Is gender a social construct?

[Mettalian]

I've always believed that gender is a social construct. I don't think a male is any more genetically predisposed to liking cars than to liking fairies. However in my Anthro/Socio/Psychology class we learned about a study that concluded that a biological male that had a female gender had a brain more like that of a female, and vice versa. So is it that one's feelings of gender are biological, but gender roles are societal constructs? Sorry if this has been asked before, I just wanted to get a better understanding. I've heard some comrades comparing infants to blank slates in terms of gender, and I've heard others giving varying degrees of support for biology. I understand it's not a cut and dry issue but I would like to get a clearer view on it.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

The role gender plays is a social construct,I believe.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/gender-social-construct-t161433/index.html

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Whether it is or not, it must be dismantled.

[cb9's_unity]

Actually, social construction is basically in the definition of what gender is. That's why sex and gender are considered two separate things.

Science has found that there are several differences between the male and female brain (my psych teacher told us there is more mass in the male brain). Based on this it is plausible that there may always be some sort of general gender distinction. There may be biological reasons that men and women take slightly different approaches to certain issues.

It is important to note that these facts are built on the aggregate of the statistical evidence. Thus there is no evidence that all women act a certain way as opposed to all men. The way one is brought up can also be more important to their psychology than their brain composition.

There is no reason for us to destroy gender in itself. What we should be doing is exposing the fallacies that exist in current thinking about gender. This means showing just how unnatural the specific genders that exist today are. The goal of this is to allow people to break away from gender constraints if they want to. We aren't here to impose our conception of gender onto others, but only to give people the freedom to define themselves in their relation to gender.

[The Stalinator]

Whether it is or not, it must be dismantled.

I would say this, yeah. I believe humans have somewhat "outgrown" rigid gender roles, through social/physical evolution. We can get rid of them if we want, there is no practical reason to keep them here.

So they are a social construct, a very harmful social construct that restricts the freedom of both men and women.

After those are gone, I believe that women/men will only be have marginal differences in the way they think, act, etc. There certainly aren't no differences at all between the average man's mind and the average woman's mind (key word here is average) but there are very few that they were born with.

[Lanky Wanker]

gender |ˈjendər| noun
1 the state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones):

The problem here is that we're very social beings and I don't think we can test for biological differences in thinking accurately until we eliminate all of the social influences, which can't happen (or at least not in our current society). Take the higher rate of achievement in girls than boys, for example (I do A-level sociology so we look at this kind of stuff a lot, also in the areas of social class and ethnicity/culture); can we really say that girls are smarter because they are biologically different (sex), or because of the social influences created by gender (consequently caused by sex). I probably sound like I'm straying away from the question here, but my point is that we're such social creatures and we generally have a natural tendency to want to conform to be accepted (this is my psychology course kicking in now :cool:), and gender is engraved on our heads from day 1 with girls wearing pink and boys wearing blue.

Onto the gender roles: I think that a large part of it is indeed biological. Parenting, for example. Depending on what type of attachment theory you want to go with, it would make sense for a mother to be naturally attached to her child than the father. Also, rape has been seen in animals other than humans. I'm not sure if a significant amount of this (or even any of it) is female-on-male rape, but it may explain, to some degree, why men are much more "z0mg I want 2 fuk u" than women are. I do obviously realise that this is mostly (or, as I said, completely) social though, due to our sexist double standards which say that women are not allowed to be promiscuous on the same level as men.

In regards to dismantling gender, I think a better way to put it would be to say that we need to accept people and their gender identity, regardless of what it is. That way, the concept of gender will no longer be a relevant issue in society. That is of course until we need to find replacements for "he" and "she". :lol:

I do hope I worded myself properly and didn't spark anyone off with what I said. Apologies if I did, I wasn't trying to justify "*****, get in the kitchen" or anything like that.

[Oswy]

I've always believed that gender is a social construct. I don't think a male is any more genetically predisposed to liking cars than to liking fairies. However in my Anthro/Socio/Psychology class we learned about a study that concluded that a biological male that had a female gender had a brain more like that of a female, and vice versa. So is it that one's feelings of gender are biological, but gender roles are societal constructs? Sorry if this has been asked before, I just wanted to get a better understanding. I've heard some comrades comparing infants to blank slates in terms of gender, and I've heard others giving varying degrees of support for biology. I understand it's not a cut and dry issue but I would like to get a clearer view on it.

My view is that while there is some legitimacy in categorising (almost all) humans into 'males' and 'females' by virtue of relatively non-arbitrary biological distinctions which can be made between them, those distinctions are too often fallaciously used to suggest wider, non-biological associations. Beyond that, we might consider how far the categorising of humans into 'males' and 'females' is itself only one of many alternatives and thus its social importance (i.e. the way it is a reified category) is a construct. We might just as easily, and legitimately, categorise humans into groups according to their hair-colour, handedness, ability to wiggle their ears and so on.

[NewSocialist]

Thats like asking if race is a Social Construct. OF COURSE IT IS! That study doesn't prove anything. Its sort of like saying “Someone born to White parents ended up having Black skin and grew up feeling Black” Well no fucking shit he would cause we're living in a racist culture that would discriminate against him, make him feel like less than a human, and so on and so forth. ¿Comprende? gender needs to be destroyed along with strictly set sexual identities otherwise bourgeoiis culture will always be tainting us and we won't have true liberation and liberation is what Communism is all about.

[Lanky Wanker]

Thats like asking if race is a Social Construct. OF COURSE IT IS!

Following on from this, anything we can identify people with/as is a social construct. Obviously we can't escape the fact that some people have penises, some have vaginas, some are light, some are dark; but they are only relevant because we make them. You don't walk past a person and go "YOU GREEN-EYED PIECE OF SHIT!" because eye colour doesn't mean anything to us. Hair/eye colour, facial structure and all that other stuff were relevant in Nazi Germany because they printed it on a sledgehammer and fucked people in the head with it. We could even make fingernail shape & size a big, important social construct if we wanted to.

[Mr. Natural]

Sex is biological, while gender generally refers to the social roles a society attaches to sex.

Male and female constitute a complementary unity that humanity must consciously understand and embrace. As someone observed, "Between male and female there are differences, but not deficiencies.

Isn't it amazing that so many males consider the sex that gave birth to them to be inferior? This almost makes me want to hand in my penis.

Almost.

[Tenka]

Male and female constitute a complementary unity that humanity must consciously understand and embrace. As someone observed, "Between male and female there are differences, but not deficiencies.
I don't think there are any real substantive, intrinsic differences between the sexes outside of role in reproduction. Your complementary unity -- not something I embrace, personally; because it has as its premise a superficial duality that won't even exist if we ever find an easy way to reproduce asexually. "Differences but not deficiencies" sounds the same as "separate but equal" to me.

Isn't it amazing that so many males consider the sex that gave birth to them to be inferior?
It is amazing that so many males are such daft shits as to consider someone inferior based on the sort of genitals they have and some social gender identifiers, yeah. That whole "women aren't inferior, because they give birth..." thing is sexist in itself and not all that fair to barren women. I know that's not really what you were implying, of course.

[Lanky Wanker]

Something interesting I just found related to this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/22/yvonne-roberts-gender-neutral-children