Yeah, I've commented a few times in the thread now, in response to people who seemed to be denying the social aspects, that the idea of gender (re a way that someone feels) wouldn't make much sense if there weren't social norms about behavior in relation to this stuff. — Terrapin Station

For a transgender, how they feel (gender?) is in direct contrast with social norms (gender?), hence the stress that they report in being treated unequally. How a cisgender feels is in congruence with social norms. The discrepancy can only be explained by using two different terms, and how they relate to each other. On one hand we have people referring to a feeling as gender, while on the other we have people referring to a social construct as gender. It doesn't make sense to say that gender is a relation with itself. Either some feeling is gender, or some social construct is gender, and then we have either feelings or social constructs (whichever one gender isn't) that either have a relation of opposition or congruence with gender.

it doesn't change my actual point: biology is not destiny. — NKBJ

Great, go find someone who disagrees with you because I do not.

And yet you kept arguing :roll:

Yes, which shows that categories, like gender, are always somewhat arbitrary constructions. — Echarmion

There's nothing arbitrary about it when less than one tenth of a percentage of the population identify as transgender.

So you say. But it seems to me that there are rather large movements that disagree. — Echarmion

It's been my understanding that the transgender movement is pushing the idea that gender is a social construct, not that the vast majority of people aren't cisgendered. A simple poll could solve that (and has).

If your claim is true "by definition", it's also circular. — Echarmion

Sorry, I'm not following. How are public polls and definitions "circular"?

Isn't the fact that "most people" (I think we need some serious qualifiers here) think gender roles are not rigid evidence that gender is constructed? Gender roles are obviously shifting. In western countries, they have by and large become much more permissive over the last decades. This would not be possible if they were simply a result of biological changes, since biology does not change that quickly.

If "most people" were truely comfortable with binary gender, why has the notion of gender changed so much? — Echarmion

I'm not sure it has changed so much. Maybe we're speaking about different things... This probably isn't a great example but hopefully it'll at least give you an idea of what I'm speaking of.

Look at football, I think its safe to say that it's generally seen as a male sport. Why is football seen that way? Is it a male sport because of the shape of the ball? Or because touchdowns are worth 6 points? No, its because you need a high level of aggression to play the game well and higher levels of aggression are much more common in males than females. Lets say that football is becoming less popular (it sort-of is) and video games are becoming more popular (it certainly is). If more and more boys/men are playing video games instead of football, is that a gender role shift? I happen to like both (football and video games) and, for many video games, at a competitive level, aggression is just as necessary as it is in football. I'm a huge League of Legends fan, there's a large element of risk taking and aggression if you're playing that game at a high level (professional). Those traits are much more common and also are much larger in males than females.

So what do you mean by the idea that gender is changing so much? If its just activities/hobbies it might not be changing all that much.

And yet you kept arguing — NKBJ

You're correct. I'm new to this forum so I'm still learning everyone. Next time I see you trying to drag me into an argument like this I'll just ignore you.

Drag you? That's hilarious.

Just because Superman was the last person to tighten the plastic wing nut on the spare tire shouldn't be taken as a strength deficiency. Maybe your wife just hasn't had to deal with enough wing nuts in her life. (Or maybe she has,) I've been outfoxed on a number of occasions by nuts and bolts, — Bitter Crank

While my wife certainly isn't very mechanically inclined she knew how to get the nut off. She just didn't have the strength. Sure, there are some women who could easily have gotten it off but she's not one of them.

Despite what a lot of people think, many guys who sit at computers all day still have a stronger grip strength than many female athletes.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0113637

Looking at men and women in their 30's, the lower 90th percentile of men are about as strong as the upper 10th percentile of women.

This study was of 50,000 people so the population size is large enough to be reliable.

Species is indeed a social construct. The act of understanding that one body belongs in one catergory is identity or another is a social state.

This doesn't mean there are no differences between the beings and bodies we catergorise as one species or another. Many differences abound between these individual bodies, just as there is great variation between bodies within a singular species.

As outlined in an earlier post, the use of "social construct" doesn't mean a social cause as opposed to a biological cause, but rather refers to a certain kind of state: the state which is our act of thinking about the catergorisation. Differences between bodies are not being rejected at any point. All that's being pointed out is the presence of a body is not the same state as those bodies being of a sex and gender catergories.

In terms of differences between sex and gender, they are two different states of social catergorisation itself. Both are "social constructs" which amount to someone being of the given catergory. One may have sex. One may have gender. One may neither. One may have both. In any case, to have sex or gender just means to belong to the catergory of that sex or gender.

I have no problem with the claim that men are stronger (on average) than women. Greater size, greater strength is one of the noted characteristics of men, compared to women. And, of course, both men and women are (I assume) separately normally distributed with respect to strength -- most people being in the middle of the distribution.

All that I was driving at was that sometimes bad design makes things difficult. Three of us spent 90 minutes trying to figure out how to detach the battery from its case on a VW Golf, and two of us were very mechanically inclined. "Devious" and "obscure" are the words that come to mind for VW's placement of the fastener.

It's not just about differences, but also about similarities. If every organism had a completely different form, and nothing looked similar, then I would totally agree with you. But that isn't the case. Similarities exist as well and we group things together based on their similarities as much as we separate things based on the number of differences vs. similarities.

Biological sex is based on a combination of traits:

- chromosomes (in humans, XY is male, XX female)
- genitals (penis vs. vagina)
- gonads (testes vs. ovaries)
- hormones (males have higher relative levels of testosterone than women, while women have higher levels of estrogen)
- secondary sex characteristics that aren’t connected with the reproductive system but distinguish the sexes, and usually appear at puberty (breasts, facial hair, size of larynx, subcutaneous fat, etc.)

Using genitals and gonads alone, more than 99.9% of people fall into two non-overlapping classes—male and female—and the other traits almost always occur with these. If you did a principal components analysis using the combination of all five traits, you’d find two widely separated clusters with very few people in between. Those clusters are biological realities, just as horses and donkeys are biological realities, even though they can produce hybrids (sterile mules) that fall morphologically in between.

If sex were purely a social construct, sexual selection wouldn’t work: males would look identical to females. That difference itself suggests that there’s a biological reality to sex, and that this biological reality—the correlation of chromosomal constitution with reproductive traits and with secondary sexual traits—is what has caused both behavioral and morphological differences between the sexes. If sex were purely a social construct, then male deer wouldn’t have antlers, male peacocks wouldn’t have long tails, human females wouldn’t have breasts, etc.

Biologists from different cultures agree on the hierarchical categorization of life, of which each sexual species reproduces in a similar way as opposed to asexual species.

As outlined in an earlier post, the use of "social construct" doesn't mean a social cause as opposed to a biological cause, but rather refers to a certain kind of state: the state which is our act of thinking about the catergorisation. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yet we have our own personal categorizations based on personal experiences that can come into conflict with the socially constructed ones. How do you determine which ones are based on personal experience vs being programmed by culture?

If you are using society or culture as the reason for the existence of some mental category, then you are essentially saying that it is the cause of some mental category. There is no difference between some state or some cause. Every state is both a cause and effect.

If gender is socially constructed (i.e. not determined by the individual) then it's subjective and CAN be determined by the individual. If it is biologically determined then it is the way it is and cannot be determined by the individual.


It's the same as not being able to decide what age you are but being able to decide whether you "act" your age or not.

Form is an epiphenomenon. Our similarities or difference in form never explain anything. All casual events are achieved by difference of existence/body. In the case of any entity, any similarities or differences in form are achieved through the difference of their own existence

If a person is to have a similar form of body to another person, it is achieved through the existence of their unique body. The fact of bodies having similar form can only be achieved by the difference of a person’s existing body. For two people to have testes, for example, it the existence of the different bodies which obtain the fact. Only the unique existence of the other’s body can present the similarity of form. Form is only along for the ride of what the different bodies are doing. Bodies are doing the causing.

In describing the presence of states of bodies, such as the presence of certain chromosomes, genitals, gonads, hormones and other bodily characteristics, like facial hair, breasts, larynx size, subcutaneous fat, etc., there is absolutely no problem. There are states of biology present in the first instance.

The trouble is these states are not sex. All those biological states are so regardless of how they get sorted into social category like sex and gender. The trans person body does not change when they take on a sex or gender different to what some people expect.

This is true of anyone. If everyone got up tomorrow and understood they just didn’t have sex or gender, their bodies wouldn’t be altered at all. The social fact of being categorised as one particular gender or sex has no impact on the body. The biological reality has no concern for how it is categorised.

Since descriptions of selection, differences in behaviour, trends in properties of bodies across mass populations are actually descriptions of states of the body, they are unaffected by which, if any, social categorisation of sex is present or not. If we, for example, do not understand deer to have the sex of “male” and “female,” there biology will be unaffected. And we will still be able to describe all the differences in the bodies we encounter. We would still see bodies with antlers fighting each other, other bodies which give birth to baby deer living in herds and reproducing with a victorious body with antlers.

Biology does not care for which category, if any, you put it in. It is itself and does what it does.


There is a great irony to all this handwringing over sex being a social construction.

Who is thinks biology is a social construction? Certainly not the person who distinguishes biological states from the social fact of sex and gender categorisation. They hold biology to be immune to impact from the social facts. Bodies are bodies, they say, no matter how we categories them. Those deer wth antlers will still be fighting each other, whether we think them male, female, sexless or anything else, for they are biological bodies doing so.

For the person panicking over sex being a social construction, the opposite is true: they think the biological facts depend upon the presence of the social fact of sex and gender. Supposedly, the very existence of deer with antlers fighting each other depends on the understanding/categorisation they are “male.” Just as you did here, they try to claim biology is somehow impossible unless there is a social fact of a particular sex category. They are literally arguing that the very existence of biology (deer with antlers) depends — they are actually the ones who think biology is constructed by a social practice of sex categorisation— on a fact of it being categorising a certain way ( “male” ).

Yet we have our own personal categorizations based on personal experiences that can come into conflict with the socially constructed ones. How do you determine which ones are based on personal experience vs being programmed by culture? — Harry Hindu

There no such distinction. All our personal experiences are affected by culture because the language and concepts we learn and develop are done so within the context of our culture. At the very least, for example, a person's personal experience is going to be formed in or in context of the language of their culture.

Okay, so you can claim anything that you want but that doesn't mean you are right. Isn't that why we have things like evidence? Doesn't David provide that? Where's yours? — Harry Hindu

No he doesn't, actually. He just claims that his depression is caused by the experiment. He can't prove it, though, because it's impossible to know what his life would have been like without the experiment.

For which of my claims would you like me to provide evidence? That gender is a construct? I already provided ample examples of constructed elements of gender performance that are malleable.

Liking something is a preference and a feeling. Your preferences are part of what define you. — Harry Hindu

Your preferences can change over time. You can learn and unlearn preferences. What I liked ten years ago is not the same as what I like now.

Transgenders are claiming that there is something out of their control about them that defines them as the opposite gender, and that they can't change it.

And I don't think anyone is merely defined by their preferences.

If gender is a social construct and a stereotype, then abolishing those stereotypes effectively abolishes gender. Gender would then be a non-existent thing. — Harry Hindu

In theory, yes we could get rid of gender.

But until we stop performing it, gender exists.

Each Conscious reality is their own. Communicating information to each other and society is the goal.
Therefore any identity or social construct that increases information transfer between individual realities is supported. As long as it does not distress the sender and result in information loss.

You said that transgender people feel they should not have to conform to either traditional gender role, but instead their "innate" gender identity. I pointed out that they do adopt either role - the one opposite their "innate" one. They end up reinforcing the gender stereotype with their behavior, even to the point of changing their sex so that they feel more comfortable engaging in those socially constructed roles (their bodies (which TheWillowOfDarkness now claims is just another social construction)). — Harry Hindu

This is not true for all transgender people though, there are those who feel like they're a genuine mix. There is also of course an interplay between their personal gender identity and the social roles they know.

Wouldn't you say that it would be useful for cisgenders to be able to recognize each other without having to look down people's pants (before getting to the bedroom) - maybe even more so now that we have this sexual/gender flux? — Harry Hindu

You mean assess each other's reproductive status/abilities? One could ask, I suppose, though it is of course awkward. But it's not like there aren't crossdressing people right now, so I am not sure how the problem could get worse with more genders. Wouldn't you get more information about others if there were more genders?

Being a non-uncle has no consequences apart from your own choice to not participate, which is why I chose that as an example of how we should view non-gendered people, which was the whole point of my argument. — Harry Hindu

But being outside of traditional gender roles does have consequences, so I am not sure how your thought experiment is relevant.

There's nothing arbitrary about it when less than one tenth of a percentage of the population identify as transgender. — Taneras

Excluding one tenth of a percentage is not arbitrary, then?

It's been my understanding that the transgender movement is pushing the idea that gender is a social construct, not that the vast majority of people aren't cisgendered. A simple poll could solve that (and has). — Taneras

It's not just the transgender movement though. As was pointed out in the OP, the idea is also supported by parts of the feminist movement.

Sorry, I'm not following. How are public polls and definitions "circular"? — Taneras

Things are never "true by definition", unless you think definitions can be true or false. If your argument is "true by definition", it just means your constructed your definition in a way to preclude the conclusion - i.e. your argument is circular.

I'm not sure it has changed so much. Maybe we're speaking about different things... This probably isn't a great example but hopefully it'll at least give you an idea of what I'm speaking of.

Look at football, I think its safe to say that it's generally seen as a male sport. Why is football seen that way? Is it a male sport because of the shape of the ball? Or because touchdowns are worth 6 points? No, its because you need a high level of aggression to play the game well and higher levels of aggression are much more common in males than females. Lets say that football is becoming less popular (it sort-of is) and video games are becoming more popular (it certainly is). If more and more boys/men are playing video games instead of football, is that a gender role shift? I happen to like both (football and video games) and, for many video games, at a competitive level, aggression is just as necessary as it is in football. I'm a huge League of Legends fan, there's a large element of risk taking and aggression if you're playing that game at a high level (professional). Those traits are much more common and also are much larger in males than females.

So what do you mean by the idea that gender is changing so much? If its just activities/hobbies it might not be changing all that much. — Taneras

The behaviors that are acceptable expressions of masculinity / feminity have changed a lot over the past, say, 50 years. If you want to look at sports, look at the changed status of female leagues in many traditionally masculine sports. Association football in Europe is one example. 20 years ago, noone cared about the female teams, now at least the international tournaments garner significant media attention.

The position of women in politics has also changed dramatically. So has the status of "stay at home dads" and in general the role model for fatherhood.

Well, I've asked twice now how you determine the distinction between what is socially constructed and what is natural, but you avoided the question both times. I can only assume that there is no difference for you - that every "independent" thought that we have isn't really independent at all, but is shaped by culture. What you are essentially describing is the lack of free will of individuals in a society. What you are proposing leaves no room for transgenders or homosexuals to realize and choose their own gender/sex. If gender/sex is a social construct then how can a person in a society even come to the realization that they might be something different than the social construct?

Another problem is how your argument leads to an infinite regress of social constructionism. I'll tell you what, let's take a ride down that infinite regress and see where it leads.

If everything is a social construction, then the distinction between culture and nature is a social construction. The theory of evolution by natural selection proposes that humans and everything that we do and create, are simply natural outcomes of natural processes. Culture itself is a natural process. So what humans like you are doing is projecting their anthropomorphism onto reality as if reality (their mind) is a product of society, not nature. Your own theory inexorably leads to that conclusion and the science supports it. Maybe you might want to take a look at evolutionary psychology which proposes that natural selection (a natural process) shapes the mind, and culture is just another aspect of nature, or an environment.

So, in your view, does nature precede culture? If not, then how do you prevent your theory from falling into an infinite regress?

Just as you did here, they try to claim biology is somehow impossible unless there is a social fact of a particular sex category. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Wrong. I said that biology is impossible if not for the differences and similarities. If there aren't just two sexes, then why don't humans have a wide range of features? Why don't some of have trunks for noses, tails, or some other organs that we might or might not refer to as sexual, or gender? Here's the quote:

If you did a principal components analysis using the combination of all five traits, you’d find two widely separated clusters with very few people in between. Those clusters are biological realities, just as horses and donkeys are biological realities, even though they can produce hybrids (sterile mules) that fall morphologically in between. — Harry Hindu

Why are these five traits occurring together in such large numbers as to create these clusters of biological realities?

This is true of anyone. If everyone got up tomorrow and understood they just didn’t have sex or gender, their bodies wouldn’t be altered at all. The social fact of being categorised as one particular gender or sex has no impact on the body. The biological reality has no concern for how it is categorised. — TheWillowOfDarkness

If differences between bodies are real, then how is it that doesn't determine "fate"?

Form is an epiphenomenon. Our similarities or difference in form never explain anything. All casual events are achieved by difference of existence/body. In the case of any entity, any similarities or differences in form are achieved through the difference of their own existence — TheWillowOfDarkness

Our similarities or difference in form explains the differences in behavior. Can you lift a large fallen tree with your nose? An elephant can.

If social constructionism isn't a cause, but a state, then what is it that you propose to change (the cause) that leads to a new effect (gender-neutrality)? Also, how is it that you have come to realize any of this on your own if your ideas are simply the result of cultural constructionism and the culture you grew up in constructed a binary concept of sex and gender?

If gender is socially constructed (i.e. not determined by the individual) then it's subjective and CAN be determined by the individual. If it is biologically determined then it is the way it is and cannot be determined by the individual. — Judaka

Did you even read the definitions I provided? If you want to claim that it is subjective, then it can't be a social construction. It would be personal - a personal choice - that could actually go against the social norm. A transgender rejects the social construction. How can something that is socially constructed reject a social construction?

No he doesn't, actually. He just claims that his depression is caused by the experiment. He can't prove it, though, because it's impossible to know what his life would have been like without the experiment. — NKBJ

So where is the evidence that a man actually feels like a woman, or vice versa? You seem to accept ideas that have no evidence that support your political viewpoint and reject other ideas that do have evidence because it doesn't support your political viewpoint.

So where is the evidence that a man actually feels like a woman, or vice versa? You seem to accept ideas that have no evidence that support your political viewpoint and reject other ideas that do have evidence because it doesn't support your political viewpoint. — Harry Hindu

Seems more like psychology than politics.

This is not true for all transgender people though, there are those who feel like they're a genuine mix. There is also of course an interplay between their personal gender identity and the social roles they know. — Echarmion

In which case, we could label them as non-gendered because they aren't part of, or don't participate in, the social construction of gender. They have essentially rejected the social construction.

Seems more like psychology than politics. — Michael

You probably want to read the previous exchanges between NKBJ and I to understand the context of what you quoted..

Does psychology precede politics in your view? In other words, do you need to explain someone's psychology in order to explain their political views?

You're very needlessly aggressive.

Also, I do not think that there is any evidence that suggests any man feels like a woman. I think it's impossible to feel like a man or a woman.

So first of all, I don't claim gender is subjective. I share your views that it is biologically determined what gender you are and personally I think transgenderism is for some a mental disorder and for others an ideological idea - like the example in OP.

However, I disagree with your distinctions.

Culture is socially constructed, you cannot change the culture by yourself but whether you continue to subscribe to it as you get older is up to you. You can change the culture you subscribe to. Within a binary perspective, in so far as gender is concerned, that means a man can choose to become a woman rather than continue being a man.

In a non-binary perspective, society has limited perception of gender into two categories but this is, in fact, wrong and many people don't fit into those categories. Therefore they posit gender is actually a spectrum and many genders exist within that spectrum.

There are transgender people who think gender is biologically determined, that gender is socially constructed and that gender is non-binary.

You have acted like transgender people have unified views on this subject but they don't. That's the only thing I am trying to get across to you.

You have acted like transgender people have unified views on this subject but they don't. That's the only thing I am trying to get across to you. — Judaka

Right, which would't be a social construction. If different people believe in different things then that isn't a social construction. It is personal preference based on personal experience. It is only when a group of people adopt a shared understanding of something that it becomes a social construct. God is a social construct in which different versions exist within the American culture (freedom of religion). There are many subcultures that can exist within a culture, and if culture itself is a social construction, then that throws a wrench in to how we define culture. In essence, culture ceases to exist, and all is left is our real biological differences and similarities that lead to real differences and similarities in behavior.

On one hand we have people referring to a feeling as gender, while on the other we have people referring to a social construct as gender. — Harry Hindu

This is very confused per what I'm saying and per the conventional views of this.

Gender is male/female/etc. conceptually. Concepts are mind-dependent.

Biological sex is male/female mind-independently--per genetics, (nonmental) physical structure, etc.

There are social norms with respect to gender conceptually. Basically, this is ways that individuals think about gender, where that gains some social traction via others agreeing on the conceptual divisions, and then that's reinforced via social behavior, social expectations, etc.

An individual can become aware that those social norms with respect to gender don't capture how they feel--they don't match their psychological reality, in other words.

So we're not referring to two different things by "gender" re social interaction and individual feeling. It's just that two different conclusions are being reached about gender. The social norm and the way and individual feels. An individual feels they don't fit the social norm. Thus they consider themselves a different gender, relative to the social norms.

Biological sex is irrelevant in all of this, aside from the fact that the social norms are at least to some extent correlated with biological sex a la the gender concept of "female" being attached to female per biological sex, for example. And then some individuals who feel they don't fit the gender social norm decide to change their biological sex to the extent that they can--which involves changing some aspects of physical structure. They want their biological sex to match their gender as much as possible.

Gender is the male/female/etc. conceptually. Concepts are mind-dependent. — Terrapin Station

I'll agree with the last part, but not the first. In regards to the last part, do you agree that minds themselves are independent, and do you consider a social construct as group-think? Is there a distinction for you when it comes to independent thought and group-think?

There are social norms with respect to gender conceptually. Basically, this is ways that individuals think about gender, where that gains some social traction via others agreeing on the conceptual divisions, and then that's enforced via social behavior, social expectations, etc. — Terrapin Station

Okay, you answered my question. Gender is an individual concept, or feeling, and then there are social norms that can either support or reject one's individual feeling of gender.

If biological differences are real then how does that not lead to real differences in behaviors and expectations of others. Females seem to have this need to keep the male around to help rear the children rather than her doing it all by herself while the male wants to be promiscuous. Is this a social construction, or natural behaviors stemming from natural (biological) causes? It seems to me that marriage is a social construction that limits a males natural inclination to be promiscuous.

If biological differences are real then how does that not lead to real differences in behaviors and expectations of others. Females seem to have this need to keep the male around to help rear the children rather than her doing it all by herself while the male wants to be promiscuous. Is this a social construction, or natural behaviors stemming from natural (biological) causes? It seems to me that marriage is a social construction that limits a males natural inclination to be promiscuous. — Harry Hindu

Definitely there are some physical or behavioral differences statistically, most not universally, correlated with biological sex, and that definitely influences gender concepts, but that doesn't amount to gender not being conceptual/mental. What we're referring to by "gender" conventionally is something conceptual.

(Just noticed another typo in my post above, by the way--"enforced" should have been "reinforced.")

Something being socially constructed means it is an invention or an artifice of a given society. What's your definition?