I’m sure you’ve all seen the other types of gingerbread people floating around there mixing and mingling sex and gender, and generally making a hot mess of things. Check the link for analysis of the evolution of the gingerbread person and the information included/excluded along the way.
Here is the version of that gingerbread person that would probably be acceptable to the radical feminist crowd.
“No one has a gender. It’s a social construct, you said that yourself, anon.
And it is a social construct: it’s arbitrary rules of behavior assigned to people based on their sex and reinforced by social systems. People are socially punished for not conforming to it.
All “trans” is is when people mistake these socially constructed rules as the essence of being one sex or the other and come to the conclusion that something is wrong with their sex, rather than something is wrong with the rules.”
Greetings everyone, today, like everyday is a good day to learn or reinforce basic concepts. Today’s lesson is in what a social construct is. Many thanks to actual ex-radfem, for all of her hard work.
This is a one dollar bill. It is an excellent example of a social construct. This piece of paper represents a specific amount of spending power in the society that it exists in (the USA). An individual person could decide personally that it represents 1000$ worth of spending power, but it would not matter because like all social constructs, the collective agreement between individuals in society is what determines the meaning of the construct. There are laws on the books about currency but it doesn’t stop society from changing the meaning of a dollar; after all, in times of scarcity a dollar is a much more valuable asset than in times of plenty. The exact value of a dollar is something that fluctuates in tune with other factors, including things like consumer confidence- meaning, how consumers feel about the economy. Social constructs can change based on changes of opinion in the population.
One way to test if something is a social construct is to remove it from its native society and see if it retains the same functionality. The US dollar is accepted in some foreign countries, but in other places, it is just a piece of paper.
Another way to test if something is a social construct is to remove people from the picture entirely and see if it retains its functionality. Without people to give a dollar meaning it simply becomes paper.
Contrast the attributes of a dollar with say, biological sex.
Male humans produce sperm and much higher levels of testosterone than females. Females produce ova and offspring if their eggs are fertilized and implanted. Individuals who are sterile still have either male or female anatomy which serves sexual functions for the individual. Virtually everyone on earth qualifies as one sex or the other, with or without malfunctioning or variations. Is this binary a social construct?
Does the collective agreement of society give male and female organs their functionality? Absolutely not. Humans did not always have an understanding of how pregnancy happened, and yet it happened anyway. Individuals who don’t know about or understand reproduction can and do get pregnant via sex. No matter how many people got together and decided that females inseminate males there would be no change in the function of testes or ovaries.
The functionality of human reproductive organs is also impervious to cultural or geographical differences. All over the world people get pregnant and have babies by mixing sperm from males with ova from females. There is no exception.
Removing humans from the equation also has no effect on the biological reality of mammalian reproduction. Male mammals are male, female mammals are female, and only one of the two can give birth.
Biological sex is not and never has been a social construct.
Another example is gender. Femininity is the easiest example to discuss. Lets look at different examples of femininity from around the world:
As you can see, what it means to be feminine or girly is very different depending upon the society. None of these is the “correct” femininity, just different versions from different cultures. There is no objective way to determine what makes someone feminine in any given culture- you have to ask people.
The nature of femininity is totally subjective and relies on the collective agreement of society. If you move one of these women into a different society their defining feminine characteristics instead become physical characteristics with no gender designation at all. In fact, what would make you gender conforming in one culture would make you gender non conforming in another. Gender also changes in individual societies over time, so the meaning of being feminine in America in the 1800s would differ markedly from what it means to be feminine in America right now. How people feel about the construct changes its meaning.Thus we can easily say that gender is a social construct.
Think you’re immune to social constructs? Think again.
“Let’s examine that a bit. “Men don’t see dirt the way women do.” That’s a pretty common assertion. And it’s bullshit. Vision problems aside, we’re all seeing the same dirty house; we’re just interpreting it differently. You and your boyfriend both walk in, see the pile of crap on the kitchen counter, and have different reactions to it. You likely think, “Man, that pile of crap is really bugging me. I should really clean it up a little.” He likely sees it and thinks, “Huh. Pile of crap. It’ll get taken care of.” Why does he think that? Well, because we’re dealing with endless generations of social gender constructs that tell us that taking care of the home is “women’s work.” Whether you or your boyfriend or your parents or your peer group believe these constructs is largely irrelevant, though, because it’s so deeply ingrained in our society that it permeates every level of culture: You see it in TV shows, movies, commercials, in the workplace, in literature, and in almost every facet of life. There’s no escaping it. So when someone says, “Men don’t see dirt the way women do,” what they’re actually saying is, “Men have been conditioned over generations to process the dirt that they see in a way that requires no further action on their part.” It’s not genetic. It’s learned. And it can be unlearned.”
The take away of this is in the last line. Learned behaviours can be altered over time. So no more weak excuses people. :)
Hmmm. This is a delicate topic, but one worth investigating. For context, the people being referred to in the video are Bruce Jenner and Rachel Dolezal.
“The researchers created a fictional student and sent out the student’s application to science professors at top, research-intensive universities in the United States. The professors were asked to evaluate how competent this student was, how likely they would be to hire the student, how much they would pay this student, and how willing they would be to mentor the student. All of the applications sent out were identical, except for the fact that half were for a male applicant, John, and half were for a female applicant, Jennifer. Results showed that, with statistical significance, both male and female faculty at these institutions were biased towards male students over female students.”
How does that translate to dollars?
Data from the study shows that on average, science faculty was willing to pay the male applicant about $4,000 more per year. Courtesy of Corinne Moss-Racusin.
Yah. So perhaps we need to take another look at the negative ways that gender classification affects our society.
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clean it up a little.” He likely sees it and thinks, “Huh. Pile of crap. It’ll get taken care of.”
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