FAQ: if “gender is a social construct”, aren’t feminists saying that gender doesn’t really exist at all?
Updated 21 August 2008
A: NO. Social constructs are human conceptions, invented but not therefore imaginary (unless one thinks that social consequences are imaginary). Social constructs are human systems of social interaction organised around shared ideas. The shared ideas may be true, false or inaccurate, but the socially constructed systems that have developed in response to those shared ideas are very, very real.
Where has this confusion arisen? I suspect because people assume that “construct” means “made up” as in “imagined” or “fantasy”. Constructed merely means artificial, and “artificial” is the opposite of “natural”, not the opposite of “real”. (After all, anyone reading this on a computer is living a very artificial life compared to the natural life of hunter-gatherers on the savannah.) The artificial aspect of social constructs is that we have manufactured these systems of expectations and obligations in response to certain ideas, ideas that are often arbitrary and which can vary between cultures, rather than any particular social construct being an inevitable development based on human nature pure and simple.
N.B. The following is going to be snarkier than usual, because this one is gobsmacking (although my snark is aimed at antagonists proclaiming their superior logic rather than genuine seekers after information). Social constructs can be confusing to wrap one’s head around because social roles and expectations are the elephants in the room that most people are unwilling to ask questions about, so why do some people insist on claiming that they’ve killed the gender elephant when in fact they’ve only just noticed that it’s got large ears?
Often people who claim to have superior logic skills are using this or similar questions about social constructs to frame some allegedly devastating argument against various aspects of progressive thought. For crying out loud, I’m amazed that sentient individuals could have quite such a large dose of EPIC FAIL in the clue-catching department as to claim “AHA!! Gotcha, you gender warriors! Take that!” without a glimmering of understanding that just because social constructs are physical/biological fictions doesn’t stop them being undeniable sociological facts. Dictionaries are your friend, for a start.
List of social constructs off the top of my head:
- Money
- Land as property
- Religion
- Race
- Politics
- party politics even more so
- Capitalism/Communism/the ism of your choice
- Marriage
- Nations
- Justice systems/legislation
- Social Status
- i.e. royalty, aristocracy, bourgeoisie, proletariat (upper/middle/lower class)
- Slavery
- Fashion
- Sport
Gender is socially instilled rather than biologically determined, but so is religion. These conceptual systems are still real phenomena that affect people’s lives, even if they have nothing to do with our essential biology. Anyone wish to try asserting ownership of your own home in a place without a social construct of property laws or a justice system? You won’t have anything other than your brawn to back it up.
Social constructs exist because people are acculturated to a shared tradition/belief/convention that such constructs are meaningful systems. It is the multiple intersections of social constructs that institutionalise people’s perceived social roles.
The nature of social constructs that is most important for feminism (and other progressive ‘isms) is that social constructs are malleable rather than inherently fixed, and historians have documented the way that socially constructed systems in the past have regularly modify their shared beliefs (divine right of kings, anyone?) in response to changes in circumstances that challenge old conventions (including new ideas). Therefore by deconstruction and persuasion with respect to the logic of new ideas existing social constructs can be modified now and in the future (although there may be a great deal of social inertia to overcome along the way).
tigtog
tekanji
shakesville
“FAQ: if feminism is a social construct, aren’t feminists saying that gender doesn’t really exist at all?”
Shouldn’t the words “feminism” and “gender” be switched around in the post title there? As it stands, it’s a bit puzzling. ( “Gender” in the second half of the sentence could also be replaced by other terms like “misogyny”, “sexism”, “patriarchy”, things that feminists are challenging)
Great and very necessary FAQ btw.
Arrrgh, you are entirely right – i was so busy redrafting the post that I forgot to double-check the heading. Oops. Fixed now.
Great post! I hear a lot of people misunderstanding this one.
I believe it was Noel Ignatiev who once said Race is a biological fiction but a sociological fact. I think the same could be said for gender.
Another way to think of it is in physical terms. A building is a construct. But it exists. It doesn’t have to exist. But it does exist because people created the building. Likewise, gender doesn’t have to exist, but it does exist because people created gender.
[ubuntucat, I've ended up paraphrasing that quote for the update of this FAQ, it's just so apt. Thankyou ~tigtog]
It constantly surprises me when otherwise very intelligent and even pro-feminist people don’t get the sex/gender distinction, and especially that the gender-concepts of masculinity and femininity are only traditionally aligned with sexual dimorphism.
I have reasonable success with “Sex is the biological fact that only
menmales have sperm and onlywomenfemales bear offspring. Gender is the social expectation that all women love shoes and all men love sports.” Way oversimplified on the range of biological sex of course, and dealing only with very superficial gender characteristics, but it usually makes a few light-bulbs go off – that the major differences between feminine and masculine are social expectations rather than biological imperatives.Of course many or even most people tend to fall in line with the social role that is expected of them, and that they have been conditioned to all their lives (girls do X, boys do Y, those who don’t are suspect). That’s what social acculturation is all about – the rebels in any society are always a minority. But rebels are the driving force for progress, always.
ubuntucat, your comment appeared while I was composing mine. That’s a great quote.
Bravo, this post was really needed!
I wish everyone would read this. This is an excellent post.
“Sex is the biological fact that only men have sperm and only women bear offspring. Gender is the social expectation that all women love shoes and all men love sports.”
I read an article called Doing Gender (West & Zimmerman; couldn’t find an online version) that I thought was pretty good… the authors suggest that sex is your medical community’s interpretation of your sex organs (which I think nods to non-binary gender and the sort of constructedness of how we see the body); sex category is which of your society’s understood sexes you identify with (so, cisgendered women and transwomen are both sex category female); and gender is what you do to convince society that’s what you are. ; )
Whoa. This is the first post I’ve read on this blog and… we have a winner. Brilliantly put!
Thanks for the compliments, all. Sometimes the posts one dashes off in a fit of pique seem to get the strongest reaction.
I’d encourage people to read Jaded Hippy’s post that is trackbacked above: the other post she is criticising there is a prime example of misrepresenting the gender-as-a-social-construct argument in order to manufacture a gotcha against progressive arguments for tolerance and pluralism (in order to spew transphobic bile). Feminists can be bigots too.
Hi folks. Could I ask for more on how this relates to trans…gender(?) issues?
From reading the post Jaded Hippy mentions, and this link I found in the Open Suggestions thread(http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2008/03/trans_101), it sounds as though there is a third component here, which they refer to as “subconcious sex”, distinct from ’sex’ since it’s not based on anatomy, and from ‘gender’ because it’s not socially defined?
Thanks,
Hugh.
i think the confusion lies at the distinction between sex and gender. some people interchange the two.
also, i have read / heard the opinions of radical feminists who are anti-transmen/women because they feel it enforces a sex dichotomy they don’t agree exists. that’s where i think you get into some thorny issues. because there are biological differences between men and women. that’s just a fact – otherwise who are we even talking about when we talk about women? if we’re therefore talking about anyone who occupies the role of oppressed based on their gender expression in society, aren’t we still including transmen / women?
i think this issue is really more complex among feminists than this post implies. and btw, as someone reading this with an earnest desire to learn about the basics of feminism, and who read this post with particular interest because it *is* something that at times has been difficult to grasp, it’s not very helpful for the post to begin with, “if you don’t get this, i can’t believe how stupid you are.”
if we *did* get it, why would we be reading feminism 101???
Immediately before I say that, I point out that the EPIC FAIL is aimed at those who are claiming that their superior logic has shot a great hole in a fundamental feminist theory, not just people who are a bit confused:
I’m willing to bold it and add an extra clause noting that yes, it can be a genuinely confusing topic, but the various posters who inspired the admittedly ranty tone of that line fully deserve that and worse.
I certainly don’t want to gratuitously offend genuine seekers after knowledge, but this blog is primarily a place to debunk pernicious stereotypes and misrepresentations of feminists and feminist arguments. This is not a place for coddling the easily offended.
I think it really helps to stop interchanging the terms male/man and female/woman. Male and female represent biology/anatomy whereas man and woman are more indicative of forms of gender expression.
Agreed, that’s another important distinction which people often simply don’t see.
Edited to add - and I’ve updated my own comment above where I made the same lazy error.
Is language another example of a social construct? What about mathematics?
Also, when you refer to gender as a social construct, does that mean that it has been artificially imposed?
Thank you for the post. I was looking for more information on feminism because of bigoted remarks on other blogs. I was wondering if those thoughts ran through the feminist community at large. I’m glad to see that they don’t.
Language is very much a social construct. Over history languages have evolved and adapted according to social changes around the speakers of that language, which is reflected in the words they use most commonly and the way that they emphasise the sounds of those words.
Mathematical theorems are ultimately descriptions of naturally occurring phenomena, but the notation and language we use to describe them are socially constructed, as is the way that we teach and study maths.
Gender is the social expectations we have of people because of their perceived biological sex. Though biological sex is a natural phenomenon, specific gender expectations are culturally imposed (trivially obvious because different cultures have distinctly different gender expectations). How much of culture is natural and how much is artificial I leave you to ponder.
But women hold onto many of these ‘Social constructs’ based on thier sex, as they see fit too, and try to dismiss the ones they don’t like.
Like chivalry, why is this construct still suppported by women? Doesn’t it go against everything feminists belive in?
I’ll bet my bottom dollar, if we were all on a sinking ship, the feminists would be the first to yell “Women and children first!”
You cannot pick and choose, we either live in a completly politically correct society, or we don’t, period!
Unfortunately, not all women are feminists, Dutch. Tradition is a hard thing to change.
On a sinking ship, this feminist would in fact be yelling “Children and their carers first”. That society is structured so that most of those carers would be women is exactly the problem with rigid gender roles. My own belief is that society would be a far more pleasant place if as many men as women took on primary carer responsibility with their children.
Oh and chivalry – I despise every atom of the entire concept. Since I was a teen I paid my own way on dates, I refused to have an engagement ring and much more besides.
So perhaps your assumptions as to feminist views on these things are not exactly accurate?
Dutch, wherever did you get the idea that this is an either/or society? Or that it could be?
When I’m reading/teaching/thinking about any kind of cultural myth or stereotype, I notice that most kinds of social beliefs about gender/race/class/etc. are utterly contradictory in their logic. Examples of nonsensical* beliefs that drive these prejudices:
-women are naturally nurturing and caring. But, they should not be allowed to care for their own bodies (let the medical and legal communities do that.)
-Men are inherently visual creatures. But, interior decorating, cosmetics, fashion design, etc. are “feminine” occupations. (inspired the male gaze thread!)
-Racism doesn’t exist. But it’s no accident that most criminals are black.
I could go on and on. We’re surrounded by, shaped by, and conditioned by contradictions and illogic. It’s not at all surprising that as self-aware folks try to disentangle themselves from this conditioning, they often encounter or have to take positions that are not either/or. You can believe that men and women are equal, but know that men and women often have fundamentally different experiences and roles in the imperfect world that made them.
*implying, obviously, I don’t believe any of those things myself.
This FAQ has just been updated to improve clarity.
there is a difference of how society views and constructs gender and how individuals do. to society regardless of our biology we are viewed as male, female or sometime something in between.
To the commentor in moderation: please read the Comments Policy regarding acceptable/unacceptable length of comments on this blog.
If you feel that you cannot do your argument full justice in a briefer comment you might be better off blogging your comment as a post on your own blog and just linking to it with a brief summary comment here.
Ran into a related question/assumption today, which is something like “so, ‘gender’ is about traditional male/female roles, right?”
And I’m not quite sure what to say except “it’s a lot more complicated, and also people’s gender identification is part of their identity, and it will bug a lot of people if you construct gender as a spectrum with ‘traditional male behaviour’ at one end and ‘traditional female behaviour’ at the other.”
I guess a short answer is “gender is about all social constructions of femaleness/maleness, not solely ‘old-fashioned’ or ‘traditional’ ones that we’ve moved past.”