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| + | #REDIRECT[[The Family: A Proclamation to the World#Is gender a social construct?]] |
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| − | ==Question: Is gender a social construct?==
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| − | ===Introduction to Question===
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| − | It’s a common refrain among the cultural left of Western politics that ''gender is a social construct''.<ref>Unless otherwise stated, all quotations and citations from the feminist authors below come from Ryan T. Anderson, ''When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment'' (New York: Encounter Books, 2018).</ref> A social construct is any category of thought that is created and imposed onto reality through and because of human, social interaction. Key to the idea of a social construct is that the category of thought is not extracted from reality but imposed onto reality. For instance, we can all agree that the boundaries of nations are good examples of a social construct. At a finite moment in time, someone had to come along and say "here is where the boundaries of what we'll call the United States are going to be!" From that moment on, we have acted as if the boundaries of the United States have an objective, primitive existence when, they don't.
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| − | The view of gender as a social construct stands in stark contrast to the ideas of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that "Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose."<ref>"[https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world?lang=eng The Family: A Proclamation to the World]," 2nd paragraph.</ref>
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| − | When saying ''gender'' in the statement “gender is a social construct”, most are referring to the idea that there are sex-specific, biologically-determined, psychobehavioral differences between men and women. According to these people, there are no substantive differences in preference or behavior between men and women. Postmodern-adjacent philosopher [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler Judith Butler] refers to gender as conceived here as a “performance”.<ref>Judith Butler, ''Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity'' (New York: Routledge, 2006), 171–80.</ref> This performance is an outward showing or demonstration of the expectations that have been imposed onto a person through [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_act speech acts] in their cultural environment. In other words, what we call “femininity” and “masculinity” is just people conforming to how society says that a man or woman “should act” and nothing more. There is no biological, neuroanatomical basis for any cognitive or behavioral differences between men and women.
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| − | When others say ''gender'' in the statement "gender is a social construct", they mean to say that the biological sex binary of male and female itself is a social construct. Butler in a 1994 book chapter regards the immutability of the body as pernicious since “successfully buries and masks the genealogy of power relations by which it is constituted”.<ref>Judith Butler, “Bodies That Matter,” in ''Engaging with Irigaray'', ed. Carolyn Burke, Naomi Schor, and Margaret Whitford (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 148.</ref> “In short,” summarizes social conservative philosopher [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_T._Anderson Ryan T. Anderson], “‘the body’ conceived as something in particular is all about power.”<ref>Ryan T. Anderson, ''When Harry Became Sally'', 153.</ref>
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| − | Some people refer to both the male-female sex binary and cognitive-behavioral differences when saying gender.
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| − | The theory that gender is a social construct is the brainchild of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-wave_feminism second-wave feminism]. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_de_Beauvoir Simone De Beauvoir] is thought to be the mother of the movement. She is famous for the saying from her 1949 book ''The Second Sex'' that "[o]ne is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine."<ref>Simone de Beauvoir, ''The Second Sex'' , trans. H.M. Parshley (London: Jonathan Cape, 1953; 2009), 294.</ref> Second-wave feminism "broadened the debate [from merely about the ownership of property and suffrage, such as under first-wave feminism] to include a wider range of issues: sexuality, family, domesticity, the workplace, reproductive rights, de facto inequalities, and official legal inequalities. It was a movement that was focused on critiquing the patriarchal, or male-dominated, institutions and cultural practices throughout society. Second-wave feminism also drew attention to the issues of domestic violence and marital rape, created rape-crisis centers and women's shelters, and brought about changes in custody laws and divorce law." Key to undermining the conception of female as interested in domestic affairs was "undoing the myth" that there were sex-based, biologically-determined, psychobehavioral differences between men and women. Thus, second-wave feminists, and especially those involved in neuroscience and psychology, have been vocal for many years that gender is a social construct, and that there are no substantive brain differences between men and women that lead to differences in cognition and behavior. All of this theorizing and scholarship was toward the end of providing greater political equality for men and women. The claim that gender is a social construct now dominates most halls of academic learning in the West. While we can recognize the substantial and wonderful differences that have been made in society because of feminism including greater learning, financial, and professional opportunities for women as well as greater political power and influence, we can also recognize the deficiencies in the social constructionist theory of gender and theorize about new ways that themes of equality, equity, justice, fairness, sexism, and misogyny can be potentially reworked and retooled with our understanding of brain differences.
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| − | This article will respond to the social constructionist theory of gender under both meanings of gender as well as provide some resources for understanding other themes better.
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| − | {{endnotes sources}}
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