Why do you believe gender is or isn’t a social construct?

[Anonymous]

Updates

+1 y

Sex refers to sexual organs
Vagina and penis are sexual organs
If a person is born with a penis their biological sex is male
If a person is born with a vagina there biological sex is female

[jahaims]

It's not an opinion based debate. It has a definition.

Gender: the male sex or the female sex, especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones, or one of a range of other identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female.

[jahaims]

Sex: either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and most other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions

[Snakeyes7]

It's not a social construct. Because males and females have different brain structures and behaviors by default and they can be witnessed as early as six months. Any conditioning beyond that is built upon by that foundation.

[VictorMachiavelli]

It’s not a social construct because biological differences influence our psychology, as do hormones.

Those who think they were born in the wrong body likely do have brains wired similarly to the opposite sex, but that’s a result of maladaptive mutation. It’s a developmental disorder.

They say that they were born in the wrong body, but they have it backwards. The brain accounts for 84% of the genome, making it a much bigger target for mutation than the body. Meaning that it’s more likely for someone to be born with bad wiring of the brain.

People separate sex and gender just as a way to claim that they’re separate when they’re not. That’s the only reason the word gender was created.

They’ll claim that gender is entirely learned, but this is has been disproven by the fucked up experiments of the guy who popularised the use of the word.

In the 1960s, a psychologist named John Money came up with the idea that gender was entirely learned, and then when he met a family with two twin boys, he decided to test his theory. One of the boys had a botched circumcision, which damaged his penis irreparably. Therefore he decided that he should be raised as a girl, while his twin brother would be raised as a boy.

Long story short, despite calling the boy “Brenda” and doing his best to raise him as a girl, it didn’t work. He just acted like a boy, and while he thought he was a girl because he was raised as one, he felt like a boy. He became suicidal eventually, his parents told him the truth, and from then on he was just a boy/man - until he killed himself because of the way that whole thing had messed with his head.

Yet, in many Universities they lie and teach this story as if the experiment was successful, and as if he lived happily ever after. That’s where these people get their ideas from.

They disprove it with their own arguments. How can you be for example a trans woman, a woman born in a boy’s body, if you were conditioned throughout your whole childhood to be a boy? If it’s entirely learned that won’t happen.

[ManOnFire]

Gender is not a social construct. The belief that it is was constructed by people who want to be what they want to be without guilt, without feeling wrong for changing. So they've come up with all these ways to try to make male and female technical, trying to create a bunch of ridiculous confusion so that lines on sexuality can become blurred and based on factors other than what they concretely are.

I don't give a damn if somebody wants to be a woman, get their dick removed, and wear women's clothes. Doesn't affect me. But don't go trying to force your ideology on our schools, media, and streets because you want the world to believe what you believe.

[rigmarole]

I guess you can call it a social construct, but then you'd have to admit that the society you live within has accepted the idea that if you are born with male genitalia you are a male and will always be a male and if you are born with female genitalia you are a female and will always be a female. You have to accept that it is not up for debate, because it is an idea that was created and accepted by people that you have to live with. Therefore, you have to also accept the idea if you want to live within said society. If you can't accept the idea, then you need to leave. Being that the entire planet has been colonized maybe you should focus your energy on engineering space craft rather than trying to manipulate the editing process of online dictionaries.

[provokeesmokee]

It is.

Biological sex isn't even a binary. Intersex people exist.

Gender is a social construct - you can see how it has changed and evolved over the thousands of years of human history. Many pre-colonial cultures have third or fluid genders which have been significant culturally.

Plus you can experience gender as a construct yourself. Just put effort into presenting as the opposite gender and experience it.

You can even look at gender of the false gender dichotomy and see how "woman" and "man" have changed in the years. Women's role and their social standing have changed significantly, for example. Where the gender norm used to be one way, it is now another.

[Bricealan]

I have absolutely no fucking idea, of how you could POSSIBLY CONNECT 'GENDER' AND "SOCIAL CONSTRUCT" I MEAN... WTF?

WELL YEAH, WE JUST MAKE UP OUR GENDER BASED ON? NO REAL 'REALITY' TO WHAT WE FEEL OUR GENDER MIGHT BE, EVEN IF WE WERE BORN WITH A VAGINA,... FOR EXAMPLE... OR MAYBE A PENIS THAT BECOMES ERECT PERIODICALLY... NAH... THAT ISN'T REAL

[Anonymous]

For me and many other people it isn’t.

I was born female and without a dick. I have always and still do emotionally and mentally felt like a female.

I have never wanted to surgically alter myself, wear opposite gender clothes or take pills to make myself look like a man.

[Opinion Owner]

These feelings just came to be naturally as well

[jahaims]

Read the definition. Sex and gender are two different things.

[Opinion Owner]

@jahaims I said for me it isn’t
Also maybe you should do some research. Sex and gender have been the same in dictionaries for decades until recently a few people with emotional or mental problems wanted to change it

[jahaims]

It doesn't matter what is to you when it has defined terms. It isn't a matter of opinion when it is factual. That's like saying lava isn't hot. You can be ignorant and believe it, but you are factual wrong by the very definition of the word.

[Opinion Owner]

@jahaims it’s factual it has been synonymous words in dictionaries for many years. Also most people gender identity corresponds with their birth sex.

www.nature.com/.../ng0800_373a

[kylee2437]

@jahaims you can call yourself anything you want, it doesn’t change that people equate gender to how someone outwardly looks.

[jahaims]

@kylee2437 never said it did.

[jahaims]

Most people's gender identity corresponding with their birth sex doesn't change the meaning of a word.

[kylee2437]

@jahaims so it doesn’t matter if it’s a social construct. The idea that people try to cover up what they were born as is so bizarre. The transgender people that aren’t afraid to say their truth are the only ones that are mentally sane

[Opinion Owner]

@jahaims If genitals don’t define gender, how can cutting them off affirm gender?

[Opinion Owner]

@jahaims did you know it’s actually considered a disorder if a person gender identify doesn’t match their birth sex

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria

[Opinion Owner]

@kylee2437 It’s considered a psychological problem if a person feels their gender identity doesn’t match their birth sex

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria

[Opinion Owner]

@jahaims I was born without a penis and my feelings about being a girl always came to me naturally. That’s why to me gender isn’t a social construct

Many people born with penis also believe they are a boy without being told.

[kylee2437]

The English language in general is a social construction but it was made to identify what you see in front of you. Gender if you think about it is not a social construction because it was made based on birth assigned body parts

[Anonymous]

For the same reason I don't believe being tall or short, or having blue or brown eyes are a social constructs.

Gender is synonimous with sex and has been in the English language for centuries. Only in the last few years has a small group hijacked the term gender and tried to change it's meaning, but the sane majority will always view gender as the same as sex, because it is.

Sex/gender is a genetically determined trait, and therefore is not a social construct.

[Dargil]

Biological sex is a condition defined by DNA. You can either be xx and be female or xy and be male. Gender however, is a language construct in most romance languages like Italian, Spanish and French.

[hello195647]

One hundred per cent is a biological construct, not a social one. There are undeniable influences our physiology has on our minds, bodies and emotions. Do I believe each gender should be boxed in and told to behave a certain way? No, because I believe in individuality which transcends gender.

[jahaims]

Read the definition. Sex and gender are two different things.

[Jdodkfndosn]

Let's all use are heads here. Sex and gender have always been equivalent until some one got the idea that gender can be however you feel inside, and reached a concensus comprised of a bunch of other dummies

[BourbonAndBacon]

We have a scientific way to tell male and female called DNA. I believe we should let scientific fact determine gender.

[Asker]

Chromosomes dna test

[Al_Musafir]

No, it's not. Also, there are only 2 genders.

[shortster]

In humans sex is determined by your DNA. All life on earth falls into one of four genders: male, female, hermaphrodite, and asexual. Anything else is either dilusional or not of this planet.

[Anonymous]

If it was just a social construct, societies around the world would have developed very differently from one another.

[gorydetails]

Because we are born male or female which is determined by our genetics.

[Anonymous]

Wow. My comment was removed. Surprise surprise.

[MaxUsefull]

Gender is the sex…. anything a part of that is just an ideology

[abc3643]

Because it's not.

[jahaims]

Read the definition. Sex and gender are two different things.

[abc3643]

@jahaims I know that full-well.
Regardless, gender is not a social construct.
If it was, then transgenders wouldn't have an innate need to remove their breasts or balls.

[jahaims]

In the definition of gender it literally says, "especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones, or one of a range of other identities." Feelings don't change facts.

[abc3643]

@jahaims That's someone else's definition.

What attribute is the green? That is, we say "The leaf has the __________ green."
Is it?
A. Color
B. Colour
Which is correct?
The answer is "It depends on who you ask."

There are no absolutes regarding shit like this. In particular, the soft sciences (*).
So, you take a more objective stance like mathematics which is pure logic or the physical sciences with empirical observation and data collection.

Many of these soft sciences are poor science. The practitioners try to create a unified theory with solid postulates, except, unfortunately, too many practitioners don't do that. Instead, they have a their particular theory and then create definitions to support it. That's not science. That's a form of logical fallacy called "Begging the Question".