Is gender merely a social construct or are we born with it?
Eat garbage
Submitted 11 months ago by ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world to [deleted]
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Comments
balderdash9@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
Zehzin@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I asked my cat what he thinks of gender and he just stared at me, so I think it’s a social construct
ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That’s the only way to test if something is a social construct. Ask a non-human animal.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Gender as sex is what you are born in
Gender as a role/identity is a social construct
Leftists push for the first one, right wingers push for the 2nd
c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Think you mixed those up, conservatives believe sex and gender are identical and don’t differentiate. Progressives believe gender is a social construct, but depending on who you talk to that means the path forward is twofold and not everyone really agrees on what form gender should take in the future.
icepuncher69@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Based
ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world 11 months ago
[deleted]WalrusDragonOnABike@kbin.social 11 months ago
Sex is also a social construct. Its separate from gender though.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Most of us? Are there actual cases where a viable off spring had no x or y?
balderdash9@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
But people who are transgender say they are born with their gender. And I’m inclined to believe them given their testimony.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Gender is a social construct designed around sexual dimorphism
Females of the species are equipped to and (before the development of birth control) likely to carry children, which inconveniences them physically for several months. Historically this was somewhat frequent. This caused a selective evolutionary pressure to concentrate traits compatible with said inconveniences on the female chromosome, and concentrate traits less compatible on the male chromosome. This created the kernel of gender roles, which themselves evolved over the years under the resulting social pressures of gender interplay.
Consequentially, women traditionally fill roles that can be accomplished while pregnant and/or breastfeeding (cooking, cleaning, childcare, weaving, sewing, etc) and men traditionally fill roles which are particularly difficult to do while pregnant and/or breastfeeding (hunting, farming, other strenuous labor, etc). These were reasonable adaptations that were broadly useful for quite some time. So in a sense, we’re born with it.
Recently, developments in housekeeping (breast pumps, formula, automatic appliances, public schooling and childcare, affordable industrial textiles, etc) and labor (the transition from physical to mental work) have made the biological differences between males and females less relevant in fulfilling social roles. What’s more, social roles have changed so much anyway.
Personally I think we’re getting to the end of the usefulness of gender as a social concept.
WalrusDragonOnABike@kbin.social 11 months ago
Both. Just like race. Its subject to change based on changing concepts, but are regardless of which version of the social construct is used, race and gender are generally based vaguely on immutable things.
balderdash9@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
I think the analogy with race is a good one, but it also raises further questions. I profess to be unclear about how we should think about race.
BearWolf@lemmings.world 11 months ago
If gender is fake why is gender identity so important? If gender is fake then how some people feel they’re the wrong gender? If gender is fake why is it so important to learn about someone’s gender because using the wrong pronouns will give them trauma?
Get your story straight on gender challenge for leftists (IMPOSSIBLE)
KepBen@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Average sincere and genuine question-asker.
xxx69MyImmortal69xxx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Do you want an honest answer to your questions or are you set on your worldviews?
BearWolf@lemmings.world 11 months ago
I always want to learn more about things. To be totally honest with you, what I’m having the most trouble understanding in the current gender discourse is how can gender be both a social construct/abstraction (in the famous words of Judith Butler “an imitation without an original”) but then also gender identity is a deeply-seated innate feeling that people have that then enables the feeling of “my gender is wrong and I need to change it.”
I really don’t want to be transphobic or even enbyphobic or anything and I will use whatever pronouns people want to be nice. But just on an epistemological level, I’m having trouble understanding it.
Mango@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s fake. Gender is like a style. Both are abstractions. Nobody can say what guy and gal mean in any meaningful sense.
Getawombatupya@aussie.zone 11 months ago
gets hit by a car
BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Won’t kill me! 🤑 🤑 🤑 🥰 😍 🤩 🤠 🥳 👺 👹 👿 👽 👻 👾 🤖 🤌 🧑🎤 🏄♀️
ShitOnABrick@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Image