatory readings as is.

[greenman26]

Interesting. I don't think that the complexity necessary precludes the possibility that the various classifications for sex have a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, but that is well outside my area of expertise. I think there is something to be said of the fact that we rely exclusively on objective when determining the necessary and sufficient conditions for classifying someone's sex unlike the sorts of things I think of as social constructs (gender, race, country, and etc.). If so, this for some might seem to indicate that instead of us having creating these categories we discovered them.

[cipher42]

I think mostly it's just that a simpler social construct is much more objective, or at least that's how I tend to see it. Like with H2O all we're doing is deciding what to label that substance, but with sex we're doing much more in deciding the perfect archetype of that sex and how far from that archetype something can be before it no longer fits in that category. With chemicals, almost no variation from the perfect archetype is possible (or that's how it seems based on my knowledge of chemistry) so it's not necessary for us to construct a particularly nuanced definition.

And I don't know that it's so much that we discovered the categories as that we saw existing patterns and created categories for them to allow us to order the world more neatly and understand it more efficiently. Like it's some of both, but with things like speciation it really is mostly up to us to determine where one species ends and another begins- as far as I know nature doesn't itself provide a easy distinction

[greenman26]

Exactly! Are you maybe a philosophy major? Because if you aren't you should seriously consider adding it as a second major and taking a philosophy of science class. There seems to be this naive assumption that when we do science we are actually discovering facts about a reality that is beyond our immediate perception. But, as you rightly point out that isn't necessarily the case. That's another very interesting question.

[cipher42]

Haha no I'm a politics major possible linguistics minor. Philosophy is a bit too abstract for me, not enough practical application for me tbh. But yeah, people really seem to want to believe science to be perfectly objective and universal, when really that's not how it tends to work. Like it's a very useful tool for understanding our world, and tends to be pretty accurate, but it is still subjective in its own way.

[redeyemindtricks]

I've read that book -- unless I'm mistakenly thinking of another one. It's like... not actually a book, right? Just some transcribed lectures?

If I'm thinking of the right one, then... I found it harder going than most books, because it fundamentally wasn't meant to be a **book** -- the content was originally spoken, and thus inevitably somewhat awkward in written form.

You'd probably get more out of reading any of several different Steven Pinker books.

[greenman26]

@redeyemindtricks That is a fair assessment. It's not a "book" that he sat down and wrote. It is a series of lectures he gave on a series of topics relating to the philosophy of language. However, to be fair it is considered by many to be among the most important writings on the philosophy of language of the 20th century.

You could be right about many other books being better - and probably much easier to get through. That one just came to mind.

[greenman26]

@cipher42 I feel you but I have to say it seems like you would be pretty good at it. Also, I'm going to go ahead and say your a philosophy major anyways. Political Science and Linguistics... that's basically the same thing lol. Just on the more practical end of the spectrum.

[cipher42]

Lol yep. I like theoretical concepts fine and all, but I prefer some grounding and application in practical reality in the end.

[lumos]

The comments on this take are giving me a migraine. The amount of people with 0 reading comprehension skills...
Great take, very well written.

[lumos]

If people think this is too long and they didn't read it, then why even bother commenting? Y'all probably never even read a book longer than half a page.

[cipher42]

Lmao I know. They probably just read the title, assumed they knew my argument, and skipped right to building their little strawmen. Though honestly the worst are those who can't understand the difference between the category/meaning of a thing and the physical thing even once it's explained to them. A lot of the commenters understand it and kinda agree with me once I actually explain it, but those guys..

[OlderAndWiser]

TLDR. If "social construct" applies to everything that humans perceive, then it is a useless concept.

[cipher42]

No. The study of how humans categorize things and why is absolutely useful, as is understanding how especially the more theoretical socially constructed categories arise.

[OlderAndWiser]

On this planet, 99.9999% of the population is clearly male or female, just like 99.9999% of all cows only have one head. The fact that most humans view gender as black and white/male and female is not some artificial device that we invented because it makes us feel good about ourselves. It is not something that we do to deprive some marginal group of some supposed rights that they have by virtue of being part of a marginal group. It is simply a recognition that people being male or female is so prevalent that it is logical to classify everything else as an aberration. This is not like thinking red hair is an aberration because it is less common than brunette. It is like thinking that a 2-headed cow is pretty fucking weird.

[OlderAndWiser]

This is part of a political agenda which wants to normalize everything that is not normal by using government institutions and social institutions to shape society, because that places control in the hands of an elite class which decides which values are permissible and which need to be extirpated.

[cipher42]

Actually the current estimate is that 1.7% of people are intersex. And what makes being intersex less Category-breaking than being red-headed other than being red headed is more normalized by society?

And our view of gender is absolutely socially constructed, are you kidding? Like it has an objective reason behind it that influences why society teaches it a certain way, but ultimately the way we perceive gender as a category and set of categories is still determined by societal teaching.

[OlderAndWiser]

Yes, my mother and father taught me the difference between men and women. I suppose that makes it social, and it is a categorization. As I got older, me experience verified what they taught me. They also taught me about beef and pork and chicken and they were right about those things, too.

As for the current estimate, it is an absolute BS number because you cannot prove the validity of any such estimate and how the estimate is calculated is driven by political considerations.

[cipher42]

Basically. As I said in my take, sex is a social construct in the same way trees are a social construct- it physically exists, and no one's gonna argue that the difference between trees and grass is only because of humans, but what those categories mean is arbitrarily socially determined.

As for the prevalency of intersex people, the study wikipedia cites is this one, so take it up with them: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11534012
From what I gather though, it does depend on how sex is defined (aka constructed)- basically whether you're just looking at physical genetalia or whether chromosomes, hormonal issues, and other such traits are being taken into account as well.

[Vyxzuw]

Trees are not a societal construct.
You are misusing societal construct.

Borders are a SOCIETAL construct, they refer to a societal idea.

Trees are an actual physical thing that we have assigned a word to to understand.
We can INCORRECTLY assign a definition to it.

We can't incorrectly define a border. What we define it what that border is.

[cipher42]

@Vyxzuw I'm not misusing anything. I'm not using "social construct" in the common colloquial way perhaps, but the way I am using it is the more academic way, which is perhaps why you can't seem to understand it.

[Vyxzuw]

Okay, here's the thing, YOU are the one misunderstanding what it means.

Is Pluto a planet.
Society feels it is, it was accepted as such by society.

Science, however, said it wasn't.

Society pushed back, and didn't like that.
However, the scientific categorization of what a planet is not concerned on what is socially acceptable.
Hence what is a planet is a SCIENTIFIC categorization, not a social one.

Social roles are social constructs, but color and trees and planets are not.
Sex is a scientific term, gender roles and identity is a social one. Gender is the collection of both and is both a scientific and social construct.

[cipher42]

@Vyxzuw Do you not think that scientists are a part of society or something? Science is not natural, it is itself a construct used by us to understand the world. It's a very useful and very reliable construct, but it is nevertheless a construct.

[Vyxzuw]

No, it is a development of understanding of nature. It is not a construction.

Social roles and ideas are constructs. They didn't exist until we came up with it. We define WHAT they are.

Science does not make anything, it reveals what is already there.

[cipher42]

@Vyxzuw Science is not a development of nature. Or perhaps it is if you mean science in the sense of "the way the world operates" rather than in the sense of "the study of the way the world operates", but based on the way you used the word that doesn't seem to be the case.

And as I've explained several times already, that's simply not what social construct means. If that's the definition you want to use, fine, but that's not the one I'm using, and it's not the one used in academia. It's like saying evolution is "just" a theory, when in science "theory" means something totally different than what it means colloquially.

[Vyxzuw]

"If that's the definition you want to use, fine, but that's not the one I'm using, and it's not the one used in academia."
I posted a definition. You can feel free to post a definition yourself.

"It's like saying evolution is "just" a theory, when in science "theory" means something totally different than what it means colloquially."
Ironically, evolution isn't even a theory according to science, since we can't create a method to test it. It's a hypothesis.
I'm not arguing against evolution, mind you, just pointing out that misuse of words causes problems.

Science is what we have found out about the world through hypothesis, testing and theory.
We don't make the results, the results define out understanding.

This isn't the same as making up a category to make understanding easier. That is a social construct.
Our understanding of color was not categorizing, it was understanding how light works.
Then, yes, society came up with 'colors'.

[cipher42]

@Vyxzuw Hmm, so you do seem to be using the same definition, but perhaps not understanding it the same way? So the way I use the term, it essentially means concepts that society has created in order to understand the world. So the concept of tree for instance, as trees exist objectively, but the meaning we place on plants that makes them trees or non-trees makes the concept of tree a social construct.

Evolution is absolutely a scientific theory (or perhaps collection of theories depending), I don't know where you get the idea that it's not.

Science is also the system we use for understanding the world. That said, the findings of science are still in some sense socially constructed, as those findings must be categorized in a way that can be understood, which translates them into socially constructed concepts. So while sound being a wave isn't socially constructed, the definition/concept of sound and the definition/concept of wave are.

[Vyxzuw]

I'm going to respond to your response in my opinion section so OlderAndWiser doesn't keep getting bombarded with our responses.

[404filenotfound]

Going by your own logic and your own definition, Gender still isn't a "theoretical" social construct. There are physiological, phsycological, hormonal and behavioral differences between men and women. These things impact our behavior, the tasks that we're more suited to and, by extension, what society expects from us.

Gender doesn't lack objective biological grounding at all; overall, Men are more masculine and women are more feminine. There are tons of examples in human society, human history and even the animal kingdom to show you that both "genders" and "gender roles" exist on an objective platform that can be easily verified and that there is an underlying biological reason for them.

As far as intersexed people go, they suffer from genetic abberations and, by most reasonable non-politically motivated estimations, make up less than a fraction of a percentage of the population. Let's not also forget that the term "intersex" is actually used as a blanket term for a multitude of disorders.

Also, the chromosome argument that a lot of people like to make in favor of more than two sexes and genders, which they seem to invariably connect in spite of persisting that gender is a social construct and different from sex, strikes me as disingenuous. They gloss over the fact that a lot of intersexed people also have have mental and physical health issues that manifest as part of their disorder and that sexual development disorders can run the gamut from anything to an enlarged clitoris to having two vaginas.

Inferring that chromosomal abberations are some sort of evolutionary branch in humanity leading to more than two sexes makes no sense to me because it'd be like trying to argue that Down Syndrome or Klinefelter's, which actually is a sexual development disorder, are new branches of humanity.

And, finally, the vast majority of people only use "gendered" words to refer to biological sex. Most people understand that not every male is entirely masculine and not every female is entirely feminine. That doesn't change the facts that:

Men are more masculine overall

Women are more feminine overall

We need words to express the differences between the two sexes.

[cipher42]

I was talking about a different definition of gender perhaps. I'll grant that what we tend to refer to as gender has some biological basises, but still not wholly, and even then it's arguable whether gender includes the biological differences in behavior themselves or just the social expectations derived from those biological differences.

And how does something being an abnormality make it not count as far as categories go? After all, as far as I'm aware the difference between an abnormality and a trait of a species is frequency. So what makes them not "new branches of humanity" exactly, outside of apparent harmfulness or rarity?

[404filenotfound]

Many mental and physical deformities could be considered an evolutionary path if you wanted to get down to a purely technical level. So, I'd say that the chances of them being passed on would be the deciding factor. When it comes to intersexed persons, the chance is very low for a few reasons. The most foremost being the fact that a lot of intersexed persons are infertile and that SDDs have a very, very low rate of occurrence. Also, a lot of sexual development disorders come about by accident, i. e., the child inherits two chromosomes in the place of one, so it's less a trait that's being passed down and more a trait that isn't passed down correctly.

And I'd still maintain that gender roles stem from biology; the whole of our social structure is the result of biology; the issue at hand here is more of a political one. On a technical level "gender" refers to masculinity and femininity, but on a practical level we use it to refer to and differentiate between biological sexes.

[cipher42]

Chances of them being passed on is still an arbitrary determiner. The point is that you are deciding what factors make it an "evolutionary path" vs an "abnormality", thus imbuing those traits with extra meaning, thus constructing them.

Colloquially "gender" can mean sex, yes. But I am not using that definition. It's like mixing up the colloquial and scientific definitions of "theory" when talking about evolution or germ theory.

[404filenotfound]

It's not arbitrary at all. If they don't have the ability to pass a "trait" onto their offspring, then it's an evolutionary dead end and may as well not even exist as far as the gene pool is concerned.

And your definition of gender is subjective. I'm saying that from the closest thing that we can can get to an objective standpoint, gender is a way of referring to biological sex.
We use gender to refer to male and female because we have to be able to make a distinction. Males are more masculine, thus masculine pronouns whereas females are more feminine, thus feminine pronouns. Hell even as far as the evolution of language goes, most dictionaries that I've read use gender to refer to biological sex; from a scientific standpoint it's the only thing that matters.

I'd say that trying to add to the confusion about gender is what's arbitrary. There are valid reasons that we have a linguistic distinction between the sexes, because males and females are different.

[cipher42]

Why should what we are concerned with be modeled off of what the gene pool is concerned with? I mean that is a valid model to base our categories off of, but it isn't the only model, and I don't think its the objectively right model.

Yes, my definition of gender is subjective. All definitions are subjective, that's the point. And the issue is that we already have a way of referring to biological sex, which is biological sex. Having a definition for that, what we would still require is a way of referring to the social roles and expectations modeled off of sex, which is what we (or I and most scientists nowadays) use the term gender for.

[Frosteh]

"Those are social constructs both in the sense that the differences between them (say between a bowl and a cup) are arbitrarily determined"

No, they're not.

First of all they're not determined in any kind of an authoritative way, the distinctions are group consensus among many people which itself is a process that evolves over time. The deciding factors for what labels evolve and how they're applied in real life is largely down to the utility of those labels and how quickly and efficiently they can be used to convey meaning between people.

The utility of language is a sliding scale, we can sub divide reality into many categories and keep sub dividing and getting infinitely more specific, for example trying to force 100 new "genders" to common lexicon. But the more we add the less difference in utility there is, and the greater burden there is to people trying to communicate. Language evolves and changes based on utility then it needs to be fast and efficient and we need to be able to communicate without confusion, we have a limited capacity for words so we draw the line somewhere. We could add labels for 1000 different types of cup and no one is really going to care because it's too hard to learn 1000 different types and offers little to no real world benefit.

99.999% of the world knows that when I say "man", I mean someone with XY chromosomes and a penis. And when I say "woman" i mean someone with XX chromosomes and a womb. We all understand there's extremely minor exceptions to that, but it's completely suitable for day to day discussion.

Sex is not socially constructed, it's a measurable fact of reality, and there's some exceptions to a very general rule such as chromosomal abnormalities, but the vast majority of us see it as I've described above and that's how we use the term in day to day usage.

Only if there's utility in that changing will it ever broadly change. So if 50% of men suddenly decided to be transgender and it becomes a real problem navigating the dating world for biological females we'd probably evolve more specific language to make distinctions clearer.

[cipher42]

Sex is socially constructed in that it's socially defined. It's just like with all other words, the thing itself may exist objectively, but we decide the categories that apply to it and what the definitions for those categories are. I agree that it's not necessary for there to be more words for sex than male, female, and intersex (and the specific scientific terms for the type of intersex), that's not what I was arguing. My only point was that it is all socially constructed, and that our words and categories are not in fact objective at all, as many seem to think.

[Frosteh]

But everything is "socially defined", the point of language is to convey meaning to one another. I know what an apple is in my mind, I can recognize apples and think about them, but if I want to convey that meaning to another human we need to have a method of communication which conveys the meaning "apple" to someone else. These means we invest systems of communication and agree on what terms mean to make those systems of communication useful - as I said before, the value of language is in utility.

All you're really saying is that language has no meaning except what people give it. Which is completely correct of course, but is in no way specific to sex and gender and so one has to wonder why you bring up this point with this specific context, rather than being general. To me it suggests you have an agenda associated with sex/gender.

The language is socially constructed, but the properties which they refer to, are real. And the distinctions matter to people.

[cipher42]

Yepp. Nothing is anything, things are things because we say they are. And I'm well aware that the things social constructs are constructed around are objectively real. The entire purpose of this take (or a major one) was to get people to understand what is meant by "social construct", because most seem to think it means a thing would not exist outside of society or can be changed or some such.

I brought up sex and gender because that's what this argument most often centers around, particularly gender. Putting it in a context people are familiar with and which is already controversial gets more people to read what I wrote, gets my take more attention, and puts what I'm talking about more practically applicable and recognizable context.

[Frosteh]

But I disagree with the conclusion you've come to. Things have the lables that society agrees to, but what is in agreement is what those labels represent, something actually real about the world. And more than that, something real about the world that actually matters to people in some important way.

For example if you survey people what you find is that about 70% of people would not date a trans person (same biological sex as them) even if they had an opposite gender identity. So it matters to wider society that there's a distinction in language that we can use to convey meaning.

The classic argument I see surrounding this topic is that gender/sex is a social construct so anyone can be either. And that's wrong. People classify these terms in ways which are broadly useful to everyone.

You can't use the "socially defined" or "social construct" arguments to remove the importance and meaning from language. It's socially constructed but it's absolutely not arbitrary.

[cipher42]

I don't think you actually understand the conclusion I've come to. I never said that a concept being socially constructed means that the thing that it represents is any less real or less important. I'm well aware that trees have an objective physical presence, I even said so in my take. I just believe that the concept of "tree" is not an objective one, and that categorizing a palm tree for instance as not a tree would be just as valid as our current categorization.

And I don't think the "social construction=changeable or made up" argument is the classic one so much as it is the misunderstood one, like people thinking evolution being a theory means it's no better than a hypothesis.

[Frosteh]

Well you're getting in strange territory here. Let's be more clear...

The reality itself is objective.
The concept or label used by any individual is subjective because it's specific to an individual.
The agreement between a group of people to all share the same subjective label is an objective fact.

So for example, I can have label called apple and you could understand the same object as me but call it a banana. Those labels are subjective. However if we want to coherently discuss something then we need to first agree on the meaning of labels and once we have a common understanding we can then converse using them.

The fact that majority of people use certain labels for certain things, for example most people using the term "sex" to mean biologically male (XY) is itself an objective fact of reality. And if you want to converse accurately with that group, you need to adopt their language, or persuade them to adopt yours (unlikely unless it has a net benefit).

[cipher42]

Yeah basically. With the added bonus of that the categories that the labels are for are somewhat constructed as well, so like one society can have seven main color labels and one could have three or four, because what the categories themselves include is subjective also.

[Frosteh]

Well, you have objectively measurable reality, and then you have categories which people construct mentally and then labels for them, and yes the categories themselves are socially constructed and the labels are also socially constructed.

The objective reality isn't dependent on subjective experience. The categories that are constructed by people are generally done for purposes relating to utility. For example men are attracted to women because of biological imperatives we've evolved over millions of years, and we feel compelled to pursue women. So a large part of the category "woman" is to do with the practical implications in our day to day life. And then the label we give woman, which differs from culture to culture and from language to language is again socially constructed, through consensus.

Most of us share the same biology and needs, so the utility to the categories is similar between us, and thus the categories become similar. But be careful what you infer from this however.

[cipher42]

Yup pretty much. And through studying how people create categories and apply meaning to them, you can infer a lot about psychology, as well as about the particular culture certain categories are from.

[Frosteh]

I agree, culture is very important and can tell you a lot. Although some categories exist cross culturally and so we can rule out the influence of society to a large degree. I'm fairly new to the field of (armchair) psychology but I've been watching a lot of Jordan Peterson's lectures recently and I'm starting to get to grips with it. I'd recommend checking him out on youtube if you haven't already, I'm fairly sure you'd find him intellectually stimulating.
You've made some interesting points, I'm going to re-read your original post and contemplate on it some more and see if I've gone wrong anywhere. You seem to have a point to make but I'm not completely sure what it is, I think the post did a good job of spurring discussion and thought.

[cipher42]

Ha, thanks, and thanks for the recommendation. Social constructionism is also a sociological theory in it's own right, as well as having some ties to psycholinguistics, so those are some areas you could look into as well if you want to read an explanation by someone with a bit more expertise than me.

[Frosteh]

I'm interested in all these areas and wasn't aware of those theories specifically so that's something to get my teeth into, I appreciate it. It does sound worryingly like post modernism though. I'll approach it with an open mind, however. Thank you. Followed, by the way.

[cipher42]

I mean it definitely is verging onto some weird ass philosophy shit, and plenty of psycholinguistic theories seem pretty pseudosciency even to me. But it's interesting, and I think it holds at least a decent degree of truth. Also by the way, if you haven't seen Arrival you should, because one of the primary premises of the movie is about how using a different language system (thus social construct system I'd say) can make one perceive the world totally differently. Kinda pseudosciency like I said, but definitely interesting.

[Frosteh]

I've seen the movie and liked it more than the critics, that's for sure. The trick with any kind of science, especially soft sciences, is to look for the evidence of the claims. This is why I like Peterson so much because his work is so firmly grounded in good science. Actually I'm tempted to watch Arrival again now - thanks for that!

[cipher42]

Ya, that's definitely true. But then also there's some sorting out to do about cause and effect- like does a society view something a certain way because of their words for it, or do they have certain words for it because they view it a certain way. But either way, it's a super interesting topic, and I'm happy to have extra resources on it

[Frosteh]

Right - exactly right, in fact Peterson makes this point quite firmly in some of his material. Quite often in the humanities and social sciences the cause and effect are the wrong way around. A really great example he gives with relation to men and women is this "issue" of gender differences in highly paid positions in the work place.
He made the great point that we tend to ask why there is so few women in these high power/paid positions, and then immediately points out that what we really should be asking is why there is any men at all that would sacrifice so much to be there, because it's such an insane out-liar position.
Another great thing he pointed out (and this goes back to reliance on science) is that we evolved due to environmental influence but we often forget that other people, and our interactions with them, have become part of our immediate environment. So you're right the cause and effect is in some sense both ways and that's a very complex structure to understand.

[hellionthesagereborn]

No its not. Their is overwhelming evidence showing that this is absolutely not true. The physical structures of the brain are different in men and women which obviously is going to alter how we process information and how we respond to said information. Then we have hormonal biochemical differences which absolutely alter how we respond to stimuli for instance most male to female transgenders will tell you how shockingly different sex drives are when a male and when on hormones. Then of course you have transgenderism itself, one cannot be socially conditioned to function as one gender yet believe they are the other if gender is social as otherwise social conditioning would of course make them identify as the gender they have been socialized to be. Then of course if you look at things like gender roles, all of which apply to innate biological differences in men and women i. e. women get pregnant men don't, women are wired biologically to be more inclined to raise children and men to work because a woman is going to be unable to do so while pregnant, then be stuck with the child for years just for breastfeeding which would hinder her ability to work or protect herself. Men on the other hand, being hindered in no such way would be better off working and providing and in fact these traits are desired by women because if he is not doing these things historically that would have meant the woman would die as she could not acquire the resources she needed to survive pregnancy and child rearing (and biology doesn't change so rapidly as technology does. About a 100 years of advancments will not alter 100,000's of years of evolution). Then you have the biological differences like women having more tear ducts and narrower channels that make women literally better able to cry, 25% less collagen in their skin, less dense bone mass and of about 10% smaller, less pronounced eye ridges and bone structure of the face which actually helps protect the face from blunt trauma.(all of which are neotenous biological traits, traits held over from child hood which help trigger the protective intincts in men). So in fact their is no science that backs up the claim that gender is a "social construct". In fact even common sense doesn't because in order for it to be a social construct you would have to have some one come up with gender roles, for no reason, then tell every one to follow said gender roles without any kind of outside influence, all of which every one agreed too,

[cipher42]

Do you understand what I mean by social construct? Because you don't seem to, since evidently you think something being socially constructed is influenced by whether it has a basis in biological reality, which I already explained is not the case.

But also, are you sure all gender roles are down to innate biological differences? Please, explain to me how wearing dresses and liking the color pink are related to biological differences between the sexes.

[hellionthesagereborn]

for no particular reason. Its an absurd concept. We don't have 3 billion base pairs in our DNA, having a length of 2 meters (per cell) and all DNA in your body end to end being twice the diameter of the known solar system because it looks pretty. Its because it influences every thing about us, this idea that its just a cellular paperweight and that "society"(which itself is biological in origin hence only certain species of animals having societies) is the only thing that influences us is well completely absurd.

[cipher42]

Again, do you understand what social constructs are? Or is your argument just that absolutely everything is a biological construct (including things like chairs or democracy or whatever the fuck) because DNA determines everything about our behavior and thus is ultimately the cause for any concept or system we come up with?

[hellionthesagereborn]

I don't think you understand what a social construct is: "A social construction, or social construct or a social concept is an invention or artifact of a particular culture or society which exists solely because people agree to behave as if it exists, or agree to follow certain conventional rules." which as I pointed out is not the case, especially since the things I mentioned and the behaviors I mentioned extend to every single culture and society that exists. So yeah I do know what it means, do you? Perhaps you would like to share your definition for social construct? Also don't really know what your rambling about with chairs or democracy, no one said anything about that, I specifically stated gender is not a social construct, so that's the topic I was discussing.

[cipher42]

Jfc dude, learn to read further than the first definition (though honestly I'm not even sure where you found the definition you're using, since it doesn't come up when I search for it). The way I am using social construct is in the sociological academic sense, not in the colloquial sense, as I explained in the take (which apparently you have not read?). In the sense I am using it, a social construct is a category created and defined by society, which imbues both objective physical objects and abstract concepts alike with meaning.

[hellionthesagereborn]

Okay, clearly your not understanding how things work, if you have a different definition then what every one else has of social construct then that would mean your definition is wrong. Now if your arguing that social construct should be what your arguing then you would have to define what it means to you which as far as I could tell you really didn't do, you just said gender is a social construct then bitched when every one pointed out that it wasn't using the academic definition of social construct and the colloquial definition of social construct to point out you where incorrect. If biology is dictating behavior and function then by definition, all definitions of it except apparently yours, then by that definition gender is biological not social in nature (as per all the ample evidence I have presented).

[hellionthesagereborn]

Here are other links to that definition: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_constructionism
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/social-construct
www.merriam-webster.com/.../social%20construct
www.verywell.com/definition-of-social-construct-1448922
I'm sorry that this does not validate your world view, never the less it is objective fact that gender is biological in nature.

[cipher42]

Only the fourth source, which is the least reliable in terms of presenting concepts accurately, provides the definition you are using. The rest reflect the way I use it, to a much greater degree at least. Thus, it's more you than me who is using a different definition from everyone else.

[hellionthesagereborn]

Wow thats sad. No all the sources used the term social construct in the way I am using it i. e. something that is agreed upon and created by society rather then by nature. In fact thats why your arguing with so many people who are explaining to you what I have, that you clearly don't know what the term social construct means. If your saying that what I have stated, about gender being biological is also some how a social construct, then your using the term social construct wrong. Their is no arguing this. Admit you where wrong and move on. Or continue to deny it and making an ass out of yourself, I really don't care which you choose at this point.

[cipher42]

The trouble is that you're conflating the social meaning/category of a thing and the thing itself. Trees are a social construct in that the category of "tree" is socially constructed, though physical trees are not. The wikipedia article even lays this distinction out. "Consider a hypothetical claim that quarks are "socially constructed". On one reading, this means that quarks themselves are not "inevitable" or "determined by the nature of things." On another reading, this means that our idea (or conceptualization, or understanding) of quarks is not "inevitable" or "determined by the nature of things"." You are using the first reading, I am using the second.

[hellionthesagereborn]

No I am not. Thats just asinine. Yes the word gender is a social construct, what it reffers to is not. Your complaining about the word and ignorign the meaning. The meaning of gender is very much rooted in biology. If you want to argue language is a social construct then their really isn't much to discuss as it most certainly is (and no one would argue otherwise). IF your trying to say that gender as it is defined by the word i. e. the meaning behind the word is a social construct, then you are very much wrong. It is biology. Thats like saying that a rock is a social construct because the word is made up, well yeah the word is made up but if some one picked up and threw that "social construct" it would have a very real and very measurable effect. Your not arguing what you claim your arguing.

[hellionthesagereborn]

If your trying to say that not every one fits into a very very strict description of gender then yes, some men like romantic movies, some women like sports, but that doesn't mean that the man is no longer a man and the woman is no longer a woman, it works some variations as with all things are expected, and in fact would be disturbing if their where none. But that doesn't mean they become some amorphous thing. If a person loses a hand in an accident they suddenly don't stop being a person, neither does some one having a single, or even a few traits that might be androgenous or even unlike their gender make them not their gender. Again, we have clear and concise evidence for gender from biology, anatomy, biochemistry, brain structures, genetics and even behavioral. Gender is real, it is biological in origin and not something that exists purely because people say it does, whether or not we acknowledge it, it will still be their.

[cipher42]

How is liking pink or women wearing dresses rooted in biology? Like some part of gender is biological in that our model for gender is constructed off biological sex. But there's also parts of gender that are wholly social convention, with no biological roots whatsoever.

And I am saying rocks are a social construct. Did you even read the take? Cause it sure doesn't seem like it.

[hellionthesagereborn]

The color has nothing to do with biology, liking clothing/jewelery however does seem to be. Part of the grooming mechanism, that's why women "shopping" or what have you is pretty much universal, women accessories themselves with jewelry and clothing usually brightly colored again, probably as a way to distinguish themselves for the same reason some birds will "paint" their feathers in red mud to essentially dye them in order to attract mates. Sure tiny specifics may not be biological but they are so completely irrelevant that to argue about them would be a waste of time. Who cares if a woman's "color" is pink? No one, because it has no impact on anything. Other behavior can be linked to biology even if it doesn't seem to be so. For instance attraction, they have consistently found that poorer men find thicker women more attractive and richer men find petite women attractive.

[hellionthesagereborn]

The reason is thicker women means more fat and a hardier build ensuring greater probability of surival in the short term as they will likely have harder times and less acess to care, meanwhile the rich man has access to care and resoures so he is attracted to more petite women because they will have fewer health issues down the line and they don't need to worry about surviving hardhsips as they already have those resources at their disposal. Enviroment impacts biology, the biological drive then adapts. Just like certain things that we would associate with health become attractive, because we have a biological drive to desire healthy mates but enviroment determines what is and is not healthy (again for example weight). Same thing with behaviors and gender inclinations, each one being a magnified biological drive by the enviroment of said individual.

[hellionthesagereborn]

I would also point out that color is not gender, behavior is gender, like how women find small things "cute" near universally. Prefferences for certain things are frequently biological but not always, but again the thing itself is not gendered but really as I mentioned before is so insignificant that it seems an odd thing to fight over and an odd reason to claim the entirety of gender is socially constructed for. Like men liking sports, that's not masculine, but competition is and thus sports being competititve appealing to men is quite natural and thus it gets associated with men more then women.

[cipher42]

I doubt the accessorizing thing is biological considering there have been cultures and time periods where men were just as vain. In any case, point is not even all gender roles have a biological basis.

Wtf is the behavioral distinction between liking "cute" things and liking pink things?

And I'm not claiming that the entirety of gender is socially constructed in the way you seem to think. Again with the strawman argument. Again, this isn't about the entirety of gendered behavior having only social basis and no cultural basis. That's very much not the claim I'm making. The only claims I'm making are that A- everything (all our categories/concepts, not physical objects) is a social construct and B- gender is a social construct on that level and PARTIALLY also in the sense of "social construct" you assumed I'm using.

[hellionthesagereborn]

Never said liking pink was biological, in fact I said that it doesn't matter because its so completely trivial that if that's all you have to complain about then their is literally nothing wrong with your world and you shouldn't complain at all. Liking cute things is biological for women (and to a lesser extent men) as things that are reminiscent of children appeal to us but especially women due to our innate drive to protect the young (which is strong in both men and women but for women they have a natural inclination for it due to being the nurturers and child rearers). As for women, yeah its biological for them to accessories, you use make up, you wear clothing that produces certain affects like low cut shirts to accent breasts tight fitting clothes to accent body structures which is no different then any other grooming found in other animal species (make up helps accent or hide flawes thus increasing the odds of acquiring a higher status mate).

[hellionthesagereborn]

As for it being a straw man argument, well no its not. You said gender is a social construct, I stated it wasn't. That was a response to your statement, a direct response to your very specific comment. Like how you claimed that sex categorization is "arbitrary" when in fact its not (as you pointed out with the people who would be termed intersex, which make up less then 2% of the population and as I pointed out would be like claiming a person who has no hand as being a separate species from humans i. e. their are many criteria and not fitting one does not prevent you from being that sex, or gender). In fact one can argue your entire argument is illogical (it is) both from a evidence point of view and that your arguing from exceptions rather then from the norm. Gender is not a social construct. Some things are social, some things people gravitate to and it gets associated with a gender, but gender itself is not a social construct, again, this isn't an argument but fact.

[Anonymous]

Lmfaoo... what the actual fuck did I just read? If a baby has XX chromosomes then it is a female and if it has XY chromosomes then it is a male. It's literally facts. You CANNOT CHANGE GENDER! Gender is NOT A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT! There is literally ONLY 2 GENDERS. Those 2 genders are male and female. There is no other real gender but those 2. Notice all this mental disorder bs going around like gender dysphoria. Why do you think when a man who identifies as a woman, goes through transition to look like a "woman" or vice versa? Women (female)= Vagina, Man (male)= penis and that is a biology FACT and NOT a construct. Even during pregnancy one can tell what gender the baby is once reveled. Why are trans having to "transition" to the opposite gender then instead of accepting the actual gender that they were born with then? My gosh men are over here buying dress, getting fake boobs, wearing wigs and makeup, some going as far as to remove their penis just have a fake "vagina", some still keep their penis (even when in denial), buy heels, and all of this nonsense. Girls are over here getting stupid hair cuts, getting steroids to change their voice, have fake "penises" (even when they know they were born with a vagina), removing their boobs, trying to act super masculine, and all of this garbage. If they truly were born with whatever gender they are getting surgery for to "transition" then they would have been born with those parts. Don't know what you are? Look on your birth certificate and bend over. Were you born with a vagina? Then you're a female and that's it. Were you born with a penis? Then you're a male and that's it. My gosh... this is literally proven science.

[cipher42]

Those aren't "literally facts", they're the definition of sex you prefer. Other definitions exist, and the most common one is in fact the genetalia definition, not the chromosomal one.

Something being socially constructed doesn't mean it's changeable, and if you think that's the case you didn't actually read the take.

[Opinion Owner]

Yes they are LITERAL FACTS. FACTS!!! There has always will be only 2 genders since the beginning of banking and there always will be 2 genders until the end of times. They're not what you "prefer" don't give me that stupid mentally ill ass shit.

[cipher42]

Again, other definitions of sex exist. It's a fact that we define sex in those ways, but not which definition is correct. And again, gender is not the same as sex anyways.

[MackFreeze]

We use language to describe and communicate. A cup is a cup so we know that it is do drink out of and it gives us a description of its useage. You have a drinking cup or glass and you may have a washing cup, the term drinking infront of cup is soley to differentiate between the purpose as does washing in the next term. We make these words to help us communicate efficently and effectively. As for color, we name them so we can communicate what color we mean. Its for fluency and communication. If I just say for example, "You should paint your room color." It wouldn't make much sense or help to anyone. However if I replace the word color, with blue, red, or green, I have communicated and established a point.

Men and women are different biologically, mentally, phsycially, emotionally so we use terms to communicate what they are. Its not a social construct its a form of communication because by nature Women act a certain way and men act a certsin way no matter how femine a man is or masculine a women is, they can't compare to a born woman or born man. We use man or woman to relate to and communicate their traits. Its not a construct since men and women are created a specific way. For instance take a look at a lion and a lioness. The male lion is dominant, proctective, has different physical traits and roars as well. The lioness stays with the alpha lion and other lionesses in the pride until another alpha comes, so the lionesses is submissive, doesn't have a mane like the lion, can hunt, but isn't as dominant or strong as the lion. Also protects her young.

Instead of listing all these traits I could just say male lion or female lion. We have words to make life easier!

[cipher42]

That method of categorizing things is socially constructing them though, at least based on the way I and most academic sources use "social construct". You may have a different definition of the term, but it is not the one I am using, and as such I am not incorrect just because my definition does not suit your own. As I explained in my take, something being a social construct does not mean it was created by us, only that we gave it meaning through categorization.

[MackFreeze]

I am mentioning common language, we create language for communication. Or categorization if you will. Social Constructs may be very subjective in so have no pupose. Lets say you deem a person who is born male, a woman. To most that means they were born a woman however subjectively to you it means they act womanly in your subjective terms be their appearance, held beliefs, etc. Even if they are biologcially not a woman.

It comes down to what is more effective and having common language for what is and what isn't is needed. Beating around the bush and joing terms isn't effective and lacks purpose. What does a term do for someone?

That comes to subjective feelings on whats appropriate to say and what not to say. Hate speech is a tricky term becuase it is so subjective in itself. So you either accept other people won't understand or speak with in subjective abstract terms or you go to legislation and have word policeing.

I personally think, you may disagree, that its uneccisary

[cipher42]

You are assuming the conflation of sex with gender. It tends to be pretty commonly understood nowadays, especially in academic circles, that sex and gender are distinct. The use of "man" and "woman" as both biological terms and social ones is something of an issue, but words don't have to have only one definition, and as it stands both definitions can be understood distinctly. So while yes it can be confusing, I don't think the confusion that might arise does anything to alter the fact that sex and gender are distinct and are understood distinctly more and more commonly.

[MackFreeze]

Well, that is where we disagree. I believe sex and gender are quite intertwined. Sex being the gender you are born either male or female.

[cipher42]

You can disagree, but that doesn't really change the way gender is defined in science or how it is being defined colloquially more and more commonly- as distinct from sex. Having your own definition isn't exactly wrong per say, but when you're communicating with others it's just like deciding that your personal definition of tree only includes pine trees and no others, or that all conservatives who believe in gun control are actually liberal.

[MackFreeze]

There are only two genders I refer too be man and woman, and since there isn't any other genders in existence I think I will fair quite fine if I engage in a discussion talking about gender.

As for trees, those are not subjective they are things as in a noun. You put the word (Pine) in front of tree to distinguish what kind of tree it is, just as you do with (mountain) lion, or (Alaskan) Husky. They all relate to what the object is. A mountain lion lives on mountains besides lions who live on the plains of Africa. These terms are to be more specific and communicate constructively. That is not societal constructs that is just language and word usage.

[cipher42]

It's not that other genders don't exist, it's that you and some others don't believe they exist. There is a difference, and a significant one at that.

Male and female are nouns as well? My point is that what a tree is is socially defined. Like, palm trees are genetically speaking closer to a grass than to a tree, but we call them trees and thus they are. If we were to decide collectively that only pine trees were trees and all other types of tree were something else, that would be true. Same with colors. Like, some people say there are six main colors, some people count indigo as a separate color. It's not objective, it's arbitrarily socially defined.

[MackFreeze]

If you look at a pine tree, a palm tree, or a oak tree you will find they all have similarities in common! If you cut them in half, there are layers which distinct their age, they have leaves to determine what tree they are we use names like oak, birch, pine, etc.

We use words for defintions and communication.

[cipher42]

Yes, and trees also have similarities to bushes. And again, palm trees are more genetically similar to grass than to oak trees. But because they look like trees and fit some of the criteria we use to define trees, we call them trees. We do use words for definitions. The thing is, that what traits we define something by is not objective, but socially determined. For instance, deciding that to be a tree, something needs a main woody stem, and also deciding that though most trees have green leaves, green leaves are not a necessary requirement for tree-ness.

[MackFreeze]

Words come from Latin or Greek roots, sometimes Germanic, Or Spanish, Sometimes Irish, Italian, or Sweedish. Englsih is a jumble of words put together. Scientists or botanists are better than this than I but there is a reason for trees are called trees and bushes bushes. I wouldn't say its left to societal constructs but to those who contructed the language. In terms of defintions which come from the combination of roots above, we get scientifc results of why we call wrods what they are.

[cipher42]

The etymology of words doesn't matter, doesn't affect their objective or subjectiveness. And there is a reason trees are called trees, and that's because we call them trees. That's it. And that's why language can change over time, and why new terms for specific types of tree or bush or rock and be created. It's similar to Pluto being classified as a planet and then having that classification changed. It's not that Pluto itself changed, it's that we decided to change what Pluto was categorized as.

[MackFreeze]

Okay, thats cool

[artisticbeliever]

I hate to say the unpopular opinion but, humans are homo sapiens (or a fancy word for another species that fall underneath the Animalia kingdom that occupy this planet). In other words, we are no better than any other animal minus, the fact that we have created structure in our society. If we were doing this same study on an ape (a member of the Hominidae group) our closest relative this would not be a question? Roles were defined at birth. The differnce is that humans, unlike any other species, ask questions, hence how our structure was formed. If we were in survival mode where or society was threatened, I'm pretty sure our primitive nature would come into effect. Your theory is true as long as our society is in renovation mode not, restoration or being built from the ground up. If something were to happen where we need to rebuild society (such as a plague, catastrophic natural disaster, or a species with a high intelligence coming along), no one would care about their gender role, they would look to survive. Fortunately, we do not live in that time currently so, I believe everyone should enjoy the freedoms they do have. For those who choose to be transgender, I believe it's your life live it how you want. I only ask that you do not try to force people to believe in your take on living life because I'm pretty sure you would not like it if someone did the same to you.

[lord_chilled]

So you made your own definition of whats a social construct, and extended it to everything. Okay then, if everything is a social construct, i really dont get the point of your take. Thats like saying the earth is round with a title that says the earth is round.

Still give you props for explaining it in a good way.

The way i see it, you made a distinction between social constructs where humans put definitions/boundaries om existing things/objects, and man made physical objects as well as man made theory. Id say for the general population, only the latter define as "social constructs" in the sense that the word is used. The former are just things and facts while the middle one (man made physical objects) are just plainly "objects".

Going by the general populations definition, in my opinion neither gender nor sex is a social construct. They are just things that are. They are there. They exist. They werent made up.
By your definition they fall into naturally occuring things which were "classified/constructed " by humans.

Id really like to offer a rebuttal to this take because i love to argue with feminists over this issue 😉, but you really dont seem to have any point or opinion in your take

[cipher42]

I didn't make my own definition, I'm using the sociological one as I understand it. The colloquial definition is perhaps the more commonly understood one, but that doesn't make it the only correct one.

And my point in this take is to explain the academic definition of social construct, and why gender falls under that definition. Since so many people only understand the colloquial definition, it leads to confusion when people try to use the academic one, particularly in relation to gender, which is the most well known example of the social construct argument. As such, I wrote a take trying to clarify what is meant by social construct so more people might accurately understand the argument.

[lord_chilled]

Yeah and surprisingly i agree with you. basically everything we have termed as a word is something that we "constructed". I, e. Its a social construct. We determined its definition and boundaries. But it doesn't really matter because people only apply the colloquial meaning of the word when they use it. To most people, the meaning of a social construct is something which has ONLY been defined by people and has no proof of existence in nature. Thats what all the fuss is about.

If people applied the definition that you applied, then there is no doubt that gender , along with anything else, is obviously a social construct.
But then everything is, and the word loses its meaning. If everything is a social construct, whats there to argue about?
People use the colloquial definition because it lets them argue about wether gender/sex is naturally occuring or socially engineered.

[lord_chilled]

Tbh i think you did the take pretty well. It was a bit short and ended rather abruptly but you got your point across and it made sense.

I guess you are quite an interesting rival after all, to an antifeminist like me. I respect anyone that outclasses me in terms of wits , even for just once. (even if im not particularly fond of them), but your strategy of argueing seemed to me like it was more of a demand for evidence followed by dismissal rather than a back and forth.
However , your take, i think its really good and well written. I think its the only take on gag i have read for which i can't really give any criticism.

[cipher42]

The point of social constructs is that most of our categories for things are arbitrary. Knowing that, a lot of knowledge can be gained by studying how and why people construct their categories, and comparing the social constructs of one culture to those of another.

That all said, I do still think gender is to some degree socially constructed in the colloquial sense, as while some aspects of gender have a basis in objective reality, others are entirely invented by a culture, such as what clothes or what colors are associated with specific genders.

[lord_chilled]

Well,,, you make it difficult for me to disagree.

I was gonna say i dont share the tought that gender is a social construct , but yeah clothes amd colors associated with gender has no real natural basis. that is entirely man made and can change from culture to culture.

So, i agree completely

[cipher42]

Cool deal, glad you get where I'm coming from.

[lord_chilled]

Yeah, likewise

[Chief16]

But you haven't provided any sort of evidence, data, corroboration or scientific proof to back what you've said.
All you make are strawma... Oops, straw (woman) arguments based on your own precluded assumptions based on how you want society to be.
It says nothing, proves nothing save your deliberate ignorance to scientific reality of Social Darwinism where gender plays a huge role.
A man is a man and a woman is a woman and we collectively belong to the race of Homo Sapiens. Any species of Mammals has two genders, fourth grade science fact.

[cipher42]

I can't make a strawman argument if all I'm talking about is my own argument. I think you may have your fallacies confused.

And as I explained, gender is not synonymous with sex. Read before you respond please.

[Chief16]

How isn't it so? scientific observation propagates social division, its a truth. Its even observed in lesser sentient species like apes, canines etc. Look at the social structure pyramid in chimps, wolves etc. Especially wolves, lead by an Alpha and the Pack Mother. Its a straw man argument, because you have nothing to show for what you say.

[cipher42]

The term gender is not used to mean sex in scientific contexts, and thus is not synonymous scientifically speaking. It is more commonly used that way in colloquial English, but in this context that is not the usage I am adhering to.

And that's not what a straw man argument is, unless you're using your personal definition and not the one anyone else would be likely to understand. But anyways, this is really a philosophical argument, which by nature doesn't use or require hard scientific evidence. I mean this sort of issue is recognized and studied in cognitive science, so ask them if you care so much, but I don't really feel the need to provide hard sources for a "this is how I see the world as functioning" take.

[Chief16]

Indeed, that is why I said 'deliberate ignorance'.

[cipher42]

Deliberate ignorance of what exactly? I fully understand and acknowledge the existence of typical sex/gender roles in reproduction, evolution, and general social function. I just maintain that sex and gender are nevertheless socially constructed, even if certain traits that make up those categories have objective scientific existence.

[Chief16]

You acknowledge gender, yet you call it a 'social construct'? Then by that very definition, sexuality is also a social construct. So the LGBT community is fighting over nothing? Phew, what was all that noise about? The world is saved.

[cipher42]

I say again, read before you respond. You clearly don't understand what I mean when I say social construct, despite the fact that I explained it within the first two paragraphs of the take. So please, go reread and come back once you understand my argument, rather than using the actual strawman fallacy to argue against me.

[Chief16]

But I did read your entire article. And since you're pretty sure about yourself, I have nothing to add. I won't waste your time any further.

[cipher42]

You clearly didn't, if you think I wouldn't qualify sexual orientation as a social construct, and if you think something being a social construct makes it meaningless.

[Anonymous]

Gender is NOT a social construct and transgenders actually proves this. Why do you think when a man who identifies as a woman, goes through transition to look like a "woman" ? That's because there are only two genders (male, female) which is determined by the genitals you were born with. So if a man wants to be a women, he wears dresses, gets fake boobs, does hormone treatment and chop of his dick and replace it with a vagina. Why? Because women have vaginas and men have dicks, that is why even before birth, the gender of the baby is revealed when the woman gets an ultrasound. So if gender was a social construct a transgender would not need to transition, but the fact that they do clearly proves... Women (female)= Vagina, Man (male)= penis and that is a biology FACT and NOT a construct.

Please go back the the drawing board.

[cipher42]

Again, intersex people exist. And transgender people don't have to go through any sort of surgery or alteration to be considered transgender, they simply do so to better fit society's perfect model of the gender they identify as, similar to how women wear dresses to be more feminine.

[Opinion Owner]

Out of 1 million people, how many are born intersex? The answer, a few because intersex is an abnormality they same for transgenders.
Think about common sense and logic and go back to human nature and you will see that in order for the species to survive , men have to mate with women in order to reproduce. So nature would not try to sabotage itself , that is why only a very, very tiny percentage of the population are LGBT.
So question... what defines a women, and what defines a man?

[cipher42]

Something being abnormal doesn't mean we can disregard it. As for nature "sabotaging" itself, you understand that evolution requires variation? Mutations are perfectly natural, and whether those mutations themselves are beneficial or not has no bearing on their validity. Besides, you realize that in some instances having non-reproductive members of society can be advantageous? Take bees for instance, where all female worker bees are infertile.

[Opinion Owner]

We are not talking about bees.
If gender is a Social Construct , who constructed it?
If gender is a Social Construct , why is it that lost tribes which are now being discovered in the amazon, which are so behind the civilized world and have no access to the civilized world, still follow Gender norms or Stereotypes? How is this possible that the men go out to hut and build the houses and the women stay at home (the huts) and take care of the kids and cook? How is this possible? You want the answer... Gender is influence by natural human behavior and not by some stupid construct.
Are you aware that women hear higher pitch sounds so that when a baby cries at night the mother would be awaken? is that a social construct as well? You need a biology class.

[cipher42]

We're talking about nature, and bees are a part of nature, are they not?

Society constructed and constructs it.

Those tribes don't have the same gender norms as us. Maybe some shared ones, but certainly some different ones as well, because their construction of gender is different. Gender may be influenced by inherent biological traits among people, yes, but that makes it no less socially constructed.

The ways we evolved to better survive as a species are not social constructs, but the categorization of such things is. Did you read my take or not? Seems not, as you can't seem to grasp even the most basic concepts I laid out.

[Gayview_Mahat]

This pink anon gets it.

[Opinion Owner]

Which society Asker? Every country has a different society and different norms.
The fact that almost everyone disagree with you should say something about your theory. Go back to biology class and try again. You are clueless as to what you're saying so don't even reply because talking to you is like talking to a brick wall.

[Opinion Owner]

@Gayview_Mahat Thanks mate :)

[cipher42]

Yes, and most every country has slightly different gender norms.

Bandwagon fallacy.

Biology is not the relevant science when talking about gender. Psychology, cognitive science, and sociology are.

[Opinion Owner]

Biology is not relevant science? The one thing that dictates who we are isn't relevant?
You need to check a doctor after making such a ludicrous statement.

[cipher42]

Nope. Because biology is about the physical nature of things, and social constructs aren't about that, but about the categories we place things in and the meaning we assign to them. That's sociology or psychology or a little bit linguistics.

[Opinion Owner]

Biology dictates who we are smarty pants.
I'm not even going to go into details because clearly you are uneducated in the field of biology. Maybe you need to drop that gender study class and study basic biology because clearly you are clueless about life.

[cipher42]

Okay but it does so on a physical level. It doesn't dictate the abstract categories or meanings we give to things. What, do you think that the word "government" or the concept "chair" have some kind of origin in our DNA or something? If so, I'd like you to explain exactly how and provide a source.

[Opinion Owner]

Are you on drugs?
explain why a transgender woman , cuts their dick of and gets a fake vagina and boobs. If genitalia doesn't say if you're a man or woman?

[cipher42]

Sweetie, you ain't slick, it's plenty obvious you're trying to distract from the argument. Answer the question or admit you don't know.

[Opinion Owner]

The government and gender are two different things.
I like that you call me sweetie, did you steal that from @taytay21 after she wpied the floor with you😂😂😂😂
you don't even understand basic biology so explaining anything to you would be like teaching a monkey to fly a plane. Good luck living in your crazy little world. Thank god everyone here disagreed with you.

[cipher42]

So you don't have an answer then, or you just don't understand the concept of analogies, in which case you're way stupider than I thought. And actually an awful lot of people agreed with me once they actually understood the argument. But that only worked for those smart enough to understand, so I guess you're out of luck.

[rjroy3]

Social Construction: " an invention or artifact of a particular culture or society which exists solely because people agree to behave as if it exists, or agree to follow certain conventional rules."

The definition is pretty clear. A social construct is something that only exists if we all agree to act as if it exists. That's pretty straightforward criteria. Like Legal codes, the value of currency or a set standard of moral codes. Things that only exists because we agree to say they do.
The moment something exists outside of whether or not we agree, then it is not within the delineation of "Social Construct". Like Gender, which directly associates to your sex, which is a reality outside of whether or not we agree they exist. The terms used to define them are social constructs, but the realities of which we speak are just that. Realities and not social construction.

Man made physical constructs don't even fall under social construction definition.

[cipher42]

That definition is not the one I am using, and honestly I can't even figure out where you got that one. I am using the sociological academic definition, which is as I explained it to be.

[rjroy3]

psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Social_construction
" A social construction, or social construct or a social concept is an invention or artifact of a particular culture or society which exists solely because people agree to behave as if it exists, or agree to follow certain conventional rules. Obvious social constructs include such things as games, language, money, school grades, titles, governments, universities, corporations and other institutions. "

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/social-construct
" a social mechanism, phenomenon, or category created and developed by society; a perception of an individual, group, or idea that is 'constructed' through cultural or social practice"

Cursory knowledge from sources like Khan academy as well. www.khanacademy.org/.../social-constructionism

Take your pick really. The base concept remains consistent across every source I've found. Usually from sociological sites all pertaining to institutions and how they relate to the individual.

[rjroy3]

Your stance is strong social constructionism. Which is fine, but it's one theory that falls short with little scrutiny. There's a better case to be made for weak social constructionism. The "everything is a social construct" idea doesn't work. But it's an esoteric topic to begin with so good luck to all who attempt to give it any noteworthy weight in meaning.

[cipher42]

I like the wikipedia one best. "A social construct or construction concerns the meaning, notion, or connotation placed on an object or event by a society, and adopted by the inhabitants of that society with respect to how they view or deal with the object or event."

So the category we place objects into- calling a palm tree a tree for instance. Or even the category "tree" in general. Trees physically exist whether or not we agree they do, but the category "tree" and the meaning that holds to us are social conventions. That's why I hold that "everything" is a social construct. Rather, not everything, but all our categories, and since we have a category for pretty much everything..

In any case, I realize the concept isn't particularly practically applicable. But I find it is important to understand that our categories for things aren't objective, and that like words, categories only mean what they do because we say they do.

[rjroy3]

It may be more effective to say all terminology and theoretical concepts are social constructs if that's what you're intending to get at. The way your take reads is stating that all things objectively are a social construct and therefore nothing is real. Lines such as this:

"For instance, chairs, bowls, beds, things that humans invented as well as categorized. Those are social constructs both in the sense that the differences between them (say between a bowl and a cup) are arbitrarily determined, and in the sense that the objects themselves are created by humans"

The concept of chair is just that a concept. But the chair itself is not a social construct. Kind of like how a stump is a stump, but a stump is also a chair. A person makes it a chair. But a chair is a chair, even if a person doesn't make it a chair. But once a chair is made it is always a chair, whether or not you and I agree it's a chair. Tho a chair could be used as a table, even tho it's a chair.

[rjroy3]

That word play was fun for me lol

[cipher42]

I made sure to make a very clear distinction between the categories we place things in and their physical forms. I even say in the second paragraph "First off, I need to make a distinction between the actual objective physical nature of things and the categories we build to understand those things. When I say everything is a social construct, I don’t actually mean absolutely everything, merely the categories and terms we use to describe everything"

And tbh I'd disagree that a chair remains a chair regardless of reclassification. Like "chair" is its original intent, but if the meaning of "chair" shifts and a new word is created for that the chair is, then the chair is now that new thing instead of a chair. It might not even remain a thing used for sitting on (what we use "chair" to mean) given the right circumstances. But that's all kinda a matter of opinion I think.

[oddwaffle]

No matter how much you pray, a rock is still a rock. No matter how society believes the Sun surrounds the Earth, the Sun still does not.

No matter how you perceive or even believe something, it will never change itself. it is you who have changed, not the world.

A cat can be called a dog. A man can be called a woman. A rock can be called a god. However, a cat is still a cat. A man is still a man. A rock is just a rock. Name changing can never defines something.

Social construct is just a scam at the highest level. Perception can define action but perception can not change reality.

[oddwaffle]

A person is more than the sum of all his parts. You can not simply reject him because he wanted to be a woman. At the same time, you can't just call him a woman even though he got his sex changed.

Sure you can use 'she' to feel politically correct or just simply honor the wish of the person. It matters not. He is a transgender then he is a transgender. He knows it. You knows it. Heaven knows it. Earth knows it. He can't change what he is. He can only change how people perceive him and live in the delusion that he wasn't a transgender.

[cipher42]

If you read the take, you'd realize I never said something being socially constructed means it can be changed. The point of social construction is that things can be recategorized, and that the categories we use to understand the world are subjective. For instance, Pluto used to be a planet, but that changed to dwarf planet. It's not that Pluto itself changed, it's that our understanding of it did.

I can call a person a woman just because they got their sex changed, if my definition of woman depends on the current external genetalia of a person.

[oddwaffle]

That's the whole point of it. It's perception vs objective observation. You don't define gender based on a subjective point of view. It's incorrect and unscientific. You need to stick with the actual definition.

The definition of gender is really simple. If you have sexual dimorphism then you have male fertilize the egg of the female. So unless you can fertilize eggs (genetically speaking) then you can't be a male. If you can then you are male. Even if you choose not to or have a sex change in the middle.

So unless you can actually sex change and start producing fertile eggs (again genetically) then you aren't female. Maybe a frog can do that but not mammals like us.

[cipher42]

Everything is defined subjectively. No concept has an inherent definition, we create those definitions for categories which we create to understand the objective world.

And that's not the definition of gender, that's A definition of sex, though even there it's not the only definition.

[oddwaffle]

There is a reason why we define something before we accept it. We can get the wrong observation but we don't get wrong definition that often.

For example we defined a dwarf planet with certain characteristics and we also define planet with certain characteristics. That definition doesn't change. We observed Pluto to be a planet which were wrong. We didn't define Pluto to be a planet. We gave the wrong conclusion.

That means having a sex change does not change the definition. You can change the name which is wrong based on the definition. You can not change definition subjectively. You can't change gender definition every time some frog change their sex (they do that often btw).

[cipher42]

There is no wrong definition, only definitions that people do not understand or definitions that do not match how a word is used.

We did define Pluto as a planet. We then learned new information that would have caused us to change the definition of planet to exclude Pluto and create a new category called "Dwarf planet", which we create a definition for such that Pluto fell into it.

Again, gender is defined as being different from sex. In academic speak, gender is the social categories we place people in, which are related to sex but are not the same.

[oddwaffle]

We didn't define Pluto as a dwarf planet. We called Pluto as a dwarf planet because we thought it matched the definition of a dwarf planet. This is an extremely important distinction in science.

It doesn't matter if we had the definition of dwarf planet before or after the reclassification of Pluto. This is extremely important.

We compare if something matches with the definition. Not create a definition that fit something.

[oddwaffle]

Gender is a strange part as it is not a science. We often confused it with science.

So you can be a male (sex) woman (gender) by it's definition. Or female (sex) woman (gender).

However, this is easily misunderstood because we often use gender as sex.

[cipher42]

Yes, we did. The category "dwarf planet" was literally created for Pluto in 2006. It used to be there were only planets and asteroids until the 1990s, when we found out that the size spectrum of celestial bodies was different than we thought, and thus created more specific categories for it. Those categories weren't discovered, they were created, and things from existing categories were moved around accordingly.

All definitions are man-made. When we create new color words, we are not discovering new colors, we are creating more exclusive and specific categories for existing ones.

[Investigator]

The logic of the title is self-refuting. If your argument is, "since everything is a social construct, everything is interchangeable", it is a false equivocation of absurd proportions. You are conflating the observation of concrete, physical characteristics with man-made language, and somehow you believe or your logic seems to be that, by changing the definitions or words used to describe things, you can change what they actually are. This is total bullshit.

Gender is not a social construct; the behaviors observable in people follow directly from their biological imperatives. How those imperatives are addressed is socially dictated, but the only "construct" is how the words make a person perceive the actions, not what actually occurs nor what biological organs allow those actions to occur. If we suddenly started using the "boy" to describe what we currently describe as a girl, the only that changes is the words used. We'd still have to specify what parts a "boy" would have.

[cipher42]

If you actually read the take, you should know that I am not conflating anything. I in fact made a very specific point of making a distinction between socially constructed categories and the physical objects those categories are constructed around. Please, try to do a better job reading the argument thoroughly in the future, such that you don't use strawman arguments like this one.

[Investigator]

Then try to summarize what you are trying to explain in one or two sentences, because I'm not about to read an entire page of explanations of social construct. I've heard this line of thinking before and it's almost not worth refuting because of the sheer amount of bullshit to process.

You ever heard of an elevator pitch? Try it sometime.

[cipher42]

If you're not going to read the take, don't comment. And if you refuse to read anything longer than two sentences, I highly doubt you understand this concept at all, so your opinion that it's bullshit isn't really worth much.

[carpentiero]

yust stop insulting those entering a debate with you
or the world will become a lonely place for you

by now i would say you are a educated troll

[cipher42]

@carpentiero These people aren't trying to enter a debate with me, they're trying to enter a debate with a fictionalized version of me who holds opinions which I do not. I'm perfectly civil with people who actually want a debate, but people who just want to be right about something I'm not going to go to any lengths to be nice to.

[Vyxzuw]

An XX female who is born with a penis, is still female. Same with an XY male who is born with a vagina.
They are not fully functional. They were produced by hormonal issues, and are environmental mutations, not genetic ones.

Someone who has a different set of chromosomes than the standard pair, is a different sex. Although one that society hasn't assigned a gender idea to. It's still a set thing.

The issue is saying gender is a social construct, like we came up with it. It's not. We can't change our gender. No amount of hormonal usage will make you a different gender. You may appear outwardly to be a different gender, but you still are not.
The same way that someone like Michael Jackson cannot bleach his skin and become white.
It's an attempt to categorize an actual physical thing. Reality constructed it, we simply give it a name.

Now, gender ROLES are a fully social construct.

[cipher42]

That's only chromosomal sex. The issue is that chromosomes are not the be all end all determiner of sex, as as I noted sex tends to be defined by external genetalia as well, and by other factors in some instances.

Gender being a social construct doesn't mean you can change it. It just means gender as a category is societal created and defined. Also, gender is not a physical thing, that's what sex is.

[Vyxzuw]

No, GENDER has been defined as external genitalia, not sex. And incorrectly.

A man who has had his penis and testes removed is a man who has had his penis and testes removed, not a non-man.
A woman who has a mastectomy doesn't become less of a woman because of it.
They are a man and a woman. Physical appearance doesn't change that.
***
Of COURSE you can change a societal construct, because it's something we came up with. We do it with words all the time. Because that is a societal construct.
We came up with it, and can do what we want with it.

Hot used to mean just something referring to temperature, not it means other things as well. And if used enough in one context that people stop using it to refer to temperature, it will stop being what it once was.
That's what a societal construct is.

What you are talking about is a definition of a real thing. Like a triangle. We created the WORD triangle, but it refers to an actual thing.

We can't PICK it's meaning. We didn't define it.

[cipher42]

No? Doctors determine the sex of a baby by looking at its genetalia, not by testing its chromosomes. Gender isn't to do just with genetalia, but rather is the social/psychological traits of a person, at least that's how it tends to be defined in scientific fields.

As for people having their genetalia removed, while genetalia aren't the exclusive determiners for sex, they are part of it. Thus why it's sex reassignment surgery and not gender reassignment.

Did you read my take? Do you understand how colors are societal constructs? It's not that we create the colors themselves, it's that we determine which colors are which.

[Vyxzuw]

"Doctors determine the sex of a baby by looking at its genetalia, not by testing its chromosomes."
No, a doctor TRIES to quickly determine it's sex by doing that. If there is confusion, then they do a chromosome test.

"Thus why it's sex reassignment surgery and not gender reassignment."
Actually they use both interchangeably. Mostly because if you actually changed your sex, then you also would change your gender.
With the implication that changing your genitalia and hormone levels makes you a different sex.

"Did you read my take? Do you understand how colors are societal constructs? It's not that we create the colors themselves, it's that we determine which colors are which."
The colors are not societal constructs, they are a scientific attempt to categorize and define a physical phenomenon called color.

Democracy is a societal construct, we came up with the idea and definition. It didn't exist until we did. Hence we CONSTRUCTED it.

[cipher42]

No, they don't. If there's confusion, the child is usually labeled intersex. There's even rules as far as what size of penis/clitoris qualifies a child as being intersex. That said, if you could find me a credible scientific source affirming that sex is based on chromosomes alone, I'd be interested in reading it.

As far as I'm aware, gender reassignment surgery is a colloquial term at best, and potentially just an outdated one. The scientific term is sex reassignment.

So you didn't actually read what I said then? The way I am using social construct is as meaning that the CATEGORY is socially constructed, not the thing itself. Things that are socially constructed as both their category and their essences are more socially constructed, but even trees and colors are socially constructed to a degree.

[Vyxzuw]

The category is not socially constructed, it's based on as close to as possible physical data.
The TERM or WORD is a social construct, but saying tree or 'bark-flower' isn't irrelevant.

"A social construct or construction concerns the meaning, notion, or connotation placed on an object or event by a society, and adopted by the inhabitants of that society with respect to how they view or deal with the object or event. In that respect, a social construct as an idea would be widely accepted as natural by the society, but may or may not represent a reality shared by those outside the society, and would be an "invention or artifice of that society."[2]

A major focus of social constructionism is to uncover the ways in which individuals and groups participate in the construction of their perceived social reality. It involves looking at the ways social phenomena are created, institutionalized, known, and made into tradition by humans."
Defined by wikipedia.

[Vyxzuw]

Note: It refers to "the meaning, notion, or connotation placed on an object or event by a society"
not to the term of that object.

Gender ROLES are a social construct, gender is not. As YOU said sex is the physical part, gender is the combined bits of physical, psychological, and social.
The physical and psychological are not social constructs, that's based on reality.
Gender Identity and Roles are, and are thus social constructs. (Well, gender identity is more of a person construct, actually.)

So no, color is not a social construct. It's a SCIENTIFIC one. It's an attempt to identify a physical phenomenon.
It's not a social attempt to decide how we feel about it.

"A major focus of social constructionism is to uncover the ways in which individuals and groups participate in the construction of their perceived social reality."
We don't vote on the perception of science. We are either right or wrong.

Social construct CAN'T be wrong, because it's just what society finds acceptable.

[cipher42]

"based as close as possible" So even you don't think it's perfect? And even you acknowledge that it's a category that we create? It being a man-made category is all that's meant by social construct. I made it clear in my take that I didn't mean the objective physical forms of things were socially constructed, nor are the patterns we see in nature (like sex). But the categories we use to understand those forms and those patterns are.

You realize science is a construct too? As I mentioned, science is a method humanity uses to understand the world, it does not exist outside of society.

And yes, our categories for color are our attempt to identify an objective physical thing. That's pretty much exactly how I explained it in my take, did you not read it? The divisions we place between different colors, and the categories created through those divisions are the socially constructed part of this.

[Vyxzuw]

No, so color is a bad example, because there is a scientific and social idea of color.

Science wise, we understand that each wavelength is a color. Note: We came to understand it, it wasn't created.

Socially, we agree that RED means a collection of colors that we deem as RED. WE made the collection and idea of RED. WE decide what is RED. WE can change it to mean whatever collection we want.
WE construct it.

As opposed to Science revealing what we know.

WE decide what a male and female is to our society. (Gender Role) We DON'T decide what a Male and Female is, we learn what it is. (And yes, there is more than just Male and Female, and our understanding of that is broadening.)

By saying something is a construct, you are saying we make it and have control over it's meaning.
But we don't with Sex. We DO with Gender Identity.

[Vyxzuw]

Again:
" In that respect, a social construct as an idea would be widely accepted as natural by the society, but may or may not represent a reality shared by those outside the society, and would be an "invention or artifice of that society.""
Gender is not an invention or artifice of our society. It existed before we even formed a society.

Gender Roles are an invention. And that is part of Gender. But the physical and psychological aspects were created through evolution, not a society.

If we didn't invent it, then it's not a construct, it's an understanding.

[cipher42]

God damn dude, have you still not read the take? Again, social construct does not imply that the thing itself does not objectively exist. Social construct refers to the labels or categories we apply to a thing, which we imbue with meaning. Color exists objectively as wavelengths of light. However, what we define as color, and especially which colors we define as which, is socially constructed. That's all that I mean by "color is socially constructed".

We do decide what male and female are in terms of sex though. We decide what defines male and what defines female. Patterns in differences in genetalia and chromosomes and hormones exist objectively, but we decide what those patterns mean. We decide whether sex is defined primarily by genetalia or primarily by chromosomes or by other traits or by a mix, and we decide what qualifies someone as being "intersex". Thus, we construct the category of sex around existing biological traits.

[Vyxzuw]

"We do decide what male and female are in terms of sex though."
No, we don't. We come to a better understanding of what Male and Female is.

If one person decides on what something is, then it's not a social construct, because he's not in a society, which requires more than one person.
One person can decide what a male and female is.
While a social structure is required for what a Male and Female is supposed to do within that society.
The society construct what Male and Female means to that society. As in how to do with it socially. Or what is Masculine and Feminine.

But only one person is needed to know what a color is. Hence it's not a social construct.
White means purity is a social construct. Red meaning passion is a social construct.
But white and red are not.

[cipher42]

The issue is that the concepts of "male" and "female" are man made. We come to a better understanding of how chromosomes and genetalia relate perhaps, but we decide what that means for our categories. We could just as well decide that male and female sex is determined solely by genetalia, and that chromosomal sex is a different category entirely.

The one person/several people distinction I don't think is particularly useful. Colors as defined by an individual are still a construct if that individual is creating their own categories with their own meanings. Like, one person could categorize blue and purple as the same color, and that would still be just as constructed as a society categorizing the same spectrum of wavelengths of light as the separate colors of blue, indigo, and purple. Thus, the category of "red" is a social construct, as we decide where that category begins and ends.

[Vyxzuw]

"So the way I use the term, it essentially means concepts that society has created in order to understand the world."
Yes, I understand that, but the question is what is the social construct of social construct.
It's not how YOU define the term, but how we collectively define it.
Hence why I linked the definition.

This ties into what I mean by single and social construct though.
You may have a cognitive construct that is different than the social one that is used.
You can choose to have it mean whatever you want, but if it differs from the social one, then it's not useful. (Pointing out how single versus social IS important.)

"So the concept of tree for instance, as trees exist objectively, but the meaning we place on plants that makes them trees or non-trees makes the concept of tree a social construct."
No. The meaning for what we DO with trees is, but not what a tree is.
Is it for firewood? Or something to be protected? Etc. But not what a tree is.

[Vyxzuw]

"Evolution is absolutely a scientific theory (or perhaps collection of theories depending), I don't know where you get the idea that it's not."
"A scientific theory is an explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can, in accordance with the scientific method, be repeatedly tested, using a predefined protocol of observations and experiments." (Again wikipedia)
Show me a link to the experiments that I can test Evolution, please.
(Again, not arguing against evolution, just pointing out that it is not actually a scientific theory.)

"We could just as well decide that male and female sex is determined solely by genetalia, and that chromosomal sex is a different category entirely."
No, we can't just do that. If we do, then we are either getting closer to the true definition, or moving away from it.

"The issue is that the concepts of "male" and "female" are man made."
No, male and female are not. But what it means to BE male and female is.

[cipher42]

Again, perhaps we understand the definition differently. I am using the definition you linked, but perhaps the way I am using it differs from the way you understand it. So the question is, what do you understand social construct to mean?

"No. The meaning for what we DO with trees is, but not what a tree is."
It's in the definition buddy. "A social construct or construction concerns the meaning, notion, or connotation placed on an object or event by a society, and adopted by the inhabitants of that society with respect to how they view or deal with the object or event." The meaning placed on trees. That's not what we do with trees so much as what we understand tree to mean, as I read it at least. The definition placed on the word "tree" kinda.

[Vyxzuw]

Actually, it's in the last part...
" with respect to how they view or deal with the object or event.""

[cipher42]

Yes and? What a tree is defined as is part of how we view trees. What trees are used for is kind of a part of how we view trees, but what they ARE is part of it as well.

[Vyxzuw]

Okay, an example.

A dandelion.
How one society views it: a Weed. What do they do with it?: Kill it.
How another society views it: a Crop. What do they do with it?: They make dandelion wine.
How another society views it: a Flower. What do they do with it?: Collect it and use it for decoration.

Weed, Crop and Flower, are social constructs. (Well, technically flower is also used to refer to a type of plant in a scientific perspective.)
Dandelion is an object.

We can change what Weed, Crop and Flower mean, we can't change what a dandelion is.
It's a universally understood thing. (For anyone that has encountered one, at least.)
Dandelion is a word, not a construct.

For instance, we can decide that crop means something that has nutritional value. Or it could mean something that has a use, such as cotton for clothes.
We thus changed the meaning of the social construct known as Crop.

A word is a verbal/literal representation of a thing, not a construct.

[cipher42]

The word and category of "dandelion" are constructed too. The physical dandelion is not, but the category "dandelion" is- we constructed what flowers are dandelions in the same way we would construct what plants are weeds. Trees are a good example of this too. Palm trees are genetically closer to grass than to most trees, but we categorize them as trees anyways.

[Vyxzuw]

No, because we aren't constructing the meaning of those words.
The meaning comes from nature. We are just trying to define it.

Weed has a constructed meaning, dandelion doesn't. It's meaning is an object.

[cipher42]

The meaning does not come from nature. Plants don't sort themselves into categories, not such distinct ones as we create for them. Again, palm trees. Why are they trees if they're so genetically different from most other trees?

[Vyxzuw]

The meaning comes from nature. We TRY to get as close as possible to that meaning, but are not able to.

As opposed to a social construct where the meaning comes from the society.

A weed is a social construct. It means something is undesired. Nature does not give it that meaning, we do.
A specific type of maple is an object. You are trying to describe that object. So, the meaning you want comes from the object.
And while tree is a collection of objects, it's one where the meaning comes from the objects. They share certain traits. We didn't create those traits.
While weeds are also a collection of objects, the trait of usefulness comes from us. Hence it's a construct.

[Vyxzuw]

""A social construct or construction concerns the meaning, notion, or connotation placed on an object or event by a society, and adopted by the inhabitants of that society with respect to how they view or deal with the object or event. In that respect, a social construct as an idea would be widely accepted as natural by the society, but may or may not represent a reality shared by those outside the society, and would be an "invention or artifice of that society."

Nowhere in this definition does it use the term 'understand'. It talks about how we value something and act towards it. Not how we understand it.

[cipher42]

What, so you believe in inherent names for things? That's a nice notion and all, but I don't really believe in it. There's plenty of fantasy books with magic operating off a similar concept, but as far as I'm concerned the idea is just that- fantasy.

Why describe the maple as a maple though? And why place it in a separate category from a similar tree? What makes various flowers all fall into the category of "dandelion"? What makes a palm tree a tree?

The meaning and connotation placed on an object are the way we understand that object.

[Vyxzuw]

"What, so you believe in inherent names for things?"
No, but the object is not something we create.
Again, we don't create the meaning of the object. We just name it.

Social Construct does not mean Noun.

"Why describe the maple as a maple though?"
So we can talk about it. If we don't have names for things then how would anyone know what anyone is talking about?
Draw pictures?

"And why place it in a separate category from a similar tree? What makes various flowers all fall into the category of "dandelion"? What makes a palm tree a tree?"
So we can understand it.
That's a scientific category. It is can be wrong.
A social construct can't be naturally wrong, it can only have a different value to another society.

[Vyxzuw]

"The meaning and connotation placed on an object are the way we understand that object."
No, read again.

""A social construct or construction concerns the meaning, notion, or connotation placed on an object or event by a society, and adopted by the inhabitants of that society with respect to how they view or deal with the object or event."
It's the meaning and connotation "with respect to how they view or deal with the object or event."

It's not a universal understanding, it's a understanding of it's use to society.

[cipher42]

I never said we created the object, I said we created the category for it. And the meaning of the object is part of the category. Not what the object *is*, but what we view the object as being- aka a palm tree being a tree rather than a grass.

As for scientific categories being wrong, again, going back to Pluto. It wasn't incorrect to define Pluto as a planet, because the term "planet" was defined such that Pluto fit into it. However, we then found new information that would have caused us to either classify all sorts of other celestial bodies as planets, and since we didn't want to do that we simply changed the definition of planet and created a new category that Pluto and those other celestial bodies fit into.

[cipher42]

Definition of understand: "to grasp the meaning of"

[Vyxzuw]

"Definition of understand: "to grasp the meaning of" "
""with respect to how they view or deal with the object or event.""

It's a TYPE of understanding in regards to how it affects society.

"In that respect, a social construct as an idea would be widely accepted as natural by the society, but may or may not represent a reality shared by those outside the society, and would be an "invention or artifice of that society.""
Take a person from any society and show them a palm tree. They now know what it is.
It's meaning is that OBJECT. You can give them a word for it, but it's meaning is not constructed by that word, it was already there.

You can point to the grass, and people can see that it is different. You can describe that difference, but it's meaning already existed.

Weed, however, is societally dependent. It's meaning is only created when you make the word.

That's why you can't apply social construct to everything. It only applies to social ideas.

[cipher42]

How many times do I have to explain that my argument is not what you seem to think it is? For the last time, something being socially constructed does not mean the object itself is variable. It only means that the category placed on that object is. For that palm tree, where one society might classify it as a tree, another might call it a grass. The palm itself is there, and is unaltered, but what the different societies perceive it as is subjective.

[Vyxzuw]

"The palm itself is there, and is unaltered, but what the different societies perceive it as is subjective."
No, because everyone can see what the differences are between a palm tree, a maple and grass. Those differences are not subjective.

If someone calls all those trees, then what they really have done is create a new synonym for plant. And another society will consider it plant in that society's language.
Like in Japanese plant is Kōjō. So, it would then translate to tree, instead of plant.

That isn't making a meaning, that's putting a label ON a meaning. That's just making a word, not making the category.
The category's already exist, we just better understand them.

While Weed is something that we define. Because it's meaning is tied to what the society values, and not to any physical trait.
It's meaning didn't exist before we made it. And can change just because we want it to.

[Vyxzuw]

Okay. An example to help.
Let's create a category for what WE know as a triangle.
That category, which we will call triangle, means an object with at least three sides.

Now, let's look at what WE call a square. It meets that criteria, so it's also a triangle.

Well, that's no good, we need to distinguish them. So, let's redefine triangle to mean EXACTLY three sides. And square to mean four.

Now, does that mean that the MEANING of our previous definition of the word triangle cease to be? No, it exists, but unnamed as what WE call a polygon. That category always exists, and triangle and square always belong to it.

No, weed. Let's look at the dandelion again. We define weed as a useless plant. If a society has not discovered a use for dandelions then it's a weed.
If they have, then it CEASES to be a weed.

What belongs to the social construct known as weed can change according to the values of the society,

While the scientific categories don't change. Only the labels do.

[cipher42]

The category tree does not exist without us creating it. Natural patterns exist, and those may seem like natural categories, but it's us labeling things that actually solidifies those categories. I think you are still misunderstanding my argument. I'm not saying that noble gasses for instance are only physically similar because we say they are- clearly in chemistry especially certain substances have natural similarities. What I mean by social construct is rather the category we create for them- the label we give them essentially.

Really I think we're in agreement here, just you're referring to natural patterns as categories, while I am not because I think those natural patterns are too fluid and not strictly enough defined to be categories in the sense I use the word.

[Vyxzuw]

"What I mean by social construct is rather the category we create for them- the label we give them essentially."

"""A social construct or construction concerns the meaning, notion, or connotation placed on an object or event by a society, and adopted by the inhabitants of that society with respect to how they view or deal with the object or event. In that respect, a social construct as an idea would be widely accepted as natural by the society, but may or may not represent a reality shared by those outside the society, and would be an "invention or artifice of that society.""

Except that social construct doesn't mean the LABEL it means the MEANING.

Yes, language is a social construct, but social construct is referring to what society does with those labels.
Hence, tree is a word. A definition.
What tree means to society is a social construct, but those have different labels.

[Vyxzuw]

Obviously, we both understand what we both are talking about, we just disagree on what definition to use.

I don't think we're going to convince the other one this.
All we'll be doing is coming up with different examples in the hope that it convinces the other that our definition is correct.

That doesn't really matter. It's what society considers the definition.

[cipher42]

I use label or category as part of the meaning. Categories are what we divide things into based on their distinct meanings we give to them. If "tree" had the same meaning as "grass", we would have only one word and only one category for both.

[Vyxzuw]

"I use label or category as part of the meaning"
It doesn't matter how you use it, it matters how it's defined.
If you use a word incorrectly, based on a meaning that you personally understand, then you are not using the correct term.

Again, we disagree on whether either of us is using the term correctly.
Providing examples won't help, as it doesn't prove that the term is being incorrectly used.

Hence, you need to see who else agrees or disagrees with your terminology for social construct.
Based on the responses, and by you feeling the need to explain your version of the term, it would seem that so far people disagree with your definition.

[cipher42]

Yes, but in some cases you can use words slightly incorrectly if they're the closest you can come and you can reasonably expect them to be understood. And since other people have understood my usage of "category" and "label" in this context, I think it's reasonable to believe that they could be understood. That said, I do think both words suit my usage, as sorting any object into a class of objects is attaching a sort of meaning to it (attaching the meaning of "tree" to palm trees). And calling an object part of a class of objects is the meaning of label or category.

[cipher42]

You should also perhaps read the wikipedia article in more depth. It uses both "understanding" and "category" in essentially the same way I do. Here's some specific quotes on that: "Consider a hypothetical claim that quarks are "socially constructed". On one reading, this means that quarks themselves are not "inevitable" or "determined by the nature of things." On another reading, this means that our idea (or conceptualization, or understanding) of quarks is not "inevitable" or "determined by the nature of things". (the second reading being the one I'm using btw)

"Hacking suggests that this third part of the analysis, the "interaction" between a socially constructed category and the individuals that are actually or potentially included in that category, is present in many "social construction" analyses involving types of human beings."

[DonkeyRick69]

Social constructionism or the social construction of reality (also social concept) is a theory of knowledge in sociology and communication theory that examines the development of jointly constructed understandings of the world that form the basis for shared assumptions about reality. The theory centers on the notions that human beings rationalize their experience by creating models of the social world and share and reify these models through language.

[cipher42]

Both those memes are strawmen, as well as demonstrating your own lack of understanding of the very paragraph you yourself quoted. Jesus buddy, if you're gonna provide memes, at least make them quality ones.

[DonkeyRick69]

Straw man argument.
A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man".
The typical straw man argument creates the illusion of having completely refuted or defeated an opponent's proposition through the covert replacement of it with a different proposition (i. e., "stand up a straw man") and the subsequent refutation of that false argument ("knock down a straw man") instead of the opponent's proposition.
This technique has been used throughout history in polemical debate, particularly in arguments about highly charged emotional issues where a fiery "battle" and the defeat of an "enemy" may be more valued than critical thinking or an understanding of both sides of the issue.
I hope this helps you understand these concepts better.

[cipher42]

I understand the concepts perfectly. You apparently do not. Interesting fact: quoting a definition does not prove you understand it, as shown by your evident lack of understanding of the concepts whose definitions you are quoting.

[DonkeyRick69]

As reading your take proves lol.

[cipher42]

Reading my take proves you do not understand those concepts? Good, I'm glad you've realized as much.

[DonkeyRick69]

Or that your take is basically your personal assumptions on social constructs and not factual.

[cipher42]

It's an explanation of social constructionism theory, which I view to be true. That said, if you don't view it as true, it'd be nice of you to explain why.

[DonkeyRick69]

It's not a question of believing or disbelieving it's the use of social construct theory as a broad term for everything.

[cipher42]

What's the issue with that exactly? Everything (all categories anyways) is a social construct, and while you may not understand the use of that view, it is actually very helpful for sociologists and psychologists to understand how people categorize and understand the world, and useful for us to realize that the labels we put on things are distinct from the things themselves.

[troychapman]

wow good take the only my take i actually stuck around to read all of your clearly intelligent grammer was on point its complicated as hell but i have to agree it makes humans seem so complicated that everything you think you know is either made up an illusion or is a fact of reality just twisted and modified to serve our purpose. however i will have to diagree about whatever society says is you can have a bunch of idiots saying one thing but the reality is there completly wrong there just expressing their opinion. etc. people onced believed the worl was flat that if you went to the end of the world you would fall off. now its been scientifically proven the world is round and you can't fall off. hence what society says isn't neccessarily true but what they believe.

[cipher42]

Ya I mean obviously people's perceptions can't change reality, but they can change definitions. Like if people claimed that oranges and tomatoes were the same color, they would be right, but only because that color would then be defined as including the color of tomatoes and the color of oranges, not because the color itself actually changed.

[Anonymous]

TLDR.
People can call themselves whatever they want and claim it is "gender"... but you are either male or female and if you are a male who thinks he is a female or a female who thinks she is a male... you have gender dysmorphia and should get help with that. Society shouldn't support mental issues as "normal behavior".
You can't simply pick or change your age.
You can't pick or change your race.
You can't pick or change your species.
You can't pick or change your biology.
You can lie and pretend you are something else, but you are not actually what you pretend to be.

[cipher42]

Noope. Reread and try again hon.

[Opinion Owner]

Don't need to.
Regardless of what you stated, My comment is still valid.
One can NOT change their gender, you can only make claim to a different one. A doctor will agree with me.

[cipher42]

You clearly do, since you clearly have no idea what my argument even was.

And no, a doctor will not agree with you, not in all likelihood. In fact, the largest association of professional psychologists in the world (and many other major psychological associations as well) disagrees with you. So while perhaps a few doctors might agree with you, those would probably be doctors of fields unrelated to those that study gender, as the consensus in the fields that actually matter here is against you.

[Opinion Owner]

So when you are a born female claiming to be a male, the doctor doesn't have to check you for female related issues any longer, because those biological issues simply stop existing because you claim to be another sex? Um no.
When I said Doctor, I meant medical... not psychologists.

[cipher42]

Sex and gender are different. Again proving you do not at all understand what I wrote.

[Opinion Owner]

I have heard that argument a million times... and like I stated, calling yourself a female doesn't make you a female. Your biology does.
Just like claiming you are 20 when you are 50 doesn't change your actual age.
Claiming you are black when you are white doesn't change your race.
You can say that color is a "social construct" simply because we as people make the distinction between white and black but biologically they are different and even if you are Michael Jackson and bleach your skin, you are still biologically black.

[cipher42]

Please, come back when you've actually read the take. Right now you're just giving idiotic strawman arguments that I already shot down in the take, which you clearly haven't read. If you're going to comment, do so once you actually know what you're commenting on.

[RedVulcan]

Ahhh, someone's done their basic philosophy, gender studies, and creative writing. I enjoyed reading this myTake, and felt that everything except the comparison to political ideologies was spot on. Frankly, I don't feel it's accurate saying liberal beliefs are feminine and vice versa, because there are too many anomalies of liberal men and conservative women.

Also, were you going anywhere with the myTake? It feels surprisingly unemotional and apolitical compared to everything else on this site lol.

[cipher42]

The political ideologies thing wasn't really meant to be about politics being gendered, just political parties vs political leaning being similar in a way to gender vs sex.

And the point was mostly to get people to understand what is typically meant by "social construct" and why people call gender or sex social constructs. People seem to think something being a social construct means it's imaginary, or that it has no basis in objective fact and thus can be easily changed, when that's simply not the case.

Also, half the issue with this kinda view of the world is that it basically leads to the conclusion "nothing means anything, everything is arbitrary", so makes sense that it'd seem apolitical (though certainly not everyone seems to think so).

[RedVulcan]

Agreed, but honestly, the idea that everything is arbitrary, or at least not set in stone, is a valuable thing to keep in mind these days. We should become better at realizing which arbitrary values and beliefs we can and can't change, so that our discussions prove more fruitful (or end earlier).

[cipher42]

Ya that's definitely true. Understanding how categories are constructed and applied is definitely very useful for understanding humans and their interactions, it's just that philosophically speaking it's something of a dead end.

[RegularTK421]

That spectrum you defined concerning sex and gender, really means genetic or hormonal abnormalities or deficiencies. It's like an infant being born with an oversized heart, and then someone gets offended because you simply state the fact that his heart is oversized and that it is a medical problem and genetic defect. No one born with an XY chromosome has a vagina. All intersex people, are xxy chromosome. This is an abnormality, and it's why their genitalia is hard to define because they all develop much differently than the rest of us. Some appear to be more female, others more male. Your average person however, is clearly male or female. About 98 to 99 percent of us. Just like most humans are born with all 5 physical senses. A normal person has all 5 senses. Now some people are unfortunate and are born without one of their senses. This does not make having 5 physical senses a "social construct," because someone wasn't born like the majority of the species.

[cipher42]

If enough members of a certain species have a certain abnormality, that abnormality is then a normal trait of that species. The fact that we view even relatively common anomalies as merely anomalies rather than a category of their own is arbitrarily socially determined, and in that sense is a social construct.

Also, you appear to be entirely uneducated on intersex people based on your statements. First of all, there are people with XY chromosomes and vaginas, it's called Swyer syndrome. Second, having XXY chromosomes is called Kleinfelter syndrome, and is not what all intersex people have, at least not based on the more common definition of intersex.

Finally, we don't actually have 5 senses, we have somewhere between 9 and 21, and senses are a social construct, though of the first sort in my opinion, the same sort that trees and grass are.

[RegularTK421]

@cipher42 Again, not a normal condition. A genetic defect is not normal. A normal trait, is being tall or short, blonde hair or black hair. That is a fucking trait. A genetic disease or abnormality is not a "trait." The absolute numbers of people having these conditions is obviously increasing, because the overall population of the planet is increasing. Far more people have hypertension, yet it is not normal or healthy to have hypertension. Just because many people have something, doesn't make it "normal." This is not a figment of our imagination or a "social construct." Millions of people are diagnosed with cancer, yet it is a medical condition not a benign trait. When someone needs their gonads surgically removed to avoid having tumors by the age of 30, and hormonal therapy or they won't hit puberty, or develop breasts then it isn't a trait.

[cipher42]

Why isn't it normal? Because it is uncommon? Red hair is uncommon, is it not a trait either?

And what relevance does normalicy have at all anyways? Whether a difference is normal or not doesn't affect whether it or the category it is placed in is socially constructed.

Either way, by claiming that certain things are or aren't traits based on their normalicy or benificialness proves my point about social constructs very well- you are picking and choosing arbitrary traits that something must have to qualify it as a certain thing, essentially constructing your own category for "traits" in a similar way to how other similar categories are socially constructed.

[RegularTK421]

Also, if you were right, then geographically isolated cultures would have "socially constructed" vastly different gender categories and what they consequently mean.

[RegularTK421]

Also, Mayan, Incan, and Aztec cultures had gender roles, and different styles of dress for the sexes. Aztec men did not wear women's clothing, or vice versa. So how come, no matter how isolated or different these societies were from each other, dress standards for men and women are distinct and different in all cultures? If it was merely a social construct, wouldn't at least one ancient society have proven your theoretical world view?

[cipher42]

They do. Not all of them, but there are cultures with different gender categories than our own, including non-binary genders.

[cipher42]

That said, I admit there's a possibility that gender has some biological or otherwise scientifically objective basis. However, considering the different gender standards among cultures, that hypothetical basis clearly does not account for the entirety of gender, and even if it did gender would still be a social construct.

[RegularTK421]

@cipher42 I disagree. It's because of obvious biological differences and behaviors that such roles and constructs were consequently assigned. Women nurtured children because their bodies are more suited to do so. Men do not have breasts, and can not breast feed an infant child. At the same time, Men typically were warriors and hunters because a man in his physical prime is generally much stronger than a woman. People historically gravitated towards certain tasks and occupations because they are simply better suited to do so. This stems from logic, survival, and analysis. Technology has simply allowed us to change or challenge tried and true cultural notions. Notions, that have allowed ancient societies and kingdoms to thrive, develop, and ultimately give us the base knowledge that we expand on today.

[RegularTK421]

In other words, things are the way they are for a reason. I don't have to overthink it, pound my fists in the sand, and challenge it because of a few confused lady-boys who want to voluntarily remove their genitals and take artificial hormones the rest of their lives. All because they do not think they were born the "right" gender. I accept what I was born as, and I am what I am. Fuck challenging it, fuck other's "feelings" who really just want to be the center of attention. For most of us, you are either a man, or a woman. For those who really were misfortunate and born with a condition, then they should receive medical treatment to help alleviate their conditions. It's really that simple.

[cipher42]

How much women are responsible for child rearing compared to men varies based on culture. Liking the color pink has no biological basis, nor does enjoyment of shopping, or wearing skirts. While some gendered traits may have biological reasons behind them, their labeling as of one gender or another is still a matter of social construction. But either way, not all gendered traits have biological basis anyhow, and the issue of which traits are gendered and which are not makes gender a social construct in any case.

[RegularTK421]

@cipher42 Because back before formula was invented, you had to breast feed a baby. That's why women HAD to be the primary caretakers of children prior to that modern invention. It is not "culturally" determined. It was a physically necessity otherwise your infant child would starve and die. The labeling of a gender as one or the other, isn't a social construction. You either have a healthy son, daughter, or a biologically abnormal child which is rare. Yes, color association and certain things are cultural, but biological and clear physiological differences between the sexes are not imaginary.

[cipher42]

Primary food providers, not primary care givers over all. Again, the amount of child care specific genders are responsible for varies from culture to culture, and as such is neither objective nor inherent.

And you are again conflating gender with sex. And if you think I use "social construct" to mean imaginary, you either did not read or did not understand my argument, and I would ask you to ensure you do so before trying to refute my argument further.

[Anonymous]

Wait... you mean that eating... drinking... SLEEPING are ALL social constructs that I don't have to believe in? Thank you! I've been trying to figure out why I needed to sleep every night, because that's 8 hours of time wasted! Thanks for this life changing article!

( you did say "everything" )

[cipher42]

If you read what I wrote, you'd understand that something being a social construct does not make it any less real.

[Opinion Owner]

If you're actually 19, you should be able to identify 'sarcasm".

But, this is a really great post, and I like what you've wrote. I just hope people will actually listen. Zeitgeist. If you've never seen it, go to YouTube now.

[cipher42]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Tone is hard to convey over text, and some people are legitimately this stupid (for instance, the majority of the other commenters), so how tf can I be expected to tell?

And noted, thanks for the recommendation

[mamamai]

@cipher42
I had respect for your opinion until you wrote that the majority of other commenters were stupid. Then my opinion turned to she's immature and can't take that the majority says she's wrong. She believes everythings a social construct, except her own thoughts.

[cipher42]

@mamamai Lmao whatever honey. Point is, majority of people on here seem to be responding either without having read the take or without having understood it. In my book, Im perfectly in the right calling that sort of thing stupid. I have no issue with people disagreeing with me, only with people who do so without first understanding my argument.

[mamamai]

@cipher42
Does that make them stupid or you a poor writer. Good old Albert once said "the definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple"

Shocking as it may sound, you may not be as smart as you'd like to believe. If you were maybe your writing would published in a science journal. Which would attract people who enjoy reading abstract thoughts, even if they don't agree.. but instead you are posting this on girlsaskguys.

PS not saying I'm a genius, just saying you definitely aren't

[cipher42]

@mamamai I know I am not a poor writer. I was very explicit in how I explained things, and the fact is that many of the commenters on here very clearly cannot have payed attention to what I wrote based on their responses, as many of them give strawman arguments that have absolutely no relevance to what I said.

And who exactly are you to say who is or isn't a genius? Now, I don't consider myself one, but I do know for a fact that I am relatively smart and well educated as these things go. But either way, it seems to me a bit narcissistic to assume you know so much about me based on just one comment on some random internet site.

[mamamai]

@cipher42
I'll give you my saying you are no genius was a little to far for not knowing you. Am I the narcissist? I fail to see how that makes me a narcissistic. Perhap prejudice would have been a better choice in word.

I never heard of someone describing good writing as something hard to stay interested in until the conclusion. That being said, I suppose good writing is relative to the reader.

[cipher42]

@mamamai Narcissistic because assuming your opinion is objective fact is to me the sign of a narcissist. So assuming you know that I am not a genius because you hold me in low regard and don't want to consider me one.

Exactly, these things are relative. I find there's plenty of good writers who I can't stay interested in reading, because I have a short attention span for non-fiction reading especially. But really, I expect what's going on here is that people read the title of the take, assume I'm talking about social constructs as they understand them (made up/unimportant/changeable concepts) and then reply without bothering to read the take itself and understanding that that's not my argument at all. That, based on my definition of the word, qualifies as stupid.

[mamamai]

@cipher by your definition perhaps we are both narcissistic. You judged before knowing the other commentors on a personal level.

[cipher42]

@mamamai Eeh. Maybe, but I would disagree, as I find "stupid" is such a relative term that what is or isn't stupid is up to my own definition to a degree. As I said, I would call responding to an argument without understanding it "stupid", thus why I would classify many of the other commenters as such. It's not really that I'm making a statement about their intellectual capacity so much as about how I view their behavior, though I admit that might have been unclear through phrasing.