Gender ROLES are socially constructed. Gender itself is not.
Saying gender itself is socially constructed erases trans* people. Its harmful and ignorant and people need to quit spreading shit like this around.Disagree. Gender and gender roles are both social constructs. Biological sex is even arguably a social construct. This neither erases trans people nor cis people for that matter. Something being a social construct doesn’t mean it’s not real or important, it just means it’s a matter of culture, and seeing as gender itself is defined differently across cultures, yep, it’s a social construct. Insisting otherwise “erases”— since we’re using that particular bingo word a lot today— it’s cultural variety. We all may have been born with a bend in some kind of direction or another but there’s no way we would know to call those feelings “male”/”female”/”masculine”/”feminine”/”other”/”both”/”neither”/”fuck you” without culture.
Stop using the phrase “social construct” to mean “I think this should be criticized heavily”. That’s not what it has to mean. For example, respect and consent are social constructs, too. I like them a lot.
Also when we play into the idea that for something to deserve defending it has to be not a social construct (aka “born this way”), the phobes win, because they have been trying to play us into that corner so we forget to point out that it doesn’t matter.
No, I wasn’t born this way. I chose to be this way (also “choose” does not mean “easy”, “whimsical”, or “outside of psychological consequence”). Because of social constructs. And that is enough of a reason.
^ YES. THIS.
Social constructionism doesn’t erase trans people. It doesn’t erase anyone. It just points out that culture isn’t encoded into our DNA. And honestly, most social constructionists recognize that real things are still real, even if they aren’t springing up out of our genes or out of the atoms around us. (Then again I would maybe even go so far as to go metaphysical and say that reality is a social construction.) Thanks Sociology 1000 for explaining that succinctly with the Thomas Theorem. See also the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, AKA my fave idea ever and why I love linguistics so.
YES
(via sexgenderbody)
