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.
Not sure I can help with that question. I just know the answer isn’t disingenuously adapting the language of equality to attack those oppressed by the system of race by acting like “black lives matters” is bad. Likewise, using “gender abolition” as an excuse to be a TERF by getting mad at trans people for fitting any stereotypes of their gender (while ignoring cis people doing the same thing) or telling trans people they’re delusional. Even if long-term we want to eliminate race and gender, it doesn’t mean we can ignore the relatively short-term impacts they’ve had historically and continue to have.
I have the same problem with the implication that race and gender are social constructs so they don’t matter. The impacts that these aspects of identity have in the real world matter a great deal to many people. Saying they “don’t exist” isn’t far from saying that we can just ignore them.
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.
Is gender merely a social construct or are we born with it?
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
Based
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.
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.
Not sure I can help with that question. I just know the answer isn’t disingenuously adapting the language of equality to attack those oppressed by the system of race by acting like “black lives matters” is bad. Likewise, using “gender abolition” as an excuse to be a TERF by getting mad at trans people for fitting any stereotypes of their gender (while ignoring cis people doing the same thing) or telling trans people they’re delusional. Even if long-term we want to eliminate race and gender, it doesn’t mean we can ignore the relatively short-term impacts they’ve had historically and continue to have.
I have the same problem with the implication that race and gender are social constructs so they don’t matter. The impacts that these aspects of identity have in the real world matter a great deal to many people. Saying they “don’t exist” isn’t far from saying that we can just ignore them.
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.