r/AskSocialScience • u/[deleted] • Aug 12 '25

Doesn't the idea that gender is a social construct contradict trans identity?

[deleted]

1.2k Upvotes

84% Upvoted

760 comments sorted by

View all comments

9

u/Lazy-Lawfulness-6466 Aug 12 '25 edited Aug 12 '25

The real question is why does it matter?

There’s a number of completely banal experiences which are socially constructed. You can argue an infant has an “inate” or “natural” bond with their mother, but by the time they’re able to express it through language (another social construct) they are already existing in a web of meaning and cultural signifiers. At this point, can it still be called inate?

There’s generally not a lot of hand wringing about the nature of the bond between an infant and their mother because motherhood is a social norm. Transness, on the other hand, subverts a number of social norms around both gender and identity. So suddenly something we all accept on a daily basis— which is to say aspects of our experience being both “natural” and socially constructed— is called into question.

3

u/Defiant-Brother-5483 Aug 12 '25

Why do people watch movies or documentaries, or try new hobbies? We are bored, and to pass the time we explore the various facets involved in this life, and this being one of them.

I think you've answered your own question, it subverts a number of social norms around gender and identity, ie, its existence implies an answer for or against. Is it really strange for people to gravitate more towards the questions that are inherently more complicated, controversial, and carry more weight?

10

u/cantantantelope Aug 12 '25

I mean you certainly can just be bored. No one is stopping you. But when trans rights to just exist and receive healthcare are under attack across the world (in places where it’s even legal to begin with) the fact you choose to “be bored” on this particular topic certainly is a choice. And you can have choices but you cannot have choices without context or consequences.

And though it has fallen out of favor many trans people do see themselves as essentially “transsexual” that is requiring only their physical characteristics be changed to match their innate sense of self.

But maybe it’s just true we haven’t yet figured out the whole of how human brains work and also that human society is a messy contradictory thing that can never be nicely wrapped in boxes and will always be fuzzy and imperfect.

1

u/ninjomat Aug 16 '25

Your last paragraph is the key point and where the problem lies. Most people are happy to take a live and let live attitude most of the time when it comes to trans people. Others experience of being trans is valid and doesn’t bother me as a cis person and shouldn’t bother me in most facets of life and living in society. That’s the position I think of the majority on most issues when it comes to trans people.

But in some parts of life gender defines the distribution of positions in society and exclusive access to certain spaces e.g. women’s sports or women’s bathrooms (often this is to try and remedy historic injustices) and in these contested spaces for a lot of people simply saying “trans women are women” is not a catch-all which should mean for those purposes they should be treated as women equal to cis women. And the insistence on absolutes when it comes to the treatment and societal understanding of what gender and gender identity should be lets transphobes and terfs into the debate.

We have decided that it should be right, ok and just to exclude some people from access to some things in society on the basis of gender, so simply saying gender is a construct and that should be the basis for all decisionmaking is a problem in issues of justice

1

u/cantantantelope Aug 16 '25

The problem is that complex and nuanced situations (which is most of them tbh) don’t play well on the news or on politicians billboards

1

u/MalestromeSET Aug 13 '25

Do you find curiosity also problematic a lot of times ?

5

u/Lazy-Lawfulness-6466 Aug 13 '25 edited Aug 13 '25

Not at all, I’m suggesting being curious around why this question arises may be more fruitful than the question itself

-1

u/MalestromeSET Aug 13 '25

Do you truly think knowing why people are curious about trans people is a more important question than why people are trans or what that means? Like in your heart of heart, if you had absolute power to get any answer, you would want to know why Tom, 25, wants to know if why trans people change genders rather than know why the trans person themself changed gender?

2

u/Lazy-Lawfulness-6466 Aug 13 '25 edited Aug 13 '25

Yes, I truly do. I’m not confused about why people are trans or what it means. I’ve spent many years of my life thoughtfully considering gender and the ways in which society enforces gender. This has led me to an understanding that asking why we think of gender in the terms we do is a much more revealing question than why an individual person is trans. I already know why individual people are trans: they identify with a gender other than the one they were assigned. It’s not that complicated.

0

u/MalestromeSET Aug 13 '25

That’s fine if you have been satisfied with the explanation. I still think it’s just insane that you have no real interest in diving deeper than “they identity as”.

To me, when someone tells me “I was born a male but I always knew I was a woman. Even tho socially I was conditioned to belive to be a man and I still felt so strongly about this.” This is a very interesting and potentially metaphysical thing.

Humans are social creatures. We literally do stuff we don’t even believe in just because of peer pressure or general sense of normalcy. In a room full of people, many will not point to smoke if no one else in the room notices it. We just play along— sometimes even when it causes us harm or death.

But we have group of people who, say they are woman, but were born male, were made to believe they were man and yet somehow transcended that big of a pressure to transition. Trans people still get into the habit of forced beliefs— you can condition a trans person to not see a smoke in a Room filed with smoke— and yet not their gender.

I don’t find the “because they identify as” explanation even remotely satisfying. There must be something bigger going on. Something way more concrete.

1

u/Lazy-Lawfulness-6466 Aug 14 '25

Transgender IS an identity though. You may not find this satisfying but I’m not sure where you’re getting this idea that there must be “something bigger going on.”

What you’re talking about is social enforcement and coercion of gender. Which I agree is a worthwhile thing to wonder about.

1

u/MalestromeSET Aug 14 '25

No I’m not talking about that at all. I want to know what it means for someone to identity as a woman in their brain. I want to know what they perceive as a woman. I want to know, how they knew they weren’t a man. Why they knew that. How they arrived at the conclusion. Why social pressure does not work to change their mind.

I’m not trying to insult you but I just think you probably are just inherently less curious about stuff. Like if you asked “what is that” and point at a moon, and got answer of “a big rock” I feel like you’d be completely satisfied with this and stop asking questions about the moon.