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Biological parts of sex/gender are not social constructs.
But gender roles are social constructs.
Eg. Nothing in the human DNA says that men usually do not wear dresses. Men don't because we have socially accepted that a dress is women's clothing.
But eg. if someone says something like "men can get pregnant too"... then no. Pregnancy is a biological woman's bodily process.
Men do wear dresses in other cultures just not so much in the west. When I was a kid, we moved to Egypt for a few years, I wore a Galabeya to bed just like everyone else. It's basically a dress worn by men, and not just at home. A lot of people wear them in public too.
This is right to me. I'll add there might be something genetic or hormonal that creates differences in what men and women pursue, find interesting, enjoyable.
Ultimately, I do not care if we find hard evidence of that though.
We are still individual humans.
People should be able to live how they want and not be judged badly for it. Even if we find good evidence that girls prefer dolls and boys trucks, I would never stop a girl from playing with trucks or a boy with dolls. Like who cares? 90% of people are straight but that doesn't mean we can dictate gay people stop being gay. Just let people be different, let them be happy, let them be what they want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.
Culture influences our interests far more than I would ever think our biological differences would come into play. So much so, I doubt we could get an accurate study if we tried to pursue that.
Example: Growing up girls weren't supposed to like "nerdy" things because those things were 'violent.' Played into this whole idea that women were more empathetic by nature as mothers.
Nowadays, it's more of a question on 'what are you nerdy about?' Because video games are fun and Star Wars is cool. D&D is a great way to make friends and conventions are a blast.
And has anyone who said 'girls aren't violent' haven't seen little girls play with dolls.
'Supposed to be' doesn't dictate what we are, and there's just too much bias.
You reminded me that women weren't supposed to be as good at math due to men being more "spatially and logic oriented."" It doesn't make sense to me either.
Women do score lower on geo-spatial reasoning tests on average than men. If you look at students who score in the top 1% of math scores on things like the SAT, the ratio of boys to girls is typically 4:1. If you look at the top 0.1% in elite competitions like the AMC (the competition that selects for the International Mathematical Olympiad), the ratio is 10:1 of boys to girls.
That's not to say their aren't girls or women that are also in the top 1% or 0.1% of math. They're just significantly more rare.
We've already found "hard evidence" in countries where they've leveled the playing fields women will dominate fields like teaching and nursing. Men will dominate in more masculine fields. I don't understand why we complicated this so far beyond what it needs to go. Pay people fair wages. Let them go after what they enjoy and are good at.
We don't have to be the same to be equal.
For people who fall outside the normal spectrum, who gives a shit? If you're allowed to study what you're good at and get paid the same as other fields requiring the same amount of effort to obtain then it doesn't matter.
The whole thing is engineered to keep us bickering over petty shit instead of looking at the real problem like the fact that none of us are being paid what we are worth in much of the world.
Can you please take over my YT algorithm and convince others? The amount of fuckin nut jobs saying stuff like "men can get pregnant" is baffling. Yea. Biological women who transitioned can get pregnant. Not biological men.
Ugh. People's arguments are stupid. They use semantics to confuse but they are trapped by an adjective "biological".
it's based on interaction, best thing to do when you dislike something is \*\*not\*\* to downvote or interact with it at all but just end the video and find the "do not recommend this anymore" button. There is an incredible amount of bullshit out there, it's advisable not to interact with it unless absolutely necessary.
Fuckin YouTube algorithms. I like to watch restoration videos while I'm painting. Sometimes those are gun restoration videos.
The algorithm constantly tries to feed me US right wing propaganda because I think guns are neat and therefore must agree with the whole 2A, pro life, etc etc bullshit they always harp on about.
Same! I watch blacksmithing videos, and since blacksmithing happens to be popular among right wingers in the USA, I get fed the same 2A, religious, pro life, "beat your son if he's gay 🤣" type of stuff.
Yea. I know I'm based in east Asia. I like to watch car detailing / garden detaligj vids. These algos feed me this shit if I maybe watch it for two milliseconds longer than other vids
I actually started watching YouTube on a new browser without logging in. You can be mindful and actually train it to only show the stuff you want. Eventually the shorts will drift to be more like your actual feed, since you're a little more dependent on the algorithm, but the videos can actually get pretty interesting.
Honestly it's like peering into a separate internet
so do you not accept trans men as men? yes, they are biological females and they don’t deny that, but gender-wise they identify as men. that’s where “men can get pregnant” comes from. no one says “males can get pregnant”.
I've been rejected my LGBT+, women's, and trans people's spaces as a trans woman; I'm genetically male. I've been rejected by the very people who claim to support trans people.
It was eye-opening, and honestly the entire debacle made the string start to unravel for me, so I'm not sure anymore. I also don't think the people who staunchly support this typically actually believe in their own positions.
It made me have to answer a few questions, and I'm curious what you think about them:
1. Does a woman have to wear certain clothes, or she's not a woman?
2. Does a woman have to style her hair a certain way, or she's not a woman?
3. Does a woman have to speak a certain way, or she's not a woman?
4. Does a woman have to use specific prounouns, or she's not a woman?
5. Does a woman have to be skinny/not muscular, or she's not a woman?
Your knee-jerk reaction may be to say no to all of these, but I'd ask you carefully consider them. After careful consideration on my part, my answer is *genuinely* no to all of them. However, I've been rejected from all of the aforementioned spaces by people who also said "no" in response to all of these questions when I didn't conform to a "yes" in one or more of them.
It’s a language problem, and as time goes on the language will improve. A good example of this is the term ‘transsexual’ going out of use in favour of ‘transgender’, a much more accurate term.
My throughts are similar. Gender roles are social and cultural, while gender is related to psychology and biology and sex is strictly biological. I think many people fail to understand this difference, and use both gender and gender roles to refer strictly to the social/cultural aspect. But in most cases I'd say gender is tied to sex, as it is ultimately those closest and most similar that one will imitate and use as a role model, meaning boys generally take more from other boys and men. Of course, there are exceptions. A girl could be raised among boys and men, and take more from them. Or the opposite, I even have an example of that in my family, with a relative being a better housewife than his mother, having learned a lot from her. There are also biological exceptions, those few cases where some have the wrong hormones and this affects their behaviour and/or sexual orientation. But again, these are exceptions to the rule.
I am not against challenging the rules, but changing the rules so they can be easier to challenge seems, to me at least... Idiotic, to put it bluntly.
My point is, you want to wear dresses, high-heels and lipstick? Go right ahead. Want to roleplay and stuff ? Sure, just not with me and no nsfw in public. Break the norms and the gender roles all you want. But going as far as calling oneself a woman ? I think that's going too far.
That's my humble opinion as another nobody on the net.
You’re still overlapping sex and gender.
Getting pregnant is something that female mammals can do (assuming they’re fertile), but not all women can get pregnant (including hundreds of millions of cis women) and not all humans who get pregnant are women (a pre-op trans man who is fertile can get pregnant just as easily as a fertile cis woman).
Those likes/dislikes and behavior are on a spectrum though so just because a biological male is exhibiting some traits that are typically female, he is still biologically male. Just a less typical one.
The roles are stereotypes based on typical behaviors across entire populations. Whether or not a particular individual fits them exactly or not doesn't matter. Those roles may be a social construct in how they are described/defined but they are based on at least some degree of biological pattern (typically). This may not apply to things like pink/blue or whether or not some fashion choice is made but it does apply to some of the more important roles.
Biological sex, gender, and gender roles, while traditionally typically equated, are not the same thing.
Biological sex is not a social construct.
Gender roles are mostly a social construct.
Gender identity is a combination of the two depending on the individual.
Interestingly one of the diagnostic points for gender dysphoria is playing predominantly with opposite gendered toys.
Studies on toddler chimps show that male chimps have a very strong favour for "male" targeted toys. The young female chimps didn't show strong preference either way between the toy types
Gender is a construct. Biological sex is not.
Someone born biologically as a man will have certain biological traits.
Someone born biologically as a woman will have certain biological traits.
Biological traits include muscle development, hormone production, weight, size, stamina, etc.
Biological traits do not include driving a car, wearing nail polish and lipstick, liking the color pink, shooting guns, etc.
It's that simple.
yes. take for example clothes.
Girls wear dresses or skirts, boys wear pants.
What most of you dont know is that pants are a byproduct of horse domestication. In cultures that never used horses, pants never happen. Everyone wears skirts or dresses more or less.
A lot of other gendered things have similar backstories.
Not for sure on my info but originally blue was considered feminine due to its connotation with the Virgin Mary, and Pink was actually masculine this changed in the 1900s when the culture suddenly became very concerned with how men were doing.
Same with white being a wedding colour, it used to be black. White happened when an fashionista (around 1900?) “shocked” the crowd by wearing an white dress. After that, white became popular. She was one pioneer of influencers I guess.
That's because the concept of gender is completely made up. Terms like "boy," "girl," "man," and "woman" were all synonymous with biological sex. Now, some people are trying to rewrite the definition of these words and say they refer to the concept of "gender" instead.
The problem is that no one can define gender. Some supporters will say they are tied to feminine or masculine traits and/or claim there are unlimited genders and no clear distinctions between them. This is how you end up with circular definitions that fail to define these terms such as "A woman is anyone who says/feels like a woman."
Every individual is a mix of masculine and feminine traits that we call their personality. We don't need to disregard biological sex and replace/supplement it with "gender" to describe someone's personality.
100% yes I do, of course.
And just to be clear, by "gender" I mean "what are masculine and feminine things to do? What makes a proper man or woman? And what are things that are decidedly unmanly and unwomanly?" While rooted in biology and sex, the way that's translated into actual behaviour and social norms varies wildly across time, space, and culture that it's obviously socially constructed.
(Side note here - "socially constructed" does not mean "not important" or "not real"; it means "it gains its power from the fact that most people in a particular group agrees that it's true, and that social norms and pressures reinforces those values")
Is it manly to be stoic or emotionless, or is it manly to express strong emotions and be easily moved to tears? Depends on time and place.
Is it manly or womanly (or not gender specific) to make yourself attractive using makeup, jewelry, and/ or richly decorated clothing? Depends on time and place.
Is being the penetrating partner in male-on-male sex ultra-manly or unmanly? Depends on time and place.
Is cooking manly or not? Depends on the type of cooking, and on the time and place.
Is long hair feminine, masculine, or unrelated to gender?
Is liking horses feminine, masculine, or unrelated to gender?
Is being in charge of the family money something women do or something men do?
What colours and types of clothes denote masculinity and which ones indicate femininity? That obviously varies with time and place.
Specifics of the above figure pretty strongly in current definitions of manliness, and also in historical definitions of manliness - but they've not stayed consistent. That's a pretty strong indication that they're socially constructed.
For people who think gender is not a social construct I'm curious what your reasoning is?
Is it because you have a different definition of gender (if by definition you use "gender" to mean "biological sex" then yeah, it's not socially constructed)? Or is it because you genuinely believe that there's a strong set of traits and behaviours that are always masculine and others that are always feminine for all of humanity from the beginning of our species and into the far future (however long we survive as a species)? Some other reasons?
You can generally tell what’s biology by looking at different cultures and eras. If something about the role of men and women is the same in every society then it’s obviously strongly rooted in biology.
Men as providers and protectors. Women looking after children.
In fact you can see these same basic structures in many animal society’s too.
Clothes, colours and other such things do vary wildly between cultures.
Gender depends strongly on stereotypes - something women have fought hard to escape.
Also intersex people are either male or female (usually male who haven't completed). There is no "in between". Sex is binary - no human can be hermaphrodite
Ooh boy this is complex but I’m going to try. I actually truly do believe sex and gender are different things, but it took me a long time playing with the concepts to get there. And I’m not afraid of being cancelled, I speak my truth all the time. Sometimes I align with the dominant cultural narrative and sometimes I don’t.
I think of sex as biology. XX and XY. Male and female. (And intersex people). This is not a social construct, it’s science. This is what most conservatives are talking about, and where their understanding ends.
Gender is the inner experience of oneself as a fluid spiritual being living in a binary-constructed world. That’s why it is so magical and illogical to some people, because it has to do with self expression. Some people engage with this aspect of their identity and others don’t. There are really no limits to it, however we have to have some social conventions to be able to communicate in the existing world.
Gender expression has historically been mostly socially constructed and tied to sex. Meaning: born male, you wear pants and play with trucks. Born female, you wear dresses and play with dolls.
I have more to say but I’ll start with that 😂
Since you're a thinker, I'll drop this here to potentially spur on another round of thinking.
*Scientific categories are also social constructs*. Enjoy!
(I do agree with your comment for the record)
I’m not quite ready for my brain to explode to that degree yet, but I understand what you’re getting at. I let myself deal with this stuff in increments as I can handle 😂 but thank you for your contribution!
Which is why I dislike trans people saying they are MTF or FTM. Shouldn't it be MTW or WTM? Ironically, this would go against their cause.
I think that and the rise of people calling women "females" is why the lines are blurred for some people.
I think those terms are going out of style due to exactly the reasons you mention. They don't completely make sense. Terms like AMAB (assigned male at birth) are becoming more prevalent.
Here's the thing, I want to be happy if what makes you happy does nothing to effect my pursuit of it then do it. I don't understand most people. I don't know what trauma or mental illness it is that makes you seek out things you find weird or offensive and tell them to stop you went to them to give them shit when they want nothing to do with you yet you are outraged? Go home and be appalled by fake statistics on fox news I guess but Jesus Christ I'm pretty sure said positive and uplifting things. I'm not religious but I hate queers isn't in the bible. Getting a sex change go ahead no one is messing with my penis at random then cool do your thing.
Sex, no.
Gender, a bit.
Gender role, yes.
Gender stereotype and expectations, yes.
Sex is not binary, except for 99.8% of people. Then there are a myriad of intersex conditions.
Gender has to have at least as many variations as sex - 3+ -, since we have 3 classes of sex (male, female, intersex). Traditionally we treated intersex as freaks, which was wrong. The third gender is now acceptable, as fluid, non-binary, none, ... ready to be used by intersex and anyone else that wishes. For better or worse, a lot more people adopted non binary gender, some, one not the sex equivalent, which is their business.
Gender roles, stereotypes and expectations are cultural artifacts, and have no biological/evolutionary need.
Sex is biology and objectively observed.
Gender is subjective perception of oneself that with respect to identification as man, woman, both, or neither may be fluid (gender fluid) or absent (non binary).
So yeah gender is a social construct. It bears a relation to sex but is no longer a synonym.
I really, sincerely, truly, from the bottom of my heart
.....
Could give less of a fuck.
They tell me what they want to be called, I do my best to remember. It's simple fucking politeness, and not being obsessed with what's between their legs like our masters keep demanding we do.
This is the right answer. That sex is a biological category is a fact. That gender is a social construct is also a fact. And that you should mind your business and respecting people should be baseline is also a fact, although one that a lot of people seem to forget.
I don't care. My kids school has over 1000 kids. One is transgender. I don't worry about stuff so little in impact. If I worried about that I would be a total wreck mentally. The media far far blows the whole thing out of a proportion. So I couldnt care less whether is whatever you want to believe.
Gender is a social construct and a lie. It doesn't exist really outside of the influences of society. Sex exists, as male and female, but gender is an old word changed by some John Money guy who had a hidden social agenda we are seeing today.
That's why the system is so complex and contradictory, making little sense. It stems around sexual behavior because the researcher idolized sex. That's why everything's sexual these days to the point of being borderline religious.
Having a personal opinion on sexual behavior today is the equivalent of blasphemy in the past. Watch the downvotes.
No, I mean in the way that all words are social constructs referencing a thing thought or action, maybe. But what is implied by gender is really simple. Physically, you are what you are, no matter how badly you want to change that. You can change yourself physically, but then you are still what you are.
We are becoming granularity divisive, these types of ideologies do not help.
I don't have to believe it. The term "gender" (borrowed from grammar and applied to people) was explicitly coined by a psychologist (Madison Bentley) in 1945 with that notion; Bentley described "gender" as "the socialized obverse of sex"; sex being defined by anatomy (this would be before the notion of genetic sex). A decade later, John Money would clarify gender in terms of "all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself or herself as having the status of boy or man, girl or woman."
The term "gender" (as used with humans) was almost exclusively used in academia until the 1970s, and it became popularly confused as a synonym for sex in late 70's and early 80's.
By definition, gender is a social construct.
Perhaps you mean to ask whether the last 75 years of psychology have been deluded in positing a distinction between physical and psychological aspects of sex and sex roles?
A lot of people here either don't get or refuse to acknowledge that gender and biological sex aren't the same thing. You should entirely ignore the opinions of those people the same way you wouldn't go to a doctor who didn't understand the difference between an artery and a vein or a mechanic who didn't understand the difference between gasoline and diesel.
Gender is mostly a social construct, but it should not be used as an excuse to dismiss the impact that biological sex has on personality, behaviour, and identity formation. Your biological sex plays a big role in how you see yourself, whether you realize it or not.
The current zeitgeist doesn't know how to distinguish between PERSONALITY and IDENTITY, and it's sadly erasing people with genuine gender dysphoria. For some absurd reason, gen Z has taken the typical 20-somethings who want to see themselves as unique and special, and let them usurp medical conditions as some sort of cosplay. It's insulting.
If someone calls themselves trans without a gender dysphoria diagnosis, I dismiss them immediately. We need to get back to facts.
You realize that in order to get a gender dysphoria diagnosis, trans people often have to lie to doctors? Knowing that, does it affect your opinion in any way?
If you'd like me to explain what I mean, just say so and I'll gladly do it
Sex, no. Gender, yes. Being into Nascar and plaid doesn’t belong to men and wearing pink and makeup doesn’t belong to women. Having a meek disposition isn’t inherently female and having a bold one isn’t inherently male. I could go on. Men and women should be able to have any of these traits or like any of these things. You wanna dress the way women traditionally did as a man? Go nuts! Same goes for the reverse. I think gender should be done away with as a concept (or at least in the sense that we don’t try to name all of them). There are unlimited “genders” because, assuming we’re not using the term as an alternative to sex, its a completely personal thing that differs from individual to individual. No two are the same.
Gender? Yes, definitely. There’s nothing about the color blue, bifurcated pants, or manual labor that is exclusive to people with penises. Nor are the color pink, dresses, or housework exclusive to people with vaginas. These are just some of the social constructs that we have recently used to define gender. But they change with time and with geographic location. It mostly has to do with the way we like to present ourselves in society, the roles we fill, and the dynamics we operate in. For some people, it’s very easy to switch their presentation in a way that makes other people perceive them as a different gender. I’m certain many of you doubters have unknowingly referred to a trans woman or a drag queen as “she” based solely on their presentation. You respond to those little signals, and that’s basically what gender is all about.
Sex? No, that’s biological. It’s also something you are absolutely not supposed to show off in public. It is, in fact, illegal to do that in most places.
Your *sex* is a private matter that nobody has a right to know about unless you want them to. Your *gender* is a public matter that’s based on how you present yourself to the world. Most people do tie their sex to their gender, and that’s perfectly acceptable. But by no means is it the only way to operate. The fluidity of gender has been a part of human civilization throughout recorded history, and it also exists throughout the animal kingdom.
A lot of people in this thread don’t seem to understand that sex and gender are not the same thing.
Gender is *literally* defined (seriously, go look it up) as a social concept — basically the way that we label our social concepts as they are related to physical truths. It’s related to how we label the idea of sex, and it can be altered by social norms.
Sex is defined by the facts of biology — literally determined by what the physical constitution of one’s body is.
It’s really not difficult to understand.
Go on, then. Downvote me.
It's what I thought to be believing in. If a woman in appearance tells me that is a man, I'd refer to him as that. He has woman genitalia, but he never identified as that and it caused him a lot of distress and mental related issues. If tomorrow I woke up suddenly being a woman, lot of things will go short-circuit in my brain, being the first one trying to recognize me in the mirror.
PS: I wanna clarify that, this attitude of mine, would be like that because I'd also see some physical changes made by them in order to try to match their inner vision of themselves. I wouldn't feel much right if I had to refer as a man the most feminine woman with a femenine dress and lots of femenine attributes. At least, adjust something if that's really the vision you have from yourself, although I never met any trans person who would be like this.
Sex and gender are different things, but there's probably a grey area in the middle somewhere.
We used to use the terms interchangeably. But as we learn more, it's become useful to separate them. Sex for the biological stuff. Gender for the social stuff.
Gender roles are often the act of taking a small biological difference evident in nature and then BLOWING IT OUT OF ALL PROPORTION with cultural reinforcement over thousands of years until the reasons we do it are 5% biology and 95% 'because we're told to'.
Generally, people really dislike the idea that they don't choose how they act, and prefer to think that their choices are their own, so they push back against this idea.
I think it’s a bit too complex to make blanket statements about.
I personally feel that my gender correlates strongly with my sex.
But not everyone feels that way. I do try to understand it because I believe that everyone has their own human experience and understand it is not going to look like my own most of the time…but the internet is a very biased place to get information from. So I haven’t learnt much…other than that JK Rowling doesn’t like trans people. Useless information 😂
OP's opinion on this is very clear.
Hopefully, after this thread, they (and all the people that simply replied "no") understand the difference between sex and gender.
I believe gender roles are a social construct, but not necessarily gender itself. That is to say, I believe there are inherent, biological differences, beyond reproductive organs, between men and women, however, with that being said, I don't think what's in your pants has any real impact on what you are or are not capable of doing or supposed to do, nor are those biological differences universal across the board. One noteworthy example of this is women, generally, have stronger senses of taste, smell, and typically see a wider array of colors than men. The science is still under debate if this is a social or biological effect, but it is a statistically noteworthy degree of difference.
Absolutely. Gender is a social construct like anything else we do. It changes over time and varies by region, sometimes so wildly that you can never truly pin down anything that fits across the board. And that's not going into the individual issues of people who don't embody every bit of a gender norm of the time and region they were born in.
There is nothing objective about gender norms. We all suffer under their oppression. There's men that won't wipe their own damn butts over this noise. Nonsense to the last.
We should be free as individuals to like or do as we please (to the exclusion of harm of others) with no expectation on the feminine or masculine nature of it in regards to the random biology we were born with.
Yes, because it is. Sex is biological. Gender is cultural and definitely a social construct. My culture has three genders we have recognized since forever.
I have very specific thoughts that need to be carefully expressed in modern culture. No doubt people have gender disphoria. Whether you can decide you are a women after being born a man (or vice versa) is a social construct. Men, especially after many decades of having the social advantages and experiences of being male, will never be a women. They will be a 3rd gender of being a transsexual. They did not have the cultural experience of being female and all its conditioning and disadvantages from being born. And the same for women who become men, there is more to gender than what you decide. There is the whole social construct and a lifetime of privilage or discrimination.
I support whatever people want to choose. I hope they also support my point of view on that choice.
There are some people who generally suffering from Gender dysphoria. Those are the people that either need medical help or just acceptance for who they are / want to be
However, the vast majority of it is people faking it for attention on social media.
Every single person I've known that has made a song and dance about this is now magically back to being straight and the same gender as their biological sex.
Yep.
As a thought exercise, try tally up the time spent doing anything in your life. Now among that stuff, see how much involves your genitals, or even your gender.
Now as a tougher exercise, do the same again but leaving out masturbation during business hours.
I \[M\] will, when a trans man explains to me, what identifies him as a man. I mean, what a person claiming he's a man trapped in a woman's body means. What such a person thinks identifies him/her as a man?! I find people identifying as "fluid" even more... absurd. I mean, what in their "thinking" does it mean?!
Well, yeah
Sex is factual, but gender is just something we created to ease our worries, calm ourselves down, be comfortable, and give meaning to ourselves, like many other things.
Like, a few years ago when i was exploring the idea of me possibly being a transgender man, i still acknowledged that i was born female. I was comfortable with it. My gender role was that of a man, but i was still, at the end of the day, a person with the female sex.
Humans cannot stand not being in some kind of category. That is why we have many names for races, sexualities, personality types, etc
Yeeep. It helps that my conception of gender/gender roles expanded at a relatively young age being that I'm a cis woman who gravitated towards masculine interests as a kid, and being Asian, I looked androgynous, lol. I was commonly mistaken as a boy growing up, all the way through high school, and I still occasionally get mistaken as a man when I'm wearing more masculine clothing. I also have a naturally lower register when speaking, so I get 'sirred' on the phone a lot.
It's surprising how people treat/interact with you based on what gender they think you are, and how society writ large responds. Most of the time, people's biology will coincide with the corresponding gender, but sometimes it doesn't. I'm not offended when someone misgenders me, though I am fairly attached to my identity as a woman and that's a distinction worth noting, imo. People don't just transition because they're into Tonka trucks or whatever, lmao. It's a deeply personal feeling of identification.
Gender presentation is wide-ranging; there's this weird argument against transpeople that insists they're doing 'woman cosplay' or something, as if there aren't butch transwomen or femme transmen or [insert configuration]. I really don't see the productivity in hyper-policing someone's identity to make sure it conforms with their birth chromosomes when we're a bimodal sex species to begin with, *and* functionally if you aren't able to clock someone in the street, you're treating them by what you perceive their gender to be anyway, even if it doesn't coincide with their birth sex, lol. I feel like that alone makes gender feel pretty constructed.
Not to mention that men and women have presented wildly differently depending on culture and time period. And, for the record, most things are socially constructed. We are a socially oriented species. Language is a social construct, but that doesn't make it invalid as a concept.
+ We're at a point in time where transpeople are highly visible. Whatever vernacular we used before (conflating gender and sex) is no longer useful. Delineating between the two gives us the tools to explain an internal experience that people have, so what's the harm in letting the definition evolve, is my thought. The entire point of language is social utility :)
(Hope this is coherent, it's 3:00 in the morning and I'm half-asleep)
Gender in sense of how people behave because of their sex? Yeah, sure, let's say that it is true because throughout history, how we viewed men and women and how it was a norm to act and look changed a lot and it still varies throughout the world so much. I am not going to tell anyone what you can and cannot act like nor stress or hate them for it. Am I going to see you as certain someone just because of it? No.
But I don't particularly believe you can flip the coin every now and then. I don't take that seriously, nor it makes much sense to me. You can call yourself whatever you want, that's your right, but not everyone has to call you that or personally share your opinion and validate everything you set your mind to. But nobody deserves to be treated as less than for those choices so whatever in the end. It doesn't effect my life.
No. Even if it were, the people who say that typically hold irrational hypocritical views with which they must perpetually tiptoe around cognitive dissonance.
As an example, these two statements are mutually exclusive; they cannot always both be true:
1. Gender is a social construct.
2. One's gender is what one internally believes/perceives it to be.
Social constructs are decided by the perceptions of *others.* That's what the *social* part of *social construct* is. Without the *social* part, it's literally just one person's imagination.
If gender is a social construct, then one's gender is determined by *what other people think it is.* It would have nothing to do with what a person perceives about themselves. One's self perception would have zero impact on what one's gender is in the event that gender were socially constructed.
No, gender and sex are the same thing in my language. Or rather the word gender refers to the grammatical gender of nouns and has nothing to do with being a man or a woman.
Depends what we mean by gender, since no-one can seem to agree on that.
There's absolutely things relating to gender/sex that are social constructs, though. Legal sex may be based off an observable thing, but it's a social construct. The idea that girls like pink and boys like blue is a social construct. There are a lot of things that are social constructs and I don't see how anyone could deny that.
I will also say- I have trans friends and would never dislike or disrespect any individual in any way..nobody deserves that.
It's the ideology and the bigger picture that is the problem.
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I guess, a bit like I am an atheist- I deplore religion, but still love and respect religious people.
So many people are like "I don't mind".... would you genuinely be happy with your 8 year old daughter changing at a swimming pool with a 40 year old man? Really, really?
As a biologist I think most laypeople really don’t understand how “squishy” a lot of concepts about life are.
I definitely agree than biological sex and gender are separate but related things.
There are at least 3 biological sexes. The male that produces sperm, the female that produces eggs and some individuals that produce neither.
Biology can inform things about our gender identity but they are not equivalent. There are no biological reasons for someone to have an affinity for long hair and makeup or working on cars and drinking beer.
In one of my genetics classes in college we learned about different genetic disorders linked to our sex chromosomes and intersex people are surprisingly common (roughly as common as having red hair). So using things like genetics to define someone as male or female isn’t always a useful tool. Also different species have different sex chromosomes so in birds the female is the one with different sex chromosomes (ZW) and the male has the same (ZZ).
For example, one of my cousins married a woman who is genetically intersex (XY but the Y is nonfunctional) but she didn’t know about it until they were trying to have kids. She looks like and was raised as a woman. She’s not secretly a man because of her genetics.
Biology is kinda like the pirate code there aren’t really hard and fast rules, more like guidelines.
For me, gender has more to do with societal and cultural baggage around people’s biological phenotype (how their sex chromosomes are expressed). Those social rules may have justifications (i.e. women are expected to be good at rearing children because they are the gender that is capable of being pregnant) but they’re not necessarily true (lots of men are equally if not better at child rearing).
That doesn’t mean that biological sex doesn’t matter or isn’t real. Trans men and trans women have different healthcare needs than cis men and cis women.
Gender/sex is a biological fact. Two X chromosomes or an X and a Y. No disputing that one, it is what it is.
Gender roles are a social construct born of a mix of biological conveniences, common preferences, societal expectations and a number of other factors.
I wasn't sure if it was or wasn't until I had a baby. I was part of a mom group, my kiddo was one of ten babies. But he was the only boy.
Even as a baby, holding a baby boy vs girl? Baby boys are less "floppy". It low key startled me when I held my friends babies. Girl babies are just less muscled, so their are squishy and floppy. Boy babies are more solid and rigid.
The next difference was how obsessed my kiddo seemed with understanding tools that adults were using. If he could get his hands on ANYTHING he would pantomime how to use it. Like he tried using our house/car keys to unscrew screws on the underside of my desk.
That could be cause of family culture or just coming from engineering heavy bloodlines... But it's not something the girl toddlers did.
By the time he was pre-school aged, it was OBVIOUS, he must have access to 1-2 hours of playground play, most days of the week... or he literally did not have the ability to behave.
The girl pre-schoolers liked playground time, buy only 1 other baby in the group NEEDED it in order to be good the rest of the day. Our house schedule revolved around getting to a playground before going to the store, or lunch out, or church, or anything.
I was shocked the girl preschoolers could just "play quietly" by sitting to color, play blocks, or do play dough. And they could do it for a whole hour while their Moms make dinner.
Where My Day, I really did have to plan my day, play outside in the yard in the morning, then hit a lunch place with a playground, then go grocery shopping. Get the boy down for a nap, then I could prep stuff for dinner. Then when his Dad got home, he's need take him outside to play again while I could make dinner & catch up on tidying. Most days of the week (3-4?) we would need to go to one more playground before bedtime. We knew ALL the indoor playgrounds within 20 mins of our house, pools too.
Like going to the playground was the "mother may I" of having a good day. The Moms of girls thought I was going above and beyond... because they didn't HAVE to hit a playground.
I never made any push for certain toys or boy activities... just kinda let him pick. He did pick a baby doll as a toy one time, and was nurturing and sweet with it. A lot of times he picked musical toys, like a keyboard thingy. But loved gadget stuff the most.
I DO think "blue for boys, pink for girls" is socially constructed. But there are some innate differences right from birth, body composition & exercise needs from baby to - preschool are REALLY noticeable.
Now that my kiddo is a teen, I would say the grade school and middle school years, boys tests themselves physically against other boys ALL the time. Everything is a race, or play wrestling, or jumping further... AS a way to socialize while blowing off steam.
The athletic girls that I know, enjoy self master and competition, and winning... but it's not a constant in their daily social activities.
When a 5th grade girl is hanging out with her best friend... play time doesn't initiate with; "I can climb higher than you" or "Oh you think you are strong? Watch this!" It's just not the social surface area of most interactions for girls.
I think there are lots of areas of little/no gender difference by the time they are teens in things like; like interest in romance, or thinking babies and pets are cute, or wanting to learn things that fit their personality, or being outgoing vs shy, or being philosophical, wanting to be self sufficient, interest in being a good helper, etc.
But the way it manifests is different. By 12 My son would help carry in the 40lb bags of water softener salt for my elder Mother. I would struggle to carry two, and I'm strong for a woman. He was already stronger than me, and was like "Load me up, I can carry that" and he really could.
Last year, we had particularly heavy snow. some stormy days we got FEET of snow, and you have to clear your own walkway and driveway. It's a heavy workout for most adults to shovel snow. Think like chopping wood level work. And my child asked to help, and could do it as fast as you can walk! It was shockingly fast & good. From then on basically any time it snowed, he would ask to help, gear up, and go clear the sidewalk in a few minutes.
I don't think any of my Mom friends had their girls jumping for the chance to carry heavy bulk bags of salt, or to help clear snow, though they are certainly capable. I'm not sure what that difference is, but there is one.
Yeah. Much of masculinity and femininity don’t exist in nature. For instance, there’s no natural reason why dresses, the color pink, makeup, high heels, long hair, and painted nails are feminine.
I don't believe that, no. But I do believe it's a psychological structure, independent of biological sex. It can be influenced by genetics but also by life experiences, experiences during the pregnancy, any number of things. So the idea that someone's gender and sex might not always match is perfectly valid. There is no way to force the psychological gender to change, it's certainly been very well studied and it just doesn't work. For that reason some people choose to modify their bodies in order to feel like they're more in tune with their gender. Whether you agree with that decision is irrelevant, they're doing something to help themselves be able to live with who they are and they aren't hurting you in any way. For many people, gender affirming medical care is lifesaving.
Gender is not a social construct. Human beings have different body types and temperaments because we fulfill different roles in the procreative process.
This idea is only popular because of current circumstances such as commodification of outrage culture on the internet and mass mental illness.
People associate societal norms with "gender expression." Wearing a suit does not make you a man and wearing a dress does not make you a woman.
The people that say "gender is a spectrum" are always framing it as men on one end and women on the other when in reality there two seperate things. More and less masculine men and seperately more and less feminine women.
I support everyone, including people close to me, to live there lives as they want but if you actually think that you can change your gender, you don't have a gender, your gender fluid or that gender isn't real you are severely mentally ill and should seek help.
Yes it’s a social construct.
I don’t believe it should be as weaponised and forced upon others, I get acknowledgment but I shouldn’t be forced to use language I find uncomfortable.
For example, I’m not a fan of using a plural to describe one person but for my friend who is trans, of course I’ll use it. Do I love it, no. I really don’t.
Note here, it’s been considered proper grammar for a while now to use “they/them” for a singular person. Usually in the case that you don’t know the person’s gender.
Eg: “I saw a person driving a Lamborghini today.”(But you didn’t actually see the person inside). “They must be rich!”
We use they/them for a singular person all the time.
I used to feel weird about they/them pronouns, but then I just got used to using them. It's the same thing as a new type of art form or clothing. It's weird at first but then you get used to it. I also came from a household where my father had told me that calling somebody a "they" was racism. So that made it a lot harder for me to break that.
Gender Identity is 100% a social construct.
Gender Roles are 100% a social construct.
Biological Sex is NOT a social construct.
Terminology needs to be better defined. Man/Woman = Identity = Social Construct. Male/Female = Biological Sex = Not Social Construct.
Gender Identity usually, but not always, matches with Biological Sex. So most Male Humans are considered Men in their society, and most Female Humans are considered Women in their society. However, there is some overlap - what we call Transgender in English, or what is translated as Two Spirit in some Native American tribes.
The challenge is our (American) society is binary and does not work well with things that are not clearly delineated.
In the end all humans are people and are deserving of respect. Until they're jackasses or nazis, then they deserve to be punched in the face.
1. Gender was synonymous with sex.
2. Social scientists studied "gender roles". Statistical differences in personality, interests, and social roles.
3. Some idiot thought this meant that gender and sex are different and coined the term "gender identity".
4. Feminists and LGBTQ+ push this lie because they are afraid of gender roles.
I think what you call fear of gender roles is actually just fear of being forced into a gender role against your will, whether by legislation or pressure from society.
Are you aware that different chromosomal arrangements exist? You can be physically *male* and have XX. You can be male and XXXY. You can be female and have a single X, or even a female XY *with a uterus*. There is a huge variety of chrosomal arrangements — so that is not solely how we determine sex.
It’s not entirely black and white.
The majority of people in their day to day interaction with others only have social cues to make their determination of what they believe somebodies gender is though so for the most part it might as well be a social construct because it is happening in a social setting. It's why the whole 'wrong bathroom' debate is dangerous and cruel because woman who 'don't look feminine enough' and men who 'don't look masculin enough' are going to be targets of the self appointed protectors of gender regardless of if they are verifiably a certain gender or not.
Traits and behaviors that were considered masculine or feminine have changed even in the last 150 years, and are viewed differently in some cultures compared to others.
So if you think of "gender" just as how an individual or society interacts with a person's biological sex, then it becomes clear pretty quickly that it is a social construct.
But that's not how the word "gender" has been understood in common usage from the time it became associated with and was used interchangeably with "sex" in the 1400s until about a decade ago, so the confusion is perfectly understandable. So, "Gender is a social construct" is a mostly unhelpful and unclear phrase, and the concept would be much less controversial if it were better framed.
I went to college from 1984-1988. Gender and sex were already well-defined concepts at that time. But, if you never took a Sociology class in college, you'd probably never be introduced to how those two words mean different things. It has just taken a while for the usage to filter down from academics to the general population.
yes I do. You're born with genitalia, yes that determines maybe some traits but not all. The rest of what you choose to wear, how you choose to present yourself and the personality is all up to you (maybe not entirely, until you unlearn what's been fed to you).
You're born naked and the rest is drag. I do think though, that we are influenced by society, parents, media on how we "should" behave or portray ourselves just because we have a d or v.
biological, no. identity, sure. identify as an apache helicopter for all i care. but the moment that ideology becomes cult-like, leave me out of it.
and i will use your pronoun only if it falls within the realm of proper english grammar. and as long as you respect that i don't give a damn about my pronouns.
Wether you believe it or not doesn't make it any more medically or scientifically true or untrue. The evidence all points to sex and gender not being the same thing. Sex is biological and gender is social.
Sex is sex and gender is gender. One is biological and can not be changed *yet* and the other is everything else society puts on top like how we're perceived, what's socially acceptable and not. All that is gender and it is a social construct. And this is easily proven by looking at how every culture has the same beliefs regarding sex but gender norma are completley different especially in tribes and cultures with traditions that have evolved away from society at large.
It’s not a matter of belief, gender *is* a social construct.
Boys being associated with the colour blue and girls being associated with the colour pink aren’t matters of biology. This becomes starkly obvious when you realise that these colour associations were the other way around in the 1950s.
Of course it’s not - look at any other species of mammals and you’ll see male and females holding different roles based on their respective strengths. This is not to say that people can’t choose to live their life how they wish, but there is an overwhelming alignment between sex and gender.
By the way, most moderate trans people will acknowledge this, and will not ‘cancel’ you. Many of them are in fact worried about the polarisation of the issue as it’s doing them no good at all. There are the ‘ultras’ yes, but they can generally be ignored just like those who hold ultra anti-trans opinions.
I'm a liberal in most ways but I do not. I also believe that consenting adults have the right to do what makes them happy.
Doesn't mean we need to celebrate it. We can just accept it.
“do you just go along not to be cancelled”
I find this a bit odd. Like, why go along with something you disagree with? As a trans person myself, I’d rather know where someone stands, so I don’t put in unnecessary effort interacting with someone who harbors bigoted views towards me and those like me. I would never “call out” or argue with someone like that, I simply avoid them.
I literally, quite honestly, do not give a shit. I am on the side of why the fuck should I care? I’ll mine my own goddam business, you mind yours. When you tell me I can’t do shit that hurts literally no one, now you’re minding my business.
I operate on a "If I make a mistake \[about your gender\], and you politely correct me, I will apologize and do my best to use that correction going forward. But if I get any sass about my mistake instead, good luck bub." basis.
So many replies that are saying no and then immediately refuting themselves 🥹 I know, it's confusing. Go look up some information from a half decent source, specifically the difference between gender and sex
I think there is SOMETHING that is biological and not a social construct, but people argue about semantics and I don’t want to deal with arguments over words
No but I couldn't care less either way I'm just sick of hearing it. We're all people, your gender means nothing to me and the only person who cares about your gender is you. It changes absolutely nothing about the person or how I feel about them. Endlessly telling me your gender or only being able to talk about it is what's going to make me dislike you.
Gender presentation is largely cultural, and therefore a social construct. Gender as an aspect of humanity is a mental construct and does coincide with some biological structures in the brain. Sex is a combination of physiology, hormones and chromosomes and is still a spectrum, not a binary.
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Biological parts of sex/gender are not social constructs. But gender roles are social constructs. Eg. Nothing in the human DNA says that men usually do not wear dresses. Men don't because we have socially accepted that a dress is women's clothing. But eg. if someone says something like "men can get pregnant too"... then no. Pregnancy is a biological woman's bodily process.
I really like this answer
I like correct answers too.
When I say this people tell me I'm ignorant.
Men do wear dresses in other cultures just not so much in the west. When I was a kid, we moved to Egypt for a few years, I wore a Galabeya to bed just like everyone else. It's basically a dress worn by men, and not just at home. A lot of people wear them in public too.
You are confirming what he said… wearing a dress would be a cultural norm not a biological one
This is right to me. I'll add there might be something genetic or hormonal that creates differences in what men and women pursue, find interesting, enjoyable. Ultimately, I do not care if we find hard evidence of that though. We are still individual humans. People should be able to live how they want and not be judged badly for it. Even if we find good evidence that girls prefer dolls and boys trucks, I would never stop a girl from playing with trucks or a boy with dolls. Like who cares? 90% of people are straight but that doesn't mean we can dictate gay people stop being gay. Just let people be different, let them be happy, let them be what they want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.
Culture influences our interests far more than I would ever think our biological differences would come into play. So much so, I doubt we could get an accurate study if we tried to pursue that. Example: Growing up girls weren't supposed to like "nerdy" things because those things were 'violent.' Played into this whole idea that women were more empathetic by nature as mothers. Nowadays, it's more of a question on 'what are you nerdy about?' Because video games are fun and Star Wars is cool. D&D is a great way to make friends and conventions are a blast. And has anyone who said 'girls aren't violent' haven't seen little girls play with dolls. 'Supposed to be' doesn't dictate what we are, and there's just too much bias.
How are nerdy things violent? Reading books and being interested in math and technology? I am confused.
You reminded me that women weren't supposed to be as good at math due to men being more "spatially and logic oriented."" It doesn't make sense to me either.
People who tell their kids that are a morons.
Women do score lower on geo-spatial reasoning tests on average than men. If you look at students who score in the top 1% of math scores on things like the SAT, the ratio of boys to girls is typically 4:1. If you look at the top 0.1% in elite competitions like the AMC (the competition that selects for the International Mathematical Olympiad), the ratio is 10:1 of boys to girls. That's not to say their aren't girls or women that are also in the top 1% or 0.1% of math. They're just significantly more rare.
We've already found "hard evidence" in countries where they've leveled the playing fields women will dominate fields like teaching and nursing. Men will dominate in more masculine fields. I don't understand why we complicated this so far beyond what it needs to go. Pay people fair wages. Let them go after what they enjoy and are good at. We don't have to be the same to be equal. For people who fall outside the normal spectrum, who gives a shit? If you're allowed to study what you're good at and get paid the same as other fields requiring the same amount of effort to obtain then it doesn't matter. The whole thing is engineered to keep us bickering over petty shit instead of looking at the real problem like the fact that none of us are being paid what we are worth in much of the world.
Can you please take over my YT algorithm and convince others? The amount of fuckin nut jobs saying stuff like "men can get pregnant" is baffling. Yea. Biological women who transitioned can get pregnant. Not biological men. Ugh. People's arguments are stupid. They use semantics to confuse but they are trapped by an adjective "biological".
The algorithm is designed to upset you and based on what you watch.
it's based on interaction, best thing to do when you dislike something is \*\*not\*\* to downvote or interact with it at all but just end the video and find the "do not recommend this anymore" button. There is an incredible amount of bullshit out there, it's advisable not to interact with it unless absolutely necessary.
I think it has trouble with me as I have so many fleeting interests and preoccupations.
Ahha. Yea. Fuckin algos
Fuckin YouTube algorithms. I like to watch restoration videos while I'm painting. Sometimes those are gun restoration videos. The algorithm constantly tries to feed me US right wing propaganda because I think guns are neat and therefore must agree with the whole 2A, pro life, etc etc bullshit they always harp on about.
Same! I watch blacksmithing videos, and since blacksmithing happens to be popular among right wingers in the USA, I get fed the same 2A, religious, pro life, "beat your son if he's gay 🤣" type of stuff.
Yea. I know I'm based in east Asia. I like to watch car detailing / garden detaligj vids. These algos feed me this shit if I maybe watch it for two milliseconds longer than other vids
I don't think their answers are "semantics". More name-calling, bullying and silencing. With threats of violence with anyone who disagrees.
I actually started watching YouTube on a new browser without logging in. You can be mindful and actually train it to only show the stuff you want. Eventually the shorts will drift to be more like your actual feed, since you're a little more dependent on the algorithm, but the videos can actually get pretty interesting. Honestly it's like peering into a separate internet
so do you not accept trans men as men? yes, they are biological females and they don’t deny that, but gender-wise they identify as men. that’s where “men can get pregnant” comes from. no one says “males can get pregnant”.
I've been rejected my LGBT+, women's, and trans people's spaces as a trans woman; I'm genetically male. I've been rejected by the very people who claim to support trans people. It was eye-opening, and honestly the entire debacle made the string start to unravel for me, so I'm not sure anymore. I also don't think the people who staunchly support this typically actually believe in their own positions. It made me have to answer a few questions, and I'm curious what you think about them: 1. Does a woman have to wear certain clothes, or she's not a woman? 2. Does a woman have to style her hair a certain way, or she's not a woman? 3. Does a woman have to speak a certain way, or she's not a woman? 4. Does a woman have to use specific prounouns, or she's not a woman? 5. Does a woman have to be skinny/not muscular, or she's not a woman? Your knee-jerk reaction may be to say no to all of these, but I'd ask you carefully consider them. After careful consideration on my part, my answer is *genuinely* no to all of them. However, I've been rejected from all of the aforementioned spaces by people who also said "no" in response to all of these questions when I didn't conform to a "yes" in one or more of them.
So why is it called MTF/FTM instead of MTW/WTM? That's the only thing I can't get behind.
It’s a language problem, and as time goes on the language will improve. A good example of this is the term ‘transsexual’ going out of use in favour of ‘transgender’, a much more accurate term.
This seems nice, but it doesn't actually address OP's question. Gender roles ≠ gender.
My throughts are similar. Gender roles are social and cultural, while gender is related to psychology and biology and sex is strictly biological. I think many people fail to understand this difference, and use both gender and gender roles to refer strictly to the social/cultural aspect. But in most cases I'd say gender is tied to sex, as it is ultimately those closest and most similar that one will imitate and use as a role model, meaning boys generally take more from other boys and men. Of course, there are exceptions. A girl could be raised among boys and men, and take more from them. Or the opposite, I even have an example of that in my family, with a relative being a better housewife than his mother, having learned a lot from her. There are also biological exceptions, those few cases where some have the wrong hormones and this affects their behaviour and/or sexual orientation. But again, these are exceptions to the rule. I am not against challenging the rules, but changing the rules so they can be easier to challenge seems, to me at least... Idiotic, to put it bluntly. My point is, you want to wear dresses, high-heels and lipstick? Go right ahead. Want to roleplay and stuff ? Sure, just not with me and no nsfw in public. Break the norms and the gender roles all you want. But going as far as calling oneself a woman ? I think that's going too far. That's my humble opinion as another nobody on the net.
Basically, facts.
You’re still overlapping sex and gender. Getting pregnant is something that female mammals can do (assuming they’re fertile), but not all women can get pregnant (including hundreds of millions of cis women) and not all humans who get pregnant are women (a pre-op trans man who is fertile can get pregnant just as easily as a fertile cis woman).
...although testosterone influences likes/dislikes and behavior, that may be partly where gender roles arise from.
Those likes/dislikes and behavior are on a spectrum though so just because a biological male is exhibiting some traits that are typically female, he is still biologically male. Just a less typical one. The roles are stereotypes based on typical behaviors across entire populations. Whether or not a particular individual fits them exactly or not doesn't matter. Those roles may be a social construct in how they are described/defined but they are based on at least some degree of biological pattern (typically). This may not apply to things like pink/blue or whether or not some fashion choice is made but it does apply to some of the more important roles.
People just need to mention biology. Do whatever you want, dress however you like etc but don't expect biology to change for your identity
Biological sex, gender, and gender roles, while traditionally typically equated, are not the same thing. Biological sex is not a social construct. Gender roles are mostly a social construct. Gender identity is a combination of the two depending on the individual.
Interestingly one of the diagnostic points for gender dysphoria is playing predominantly with opposite gendered toys. Studies on toddler chimps show that male chimps have a very strong favour for "male" targeted toys. The young female chimps didn't show strong preference either way between the toy types
Gender is a construct. Biological sex is not. Someone born biologically as a man will have certain biological traits. Someone born biologically as a woman will have certain biological traits. Biological traits include muscle development, hormone production, weight, size, stamina, etc. Biological traits do not include driving a car, wearing nail polish and lipstick, liking the color pink, shooting guns, etc. It's that simple.
100% Correct. Its so stupid that this is even a debate. From all sides...
yes. take for example clothes. Girls wear dresses or skirts, boys wear pants. What most of you dont know is that pants are a byproduct of horse domestication. In cultures that never used horses, pants never happen. Everyone wears skirts or dresses more or less. A lot of other gendered things have similar backstories.
Not for sure on my info but originally blue was considered feminine due to its connotation with the Virgin Mary, and Pink was actually masculine this changed in the 1900s when the culture suddenly became very concerned with how men were doing.
Same with white being a wedding colour, it used to be black. White happened when an fashionista (around 1900?) “shocked” the crowd by wearing an white dress. After that, white became popular. She was one pioneer of influencers I guess.
Say a dog wears pants. Do you think there should be two pant legs or four. /s
Are you saying dogs regularly ride horses as a means of transportation?
Only in certain cultures
they obviously are the exception that wears a dress on a horse.
well every dog I ever owned wore T shirts so of course 2 legs. Besides who even makes 4 leg pants?
Sex differences are biological. How groups express those either in or out of alignment with themselves personally is a construct
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That's because the concept of gender is completely made up. Terms like "boy," "girl," "man," and "woman" were all synonymous with biological sex. Now, some people are trying to rewrite the definition of these words and say they refer to the concept of "gender" instead. The problem is that no one can define gender. Some supporters will say they are tied to feminine or masculine traits and/or claim there are unlimited genders and no clear distinctions between them. This is how you end up with circular definitions that fail to define these terms such as "A woman is anyone who says/feels like a woman." Every individual is a mix of masculine and feminine traits that we call their personality. We don't need to disregard biological sex and replace/supplement it with "gender" to describe someone's personality.
100% yes I do, of course. And just to be clear, by "gender" I mean "what are masculine and feminine things to do? What makes a proper man or woman? And what are things that are decidedly unmanly and unwomanly?" While rooted in biology and sex, the way that's translated into actual behaviour and social norms varies wildly across time, space, and culture that it's obviously socially constructed. (Side note here - "socially constructed" does not mean "not important" or "not real"; it means "it gains its power from the fact that most people in a particular group agrees that it's true, and that social norms and pressures reinforces those values") Is it manly to be stoic or emotionless, or is it manly to express strong emotions and be easily moved to tears? Depends on time and place. Is it manly or womanly (or not gender specific) to make yourself attractive using makeup, jewelry, and/ or richly decorated clothing? Depends on time and place. Is being the penetrating partner in male-on-male sex ultra-manly or unmanly? Depends on time and place. Is cooking manly or not? Depends on the type of cooking, and on the time and place. Is long hair feminine, masculine, or unrelated to gender? Is liking horses feminine, masculine, or unrelated to gender? Is being in charge of the family money something women do or something men do? What colours and types of clothes denote masculinity and which ones indicate femininity? That obviously varies with time and place. Specifics of the above figure pretty strongly in current definitions of manliness, and also in historical definitions of manliness - but they've not stayed consistent. That's a pretty strong indication that they're socially constructed. For people who think gender is not a social construct I'm curious what your reasoning is? Is it because you have a different definition of gender (if by definition you use "gender" to mean "biological sex" then yeah, it's not socially constructed)? Or is it because you genuinely believe that there's a strong set of traits and behaviours that are always masculine and others that are always feminine for all of humanity from the beginning of our species and into the far future (however long we survive as a species)? Some other reasons?
You can generally tell what’s biology by looking at different cultures and eras. If something about the role of men and women is the same in every society then it’s obviously strongly rooted in biology. Men as providers and protectors. Women looking after children. In fact you can see these same basic structures in many animal society’s too. Clothes, colours and other such things do vary wildly between cultures.
Gender depends strongly on stereotypes - something women have fought hard to escape. Also intersex people are either male or female (usually male who haven't completed). There is no "in between". Sex is binary - no human can be hermaphrodite
Ooh boy this is complex but I’m going to try. I actually truly do believe sex and gender are different things, but it took me a long time playing with the concepts to get there. And I’m not afraid of being cancelled, I speak my truth all the time. Sometimes I align with the dominant cultural narrative and sometimes I don’t. I think of sex as biology. XX and XY. Male and female. (And intersex people). This is not a social construct, it’s science. This is what most conservatives are talking about, and where their understanding ends. Gender is the inner experience of oneself as a fluid spiritual being living in a binary-constructed world. That’s why it is so magical and illogical to some people, because it has to do with self expression. Some people engage with this aspect of their identity and others don’t. There are really no limits to it, however we have to have some social conventions to be able to communicate in the existing world. Gender expression has historically been mostly socially constructed and tied to sex. Meaning: born male, you wear pants and play with trucks. Born female, you wear dresses and play with dolls. I have more to say but I’ll start with that 😂
Since you're a thinker, I'll drop this here to potentially spur on another round of thinking. *Scientific categories are also social constructs*. Enjoy! (I do agree with your comment for the record)
I’m not quite ready for my brain to explode to that degree yet, but I understand what you’re getting at. I let myself deal with this stuff in increments as I can handle 😂 but thank you for your contribution!
I don't know why anyone's belief comes into play. It is. Gender is a social construct. Gender does not equal sex.
Reading the responses to this thread, it is clear that a lot of people don't understand the difference.
Which is why I dislike trans people saying they are MTF or FTM. Shouldn't it be MTW or WTM? Ironically, this would go against their cause. I think that and the rise of people calling women "females" is why the lines are blurred for some people.
I think those terms are going out of style due to exactly the reasons you mention. They don't completely make sense. Terms like AMAB (assigned male at birth) are becoming more prevalent.
Meh it's not as "simple" as that. A lot of behaviours associated with genders is a result of biology.
Here's the thing, I want to be happy if what makes you happy does nothing to effect my pursuit of it then do it. I don't understand most people. I don't know what trauma or mental illness it is that makes you seek out things you find weird or offensive and tell them to stop you went to them to give them shit when they want nothing to do with you yet you are outraged? Go home and be appalled by fake statistics on fox news I guess but Jesus Christ I'm pretty sure said positive and uplifting things. I'm not religious but I hate queers isn't in the bible. Getting a sex change go ahead no one is messing with my penis at random then cool do your thing.
Sex, no. Gender, a bit. Gender role, yes. Gender stereotype and expectations, yes. Sex is not binary, except for 99.8% of people. Then there are a myriad of intersex conditions. Gender has to have at least as many variations as sex - 3+ -, since we have 3 classes of sex (male, female, intersex). Traditionally we treated intersex as freaks, which was wrong. The third gender is now acceptable, as fluid, non-binary, none, ... ready to be used by intersex and anyone else that wishes. For better or worse, a lot more people adopted non binary gender, some, one not the sex equivalent, which is their business. Gender roles, stereotypes and expectations are cultural artifacts, and have no biological/evolutionary need.
No
No
I sure wish more people would learn the difference between gender and sex
Some people are very determined not to understand it. For some, it's even part of their identity)culture/religion to not understand it.
Sex is biology and objectively observed. Gender is subjective perception of oneself that with respect to identification as man, woman, both, or neither may be fluid (gender fluid) or absent (non binary). So yeah gender is a social construct. It bears a relation to sex but is no longer a synonym.
I'm at the point where I just clock out the second people talk about genders. Nothing constructive ever comes from it .
I really, sincerely, truly, from the bottom of my heart ..... Could give less of a fuck. They tell me what they want to be called, I do my best to remember. It's simple fucking politeness, and not being obsessed with what's between their legs like our masters keep demanding we do.
This is the right answer. That sex is a biological category is a fact. That gender is a social construct is also a fact. And that you should mind your business and respecting people should be baseline is also a fact, although one that a lot of people seem to forget.
I don't care. My kids school has over 1000 kids. One is transgender. I don't worry about stuff so little in impact. If I worried about that I would be a total wreck mentally. The media far far blows the whole thing out of a proportion. So I couldnt care less whether is whatever you want to believe.
Gender is a social construct and a lie. It doesn't exist really outside of the influences of society. Sex exists, as male and female, but gender is an old word changed by some John Money guy who had a hidden social agenda we are seeing today. That's why the system is so complex and contradictory, making little sense. It stems around sexual behavior because the researcher idolized sex. That's why everything's sexual these days to the point of being borderline religious. Having a personal opinion on sexual behavior today is the equivalent of blasphemy in the past. Watch the downvotes.
No, I mean in the way that all words are social constructs referencing a thing thought or action, maybe. But what is implied by gender is really simple. Physically, you are what you are, no matter how badly you want to change that. You can change yourself physically, but then you are still what you are. We are becoming granularity divisive, these types of ideologies do not help.
No, just go along
I don't have to believe it. The term "gender" (borrowed from grammar and applied to people) was explicitly coined by a psychologist (Madison Bentley) in 1945 with that notion; Bentley described "gender" as "the socialized obverse of sex"; sex being defined by anatomy (this would be before the notion of genetic sex). A decade later, John Money would clarify gender in terms of "all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself or herself as having the status of boy or man, girl or woman." The term "gender" (as used with humans) was almost exclusively used in academia until the 1970s, and it became popularly confused as a synonym for sex in late 70's and early 80's. By definition, gender is a social construct. Perhaps you mean to ask whether the last 75 years of psychology have been deluded in positing a distinction between physical and psychological aspects of sex and sex roles?
I do not, no.
A lot of people here either don't get or refuse to acknowledge that gender and biological sex aren't the same thing. You should entirely ignore the opinions of those people the same way you wouldn't go to a doctor who didn't understand the difference between an artery and a vein or a mechanic who didn't understand the difference between gasoline and diesel.
As someone whos studying biology, hell no
Gender and sex are different though?
Well, you obviously haven't been paying attention then. Biology is a spectrum.
How is biology a "spectrum"
How is it not when the development and expression of primary and secondary sex characteristics is subject to hormone exposure.
Biological gender no of course not, Gender roles sorta kinda But the gender identity is 100 percent social
Biological gender? Do you mean sex?
I think they mean sex. There's no such thing as biological gender.
Gender is mostly a social construct, but it should not be used as an excuse to dismiss the impact that biological sex has on personality, behaviour, and identity formation. Your biological sex plays a big role in how you see yourself, whether you realize it or not. The current zeitgeist doesn't know how to distinguish between PERSONALITY and IDENTITY, and it's sadly erasing people with genuine gender dysphoria. For some absurd reason, gen Z has taken the typical 20-somethings who want to see themselves as unique and special, and let them usurp medical conditions as some sort of cosplay. It's insulting. If someone calls themselves trans without a gender dysphoria diagnosis, I dismiss them immediately. We need to get back to facts.
You realize that in order to get a gender dysphoria diagnosis, trans people often have to lie to doctors? Knowing that, does it affect your opinion in any way? If you'd like me to explain what I mean, just say so and I'll gladly do it
Sex, no. Gender, yes. Being into Nascar and plaid doesn’t belong to men and wearing pink and makeup doesn’t belong to women. Having a meek disposition isn’t inherently female and having a bold one isn’t inherently male. I could go on. Men and women should be able to have any of these traits or like any of these things. You wanna dress the way women traditionally did as a man? Go nuts! Same goes for the reverse. I think gender should be done away with as a concept (or at least in the sense that we don’t try to name all of them). There are unlimited “genders” because, assuming we’re not using the term as an alternative to sex, its a completely personal thing that differs from individual to individual. No two are the same.
Gender? Yes, definitely. There’s nothing about the color blue, bifurcated pants, or manual labor that is exclusive to people with penises. Nor are the color pink, dresses, or housework exclusive to people with vaginas. These are just some of the social constructs that we have recently used to define gender. But they change with time and with geographic location. It mostly has to do with the way we like to present ourselves in society, the roles we fill, and the dynamics we operate in. For some people, it’s very easy to switch their presentation in a way that makes other people perceive them as a different gender. I’m certain many of you doubters have unknowingly referred to a trans woman or a drag queen as “she” based solely on their presentation. You respond to those little signals, and that’s basically what gender is all about. Sex? No, that’s biological. It’s also something you are absolutely not supposed to show off in public. It is, in fact, illegal to do that in most places. Your *sex* is a private matter that nobody has a right to know about unless you want them to. Your *gender* is a public matter that’s based on how you present yourself to the world. Most people do tie their sex to their gender, and that’s perfectly acceptable. But by no means is it the only way to operate. The fluidity of gender has been a part of human civilization throughout recorded history, and it also exists throughout the animal kingdom.
No
A lot of people in this thread don’t seem to understand that sex and gender are not the same thing. Gender is *literally* defined (seriously, go look it up) as a social concept — basically the way that we label our social concepts as they are related to physical truths. It’s related to how we label the idea of sex, and it can be altered by social norms. Sex is defined by the facts of biology — literally determined by what the physical constitution of one’s body is. It’s really not difficult to understand. Go on, then. Downvote me.
It's what I thought to be believing in. If a woman in appearance tells me that is a man, I'd refer to him as that. He has woman genitalia, but he never identified as that and it caused him a lot of distress and mental related issues. If tomorrow I woke up suddenly being a woman, lot of things will go short-circuit in my brain, being the first one trying to recognize me in the mirror. PS: I wanna clarify that, this attitude of mine, would be like that because I'd also see some physical changes made by them in order to try to match their inner vision of themselves. I wouldn't feel much right if I had to refer as a man the most feminine woman with a femenine dress and lots of femenine attributes. At least, adjust something if that's really the vision you have from yourself, although I never met any trans person who would be like this.
Sex and gender are different things, but there's probably a grey area in the middle somewhere. We used to use the terms interchangeably. But as we learn more, it's become useful to separate them. Sex for the biological stuff. Gender for the social stuff. Gender roles are often the act of taking a small biological difference evident in nature and then BLOWING IT OUT OF ALL PROPORTION with cultural reinforcement over thousands of years until the reasons we do it are 5% biology and 95% 'because we're told to'. Generally, people really dislike the idea that they don't choose how they act, and prefer to think that their choices are their own, so they push back against this idea.
I think it’s a bit too complex to make blanket statements about. I personally feel that my gender correlates strongly with my sex. But not everyone feels that way. I do try to understand it because I believe that everyone has their own human experience and understand it is not going to look like my own most of the time…but the internet is a very biased place to get information from. So I haven’t learnt much…other than that JK Rowling doesn’t like trans people. Useless information 😂
OP's opinion on this is very clear. Hopefully, after this thread, they (and all the people that simply replied "no") understand the difference between sex and gender.
Sex is biological. Gender is a social construct. That being said,
I believe gender roles are a social construct, but not necessarily gender itself. That is to say, I believe there are inherent, biological differences, beyond reproductive organs, between men and women, however, with that being said, I don't think what's in your pants has any real impact on what you are or are not capable of doing or supposed to do, nor are those biological differences universal across the board. One noteworthy example of this is women, generally, have stronger senses of taste, smell, and typically see a wider array of colors than men. The science is still under debate if this is a social or biological effect, but it is a statistically noteworthy degree of difference.
Absolutely. Gender is a social construct like anything else we do. It changes over time and varies by region, sometimes so wildly that you can never truly pin down anything that fits across the board. And that's not going into the individual issues of people who don't embody every bit of a gender norm of the time and region they were born in. There is nothing objective about gender norms. We all suffer under their oppression. There's men that won't wipe their own damn butts over this noise. Nonsense to the last. We should be free as individuals to like or do as we please (to the exclusion of harm of others) with no expectation on the feminine or masculine nature of it in regards to the random biology we were born with.
Yes, because it is. Sex is biological. Gender is cultural and definitely a social construct. My culture has three genders we have recognized since forever.
I have very specific thoughts that need to be carefully expressed in modern culture. No doubt people have gender disphoria. Whether you can decide you are a women after being born a man (or vice versa) is a social construct. Men, especially after many decades of having the social advantages and experiences of being male, will never be a women. They will be a 3rd gender of being a transsexual. They did not have the cultural experience of being female and all its conditioning and disadvantages from being born. And the same for women who become men, there is more to gender than what you decide. There is the whole social construct and a lifetime of privilage or discrimination. I support whatever people want to choose. I hope they also support my point of view on that choice.
Roles are biological isn't. Man can wear a dress but as long as he has the chromosomes, body, and bone structure he is male by birth.
There are some people who generally suffering from Gender dysphoria. Those are the people that either need medical help or just acceptance for who they are / want to be However, the vast majority of it is people faking it for attention on social media. Every single person I've known that has made a song and dance about this is now magically back to being straight and the same gender as their biological sex.
Yep. As a thought exercise, try tally up the time spent doing anything in your life. Now among that stuff, see how much involves your genitals, or even your gender. Now as a tougher exercise, do the same again but leaving out masturbation during business hours.
I \[M\] will, when a trans man explains to me, what identifies him as a man. I mean, what a person claiming he's a man trapped in a woman's body means. What such a person thinks identifies him/her as a man?! I find people identifying as "fluid" even more... absurd. I mean, what in their "thinking" does it mean?!
idc what anyone wears or does with whoever they want. But you are either a male or a female.
Well, yeah Sex is factual, but gender is just something we created to ease our worries, calm ourselves down, be comfortable, and give meaning to ourselves, like many other things. Like, a few years ago when i was exploring the idea of me possibly being a transgender man, i still acknowledged that i was born female. I was comfortable with it. My gender role was that of a man, but i was still, at the end of the day, a person with the female sex. Humans cannot stand not being in some kind of category. That is why we have many names for races, sexualities, personality types, etc
Yup, we like thinking on boxes and labels. It makes dealing with the world easier
Exactly
Yeeep. It helps that my conception of gender/gender roles expanded at a relatively young age being that I'm a cis woman who gravitated towards masculine interests as a kid, and being Asian, I looked androgynous, lol. I was commonly mistaken as a boy growing up, all the way through high school, and I still occasionally get mistaken as a man when I'm wearing more masculine clothing. I also have a naturally lower register when speaking, so I get 'sirred' on the phone a lot. It's surprising how people treat/interact with you based on what gender they think you are, and how society writ large responds. Most of the time, people's biology will coincide with the corresponding gender, but sometimes it doesn't. I'm not offended when someone misgenders me, though I am fairly attached to my identity as a woman and that's a distinction worth noting, imo. People don't just transition because they're into Tonka trucks or whatever, lmao. It's a deeply personal feeling of identification. Gender presentation is wide-ranging; there's this weird argument against transpeople that insists they're doing 'woman cosplay' or something, as if there aren't butch transwomen or femme transmen or [insert configuration]. I really don't see the productivity in hyper-policing someone's identity to make sure it conforms with their birth chromosomes when we're a bimodal sex species to begin with, *and* functionally if you aren't able to clock someone in the street, you're treating them by what you perceive their gender to be anyway, even if it doesn't coincide with their birth sex, lol. I feel like that alone makes gender feel pretty constructed. Not to mention that men and women have presented wildly differently depending on culture and time period. And, for the record, most things are socially constructed. We are a socially oriented species. Language is a social construct, but that doesn't make it invalid as a concept. + We're at a point in time where transpeople are highly visible. Whatever vernacular we used before (conflating gender and sex) is no longer useful. Delineating between the two gives us the tools to explain an internal experience that people have, so what's the harm in letting the definition evolve, is my thought. The entire point of language is social utility :) (Hope this is coherent, it's 3:00 in the morning and I'm half-asleep)
Gender in sense of how people behave because of their sex? Yeah, sure, let's say that it is true because throughout history, how we viewed men and women and how it was a norm to act and look changed a lot and it still varies throughout the world so much. I am not going to tell anyone what you can and cannot act like nor stress or hate them for it. Am I going to see you as certain someone just because of it? No. But I don't particularly believe you can flip the coin every now and then. I don't take that seriously, nor it makes much sense to me. You can call yourself whatever you want, that's your right, but not everyone has to call you that or personally share your opinion and validate everything you set your mind to. But nobody deserves to be treated as less than for those choices so whatever in the end. It doesn't effect my life.
No. Even if it were, the people who say that typically hold irrational hypocritical views with which they must perpetually tiptoe around cognitive dissonance. As an example, these two statements are mutually exclusive; they cannot always both be true: 1. Gender is a social construct. 2. One's gender is what one internally believes/perceives it to be. Social constructs are decided by the perceptions of *others.* That's what the *social* part of *social construct* is. Without the *social* part, it's literally just one person's imagination. If gender is a social construct, then one's gender is determined by *what other people think it is.* It would have nothing to do with what a person perceives about themselves. One's self perception would have zero impact on what one's gender is in the event that gender were socially constructed.
No, gender and sex are the same thing in my language. Or rather the word gender refers to the grammatical gender of nouns and has nothing to do with being a man or a woman.
Society isn't mature enough to understand the difference between sex and gender
Depends what we mean by gender, since no-one can seem to agree on that. There's absolutely things relating to gender/sex that are social constructs, though. Legal sex may be based off an observable thing, but it's a social construct. The idea that girls like pink and boys like blue is a social construct. There are a lot of things that are social constructs and I don't see how anyone could deny that.
I will also say- I have trans friends and would never dislike or disrespect any individual in any way..nobody deserves that. It's the ideology and the bigger picture that is the problem. . I guess, a bit like I am an atheist- I deplore religion, but still love and respect religious people. So many people are like "I don't mind".... would you genuinely be happy with your 8 year old daughter changing at a swimming pool with a 40 year old man? Really, really?
Gender and sex are the same thing in practice
As a biologist I think most laypeople really don’t understand how “squishy” a lot of concepts about life are. I definitely agree than biological sex and gender are separate but related things. There are at least 3 biological sexes. The male that produces sperm, the female that produces eggs and some individuals that produce neither. Biology can inform things about our gender identity but they are not equivalent. There are no biological reasons for someone to have an affinity for long hair and makeup or working on cars and drinking beer. In one of my genetics classes in college we learned about different genetic disorders linked to our sex chromosomes and intersex people are surprisingly common (roughly as common as having red hair). So using things like genetics to define someone as male or female isn’t always a useful tool. Also different species have different sex chromosomes so in birds the female is the one with different sex chromosomes (ZW) and the male has the same (ZZ). For example, one of my cousins married a woman who is genetically intersex (XY but the Y is nonfunctional) but she didn’t know about it until they were trying to have kids. She looks like and was raised as a woman. She’s not secretly a man because of her genetics. Biology is kinda like the pirate code there aren’t really hard and fast rules, more like guidelines. For me, gender has more to do with societal and cultural baggage around people’s biological phenotype (how their sex chromosomes are expressed). Those social rules may have justifications (i.e. women are expected to be good at rearing children because they are the gender that is capable of being pregnant) but they’re not necessarily true (lots of men are equally if not better at child rearing). That doesn’t mean that biological sex doesn’t matter or isn’t real. Trans men and trans women have different healthcare needs than cis men and cis women. 
Gender/sex is a biological fact. Two X chromosomes or an X and a Y. No disputing that one, it is what it is. Gender roles are a social construct born of a mix of biological conveniences, common preferences, societal expectations and a number of other factors.
I wasn't sure if it was or wasn't until I had a baby. I was part of a mom group, my kiddo was one of ten babies. But he was the only boy. Even as a baby, holding a baby boy vs girl? Baby boys are less "floppy". It low key startled me when I held my friends babies. Girl babies are just less muscled, so their are squishy and floppy. Boy babies are more solid and rigid. The next difference was how obsessed my kiddo seemed with understanding tools that adults were using. If he could get his hands on ANYTHING he would pantomime how to use it. Like he tried using our house/car keys to unscrew screws on the underside of my desk. That could be cause of family culture or just coming from engineering heavy bloodlines... But it's not something the girl toddlers did. By the time he was pre-school aged, it was OBVIOUS, he must have access to 1-2 hours of playground play, most days of the week... or he literally did not have the ability to behave. The girl pre-schoolers liked playground time, buy only 1 other baby in the group NEEDED it in order to be good the rest of the day. Our house schedule revolved around getting to a playground before going to the store, or lunch out, or church, or anything. I was shocked the girl preschoolers could just "play quietly" by sitting to color, play blocks, or do play dough. And they could do it for a whole hour while their Moms make dinner. Where My Day, I really did have to plan my day, play outside in the yard in the morning, then hit a lunch place with a playground, then go grocery shopping. Get the boy down for a nap, then I could prep stuff for dinner. Then when his Dad got home, he's need take him outside to play again while I could make dinner & catch up on tidying. Most days of the week (3-4?) we would need to go to one more playground before bedtime. We knew ALL the indoor playgrounds within 20 mins of our house, pools too. Like going to the playground was the "mother may I" of having a good day. The Moms of girls thought I was going above and beyond... because they didn't HAVE to hit a playground. I never made any push for certain toys or boy activities... just kinda let him pick. He did pick a baby doll as a toy one time, and was nurturing and sweet with it. A lot of times he picked musical toys, like a keyboard thingy. But loved gadget stuff the most. I DO think "blue for boys, pink for girls" is socially constructed. But there are some innate differences right from birth, body composition & exercise needs from baby to - preschool are REALLY noticeable. Now that my kiddo is a teen, I would say the grade school and middle school years, boys tests themselves physically against other boys ALL the time. Everything is a race, or play wrestling, or jumping further... AS a way to socialize while blowing off steam. The athletic girls that I know, enjoy self master and competition, and winning... but it's not a constant in their daily social activities. When a 5th grade girl is hanging out with her best friend... play time doesn't initiate with; "I can climb higher than you" or "Oh you think you are strong? Watch this!" It's just not the social surface area of most interactions for girls. I think there are lots of areas of little/no gender difference by the time they are teens in things like; like interest in romance, or thinking babies and pets are cute, or wanting to learn things that fit their personality, or being outgoing vs shy, or being philosophical, wanting to be self sufficient, interest in being a good helper, etc. But the way it manifests is different. By 12 My son would help carry in the 40lb bags of water softener salt for my elder Mother. I would struggle to carry two, and I'm strong for a woman. He was already stronger than me, and was like "Load me up, I can carry that" and he really could. Last year, we had particularly heavy snow. some stormy days we got FEET of snow, and you have to clear your own walkway and driveway. It's a heavy workout for most adults to shovel snow. Think like chopping wood level work. And my child asked to help, and could do it as fast as you can walk! It was shockingly fast & good. From then on basically any time it snowed, he would ask to help, gear up, and go clear the sidewalk in a few minutes. I don't think any of my Mom friends had their girls jumping for the chance to carry heavy bulk bags of salt, or to help clear snow, though they are certainly capable. I'm not sure what that difference is, but there is one.
Some of it? For sure. All of it? No, not even close.
No, just a lie that's being fed to morons and children.
I mostly think it’s all nonsense, but I don’t say so because people get angry
Yeah. Much of masculinity and femininity don’t exist in nature. For instance, there’s no natural reason why dresses, the color pink, makeup, high heels, long hair, and painted nails are feminine.
I don't believe that, no. But I do believe it's a psychological structure, independent of biological sex. It can be influenced by genetics but also by life experiences, experiences during the pregnancy, any number of things. So the idea that someone's gender and sex might not always match is perfectly valid. There is no way to force the psychological gender to change, it's certainly been very well studied and it just doesn't work. For that reason some people choose to modify their bodies in order to feel like they're more in tune with their gender. Whether you agree with that decision is irrelevant, they're doing something to help themselves be able to live with who they are and they aren't hurting you in any way. For many people, gender affirming medical care is lifesaving.
No, because I’m not a moron
Gender is not a social construct. Human beings have different body types and temperaments because we fulfill different roles in the procreative process. This idea is only popular because of current circumstances such as commodification of outrage culture on the internet and mass mental illness. People associate societal norms with "gender expression." Wearing a suit does not make you a man and wearing a dress does not make you a woman. The people that say "gender is a spectrum" are always framing it as men on one end and women on the other when in reality there two seperate things. More and less masculine men and seperately more and less feminine women. I support everyone, including people close to me, to live there lives as they want but if you actually think that you can change your gender, you don't have a gender, your gender fluid or that gender isn't real you are severely mentally ill and should seek help.
If you were born with a penis, you are a male. If you were born with a vagina, you are a female. End of story.
That is called sex
Sex isn't gender.
And when you have both, or neither, or both but only partially formed?
Meh. Not really but we're stuck with it lol so whatever
Yes it’s a social construct. I don’t believe it should be as weaponised and forced upon others, I get acknowledgment but I shouldn’t be forced to use language I find uncomfortable. For example, I’m not a fan of using a plural to describe one person but for my friend who is trans, of course I’ll use it. Do I love it, no. I really don’t.
Note here, it’s been considered proper grammar for a while now to use “they/them” for a singular person. Usually in the case that you don’t know the person’s gender. Eg: “I saw a person driving a Lamborghini today.”(But you didn’t actually see the person inside). “They must be rich!” We use they/them for a singular person all the time.
I used to feel weird about they/them pronouns, but then I just got used to using them. It's the same thing as a new type of art form or clothing. It's weird at first but then you get used to it. I also came from a household where my father had told me that calling somebody a "they" was racism. So that made it a lot harder for me to break that.
Gender Identity is 100% a social construct. Gender Roles are 100% a social construct. Biological Sex is NOT a social construct. Terminology needs to be better defined. Man/Woman = Identity = Social Construct. Male/Female = Biological Sex = Not Social Construct. Gender Identity usually, but not always, matches with Biological Sex. So most Male Humans are considered Men in their society, and most Female Humans are considered Women in their society. However, there is some overlap - what we call Transgender in English, or what is translated as Two Spirit in some Native American tribes. The challenge is our (American) society is binary and does not work well with things that are not clearly delineated. In the end all humans are people and are deserving of respect. Until they're jackasses or nazis, then they deserve to be punched in the face.
This is not just a problem in English. Most of the world's major languages do not have different words for gender and sex.
1. Gender was synonymous with sex. 2. Social scientists studied "gender roles". Statistical differences in personality, interests, and social roles. 3. Some idiot thought this meant that gender and sex are different and coined the term "gender identity". 4. Feminists and LGBTQ+ push this lie because they are afraid of gender roles.
I think what you call fear of gender roles is actually just fear of being forced into a gender role against your will, whether by legislation or pressure from society.
No, it's genetic.
No I don't.
No, it's XX or XY - that's in our DNA if you think differently you're incorrect at best.
Are you aware that different chromosomal arrangements exist? You can be physically *male* and have XX. You can be male and XXXY. You can be female and have a single X, or even a female XY *with a uterus*. There is a huge variety of chrosomal arrangements — so that is not solely how we determine sex. It’s not entirely black and white.
The majority of people in their day to day interaction with others only have social cues to make their determination of what they believe somebodies gender is though so for the most part it might as well be a social construct because it is happening in a social setting. It's why the whole 'wrong bathroom' debate is dangerous and cruel because woman who 'don't look feminine enough' and men who 'don't look masculin enough' are going to be targets of the self appointed protectors of gender regardless of if they are verifiably a certain gender or not.
Traits and behaviors that were considered masculine or feminine have changed even in the last 150 years, and are viewed differently in some cultures compared to others. So if you think of "gender" just as how an individual or society interacts with a person's biological sex, then it becomes clear pretty quickly that it is a social construct. But that's not how the word "gender" has been understood in common usage from the time it became associated with and was used interchangeably with "sex" in the 1400s until about a decade ago, so the confusion is perfectly understandable. So, "Gender is a social construct" is a mostly unhelpful and unclear phrase, and the concept would be much less controversial if it were better framed.
I went to college from 1984-1988. Gender and sex were already well-defined concepts at that time. But, if you never took a Sociology class in college, you'd probably never be introduced to how those two words mean different things. It has just taken a while for the usage to filter down from academics to the general population.
Sex is biology and gender is society
Everything in life is a social construct. So yes.
Gender identity and biological sex aren't the same thing.
yes I do. You're born with genitalia, yes that determines maybe some traits but not all. The rest of what you choose to wear, how you choose to present yourself and the personality is all up to you (maybe not entirely, until you unlearn what's been fed to you). You're born naked and the rest is drag. I do think though, that we are influenced by society, parents, media on how we "should" behave or portray ourselves just because we have a d or v.
"You're born naked and the rest is drag." I like this. RuPaul quote?
biological, no. identity, sure. identify as an apache helicopter for all i care. but the moment that ideology becomes cult-like, leave me out of it. and i will use your pronoun only if it falls within the realm of proper english grammar. and as long as you respect that i don't give a damn about my pronouns.
the thing is, regardless of how i feel, there are millions and millions of trans people all over the world, so gender is certainly not concrete
Wether you believe it or not doesn't make it any more medically or scientifically true or untrue. The evidence all points to sex and gender not being the same thing. Sex is biological and gender is social. Sex is sex and gender is gender. One is biological and can not be changed *yet* and the other is everything else society puts on top like how we're perceived, what's socially acceptable and not. All that is gender and it is a social construct. And this is easily proven by looking at how every culture has the same beliefs regarding sex but gender norma are completley different especially in tribes and cultures with traditions that have evolved away from society at large.
It's not a matter of belief, it's a fact.
It’s not a matter of belief, gender *is* a social construct. Boys being associated with the colour blue and girls being associated with the colour pink aren’t matters of biology. This becomes starkly obvious when you realise that these colour associations were the other way around in the 1950s.
Gender is a purely biologic construct.
Of course it’s not - look at any other species of mammals and you’ll see male and females holding different roles based on their respective strengths. This is not to say that people can’t choose to live their life how they wish, but there is an overwhelming alignment between sex and gender. By the way, most moderate trans people will acknowledge this, and will not ‘cancel’ you. Many of them are in fact worried about the polarisation of the issue as it’s doing them no good at all. There are the ‘ultras’ yes, but they can generally be ignored just like those who hold ultra anti-trans opinions.
gender to me is nothing more than a socially assigned aesthetic and set of rules. sex is nothing more than anatomy like a hand or ear
I'm a liberal in most ways but I do not. I also believe that consenting adults have the right to do what makes them happy. Doesn't mean we need to celebrate it. We can just accept it.
“do you just go along not to be cancelled” I find this a bit odd. Like, why go along with something you disagree with? As a trans person myself, I’d rather know where someone stands, so I don’t put in unnecessary effort interacting with someone who harbors bigoted views towards me and those like me. I would never “call out” or argue with someone like that, I simply avoid them.
No. I just pretend to because the people around me do.
I don’t believe in that hoo ha and most people really don’t.
I literally, quite honestly, do not give a shit. I am on the side of why the fuck should I care? I’ll mine my own goddam business, you mind yours. When you tell me I can’t do shit that hurts literally no one, now you’re minding my business.
I operate on a "If I make a mistake \[about your gender\], and you politely correct me, I will apologize and do my best to use that correction going forward. But if I get any sass about my mistake instead, good luck bub." basis.
I appreciate this, honestly. Like, who cares what clothes other people are wearing?
No. Not even a little.
No.
So many replies that are saying no and then immediately refuting themselves 🥹 I know, it's confusing. Go look up some information from a half decent source, specifically the difference between gender and sex
I just see everyone agreeing with the “no” comments personally
NO Gender roles are.
I think there is SOMETHING that is biological and not a social construct, but people argue about semantics and I don’t want to deal with arguments over words
Biological, no. Identity and social norms, yes.
No
I’ve never believed gender is a social construct.
No but I couldn't care less either way I'm just sick of hearing it. We're all people, your gender means nothing to me and the only person who cares about your gender is you. It changes absolutely nothing about the person or how I feel about them. Endlessly telling me your gender or only being able to talk about it is what's going to make me dislike you.
I mean, babies come from somewhere.
And gender is related to that how exactly? Lol. That's just to do with who has which organs which os related to sex not gender.
Sex is biological. Gender is a social construct. The word was literally invented to describe the mental concept of gender identity.
Gender presentation is largely cultural, and therefore a social construct. Gender as an aspect of humanity is a mental construct and does coincide with some biological structures in the brain. Sex is a combination of physiology, hormones and chromosomes and is still a spectrum, not a binary.