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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32882 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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Here's an old comment of mine from the old Reddit site:

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/n8xict/comment/gxmeur8/

People say that gender is a social construct, but I think there is a more traditionally and standard-use word for what is being called "gender" these days ("expression as a person's behavior, mannerisms, interests, and appearance that are associated with gender in a particular cultural context"). Prior to 2010, I think that definition would not be called "gender" but rather "gender roles". I think it would be much less controversial if people said "gender roles are socially constructed" as opposed to "gender is socially constructed. After all, women in India, China, or wherever else do not act like women in the US, Canada, etc, so at least part of gender roles is socially constructed, if not all.

I sort of feel that this playing fast-and-loose with the terms "gender" and "gender-roles" has had implications for the development of the transgender movement. If people say that gender-roles are socially constructed, no biggie, no complaints from almost anyone. If people say that gender is socially-constructed, that would mean that being a man or woman itself is socially constructed; most people don't believe that to be true. After all, a woman in India may dress differently than a woman in the US, but everyone still agrees that they're both women. We don't believe that India-woman is a different gender from US-woman. I feel like the hot-swapping of these terms has been put to questionable and potentially insidious use.

I still have seen no convincing explanation of why people use the term gender these days to describe what used to be called gender roles.

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