Gender as a social construct: Why it’s problematic

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

This is a problem. Why? Because if gender were entirely socialised I wouldn’t exist. Nor would thousands of other binary identified transsexuals. If gender were solely an issue of socialisation it would be possible to train me to be a nice little girl. My parents tried that. It failed. Pretty miserably.
http://notanotheraiden.com/gender-as-a-social-construct/

[shinjuku dori]

I'm wondering who constructed the penis and vagina. Was it done socially? I wasn't involved.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

The article is about gender identity, not biological sexual attributes.

[shinjuku dori]

If I "identify" woman, what happen to my penis and beard?

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

What does a penis have to do with your gender identity?

[shinjuku dori]

Male = has penis.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

But having a penis doesn't mean one's gender identity is male.

[shinjuku dori]

I do not understand.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

The article is talking about transpeople and gender being more than a social construct.

[shinjuku dori]

I'm sorry. Maybe this is beyond my comprehension. I think I don't know the meaning of "man" or "woman"?

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Transgender people have a gender identity that's doesn't match the physical bodies they were born with.

[¿Que?]

I'm not very impressed with this article at all. The only argument the author made that had any validity was the first one, about the gender reassignment of David Reimer. In this case, everyone treated David as a girl, and as far as David knew, he was a girl, so why did he eventually identify as a man. Well, it could be due to many things. For one thing, his gender reassignment did not occur at birth. In fact, the article is not clear as to whether or not he ever had gender reassignment surgery. The article states that doctors told the parent that he would have the surgery when he got older, although it never says if he ever had the surgery. The problem here is obvious. If as a child, he noticed a physical difference in his genitalia than other little girls, this might lead to confusion and frustration. Indeed, there is no indication that David ever identified as male until after he was told of his medical history. It is a suspicious lack of details that makes this example problematic.

Further, a commenter argues that gender reassignment of this sort has successfully worked other instances. In which case, the argument is invalid, since the innate quality of the brain which somehow determines gender identity would not be able to be fooled in this way.

The rest of the arguments were weaker than the David Reimer one. They all assume that because some condition of gender neutrality has been achieved (for example parents buying both types of toys, or gender neutral restrooms) that such an environment (or to be more precise, context) must be gender neutral. The author is confusing necessary conditions with sufficient conditions. If your parents provide you with gender neutral toys, or you go to a school with gender neutral restrooms, these are only necessary conditions for positing a gender neutral context. They are not sufficient conditions, as other factors may not be gender neutral. Indeed, since we live in a very gendered society, it is difficult to conceive of any scenario in which a child could grow up, that could adequately be called gender neutral. As such, the arguments do not hold much water.

Please bear in mind, I will not discuss my views on the social construction of gender. There is a lot that science has to say about this, both social and natural science. Suffice it to say, I in no way believe in such a thing as biologically determined gender, because there is not enough evidence to support such a claim. However, there is a sense that socially constructed gender is in no way influenced by biology. This is equally, if not more ridiculous, as the opposite has been pretty well established in science. Hormones are known to influence behavior, although I would not go so far as to suggest it determines it. For a refinement of this distinction, you will have to go to someone else, I am still working out the details of this, and thus do not intend to get into a debate about it. In the interest of full disclosure I felt it was necessary to say this.

I welcome comments, criticism and objections in so far as they deal specifically with my objections to the posted article. Like I said, I do not want to even try to answer these questions at the moment, however, I am happy to discuss the merits and faults of the arguments posited in the article.

[Halleluhwah]

Why does the idea that something is socially constructed have to mean that it isn't real or that it is easily changed in an individual? I am gay, but I'm still interested in claims that homosexuality is a social construct. Different cultures have different gender classifications. That doesn't mean you can take a person from one of those cultures and force them to change genders.

EDIT: I also don't think that a social constructionist understanding of gender (or sexuality or whatever else) is necessarily incompatible with a genetic explanation. It could all be a matter of how 'nature' and 'nurture' interact.

[Raúl Duke]

Shinjuku Dori
What you're referring to is more accurately described, particularly in the West but in academia in general, as one's sex. A person with a penis is indeed one of the male sex while a person with a vagina is one of the female sex.

But a "woman" and a "man," gender, is a bit more than just one's biological sex.

Transexuality is more than just a matter of social constructs though.
Psychiatrists have found out that there's a particular pattern in the brain that determines it (i.e a certain part is bigger/smaller than the typical non-transgender person). This is where the issue is and why psychiatry still labels transexuality as an "issue" (to put it nicely, in reality I still think they call it a disorder) which can be "cured" through sexual reassignment surgery.

[Raúl Duke]

I would like to add that on the matter of transexuals I'm not very well-versed so I hope I did not offend anyone with what I said.

The knowledge I've mentioned in fact I think comes out of that whole David case study which I saw a video about in an AP psychology class so we've viewed it in that light. I'm not very knowledgeable of the whole politically correct discourse related to this subject.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I find it useful to distinguish between gender identity and gender roles. "Gender" alone is vague, because it's made up of multiple elements, some of which may be social constructs.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Psychiatrists have found out that there's a particular pattern in the brain that determines it (i.e a certain part is bigger/smaller than the typical non-transgender person).
They found that a particular structure in the brain was differently sized for biological males and biological females, but in transpeople the structures were most closely sized to the gender they identified with.

Of course, I think it likely that there is more than one cause of people being transgendered.