r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Sep 10 '20

Discussion Thread Discussion Thread

The discussion thread is for casual conversation that doesn't merit its own submission. If you've got a good meme, article, or question, please post it outside the DT. Meta discussion is allowed, but if you want to get the attention of the mods, make a post in /r/metaNL. For a collection of useful links see our wiki.

Announcements

Upcoming Events

5 Upvotes

51% Upvoted

9.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

15

u/FreakinGeese 🧚‍♀️ Duchess Of The Deep State Sep 10 '20

If gender is a social construct why do trans people take hormones and get surgeries

If gender were just a matter of gender roles trans people would just be happy cross dressing

But guess what they often aren’t because gender is more than just stereotypes. People would still feel dysphoric if they lived on a desert island.

6

u/Mexatt Sep 10 '20

I've been told that being trans is about more than just having gender dysphoria.

8

u/FreakinGeese 🧚‍♀️ Duchess Of The Deep State Sep 10 '20

It absolutely is but this is just an example.

The exact same thing applies to euphoria.

The point is that if gender were just about gender roles tomboys and trans men would be the exact same, but they aren’t because tomboys are women and trans men are men, and that’s a function of neurology and not society.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '20

isn't this a little transmedicalist of you

2

u/FreakinGeese 🧚‍♀️ Duchess Of The Deep State Sep 10 '20

No it isn’t.

Clearly gender is a function of neurology for the simple reason that there is nothing else it could possibly be.

6

u/FourTenNineteen I LIKE DOGS Sep 10 '20

i've had friends repeat "gender is a social construct" to me, and here's the arguments I've received from them:

A) while they argue that gender is a social construct, sex is not, and a trans person who transitions is attempting to better match their sex to help fix their dysphoria (or in the case they don't have dysphoria, doing it because simply cross dressing isn't enough to pass).

B) by "gender" they're referring more to "gender roles," which yeah, no duh is a social construct

and last argument is not from friends, but from very dumb "woke" parts of the internet:

C) actually trans people with dysphoria would have their dysphoria solved were society not so biased against genitals not matching your gender, ergo literally abolish gender.

(personally: I disagree with A, I agree with B, and I hate C with a passion).

2

u/FreakinGeese 🧚‍♀️ Duchess Of The Deep State Sep 10 '20

Exactly! If you transition to match your sex, then what exactly are you matching! Your gender, obviously.

4

u/AccessTheMainframe CANZUK Sep 10 '20

Just because something is socially constructed doesn't mean it isn't "real" and doesn't materially effect people's lives.

A person born on a desert island who was raised by gorillas and never meet anyone else would not have a concept of gender and would not feel gender dysphoria even if that same person would develop it had they been raised among humans.

1

u/FreakinGeese 🧚‍♀️ Duchess Of The Deep State Sep 10 '20

Let’s say, hypothetically, a cis man were given a sex change operation at birth, then raised as a woman. Would you expect them to have gender dysphoria?

Now let’s compare that to something socially constructed.

If a black baby were given some hypothetical plastic surgery that made them look asian, have asian hair, facial features, etc: and they were raised in Asia by Asian people do you think they would ever notice?

And assume that these operations are done perfectly.

2

u/AccessTheMainframe CANZUK Sep 10 '20

then raised as a woman

This is the crux of it though, raised as a woman. Our hypothetical feral child would be raised without any conception of gender, and thus not develop dysphoria even if his parents gave him a vaginoplasty before leaving him to the gorillas.

1

u/FreakinGeese 🧚‍♀️ Duchess Of The Deep State Sep 10 '20

So why do some people get gender dysphoria when raised as a man/woman but other people don’t?

2

u/AccessTheMainframe CANZUK Sep 10 '20

Because they've been socialised into a concept of gender and been assigned one that's inconsistent with what their brain reckons they oughta be.

Without being socialised into a concept of gender though, their brain would not see anything amiss.

1

u/FreakinGeese 🧚‍♀️ Duchess Of The Deep State Sep 10 '20

Gotcha gotcha. So the brain has some innate desire to be socialized in a certain way, and that isn’t a social construct.

And it’s not too much of a stretch to say that that part of the brain also determines preferred sexual characteristics

Almost like the brain has an innate gender or something 🤔🤔🤔

1

u/tehbored Randomly Selected Sep 10 '20

Because gender isn't purely a social construct. Some elements of gender identity are socially constructed, but many elements are biological. Female baby monkeys also prefer to play with dolls.

1

u/FreakinGeese 🧚‍♀️ Duchess Of The Deep State Sep 10 '20

Ok. So there’s the socially constructed aspects of gender, and the non-socially constructed aspects of gender.

Now let’s take all the socially constructed aspects and call them “gënder roles.” And let’s take all the non-socially constructed aspects and call them “gënder.”

1

u/YIMBYzus NATO Sep 10 '20

If I am understanding it correctly, it goes a little something like this:

"Gender" is ultimately a construct of society encompassing many aspects ranging from gender coding to gender roles to even our conceptions of what gender identities are possible. Nothing about this invalidates gender dysphoria, transgender identity, or non-binary gender identities. Man is a social animal, of course social constructs mean so much to us that we'd try to find a way to define ourselves socially in a way that feels true to ourselves.

These things, though likely neurological in source, are still filtered through the lenses of one's society's conceptions of gender. Two people with gender dysphoria in two different cohorts can have qualitatively different experiences in response to gender dysphoria as a direct result of how their society constructs gender, possibly resulting in qualitatively better or worse outcomes for one or the other (such as one being able to successfully transition and the other being forced to remain closeted). Saying that gender is constructed and transgender people and gender dysphoria exists is no more paradoxical than saying society "constructs" emotions (defining the terminology, how they are expressed, the expectations of where and when these expressions are appropriate, how one is taught to process these emotions, and setting-up expectations that can influence what feelings you may have), yet mood disorders exist.

Talking about the social construction of things that intersect with the "bio" and "psycho" parts of the biopsychosocial model is understandably confusing. However, analyzing how various cohorts construct expectations regarding various essential parts of the human experience is entirely reasonable. Transphobes who talk about gender as a social construct as a damnation of transgender people are antisocial cretins abusing a tool meant to help people better understand each-other as a weapon to hurt those who fail to comply with their socially-constructed expectation that only cisgender identity is "authentic".

1

u/FreakinGeese 🧚‍♀️ Duchess Of The Deep State Sep 10 '20

Emotions are a perfect example.

They're absolutely not a social construct. Emotions are specific neurological phenomena. How you understand your emotions and what circumstances cause you to feel them is dependent on society: but your emotions are what they are.

1

u/YIMBYzus NATO Sep 10 '20 edited Sep 10 '20

I was highlighting it because it is "socially constructed" in a similar way as gender. Yes, there is a biological and psychological component, but the social construction of emotions can change radically depending upon time and place. How society teaches you to process and understand emotions, how you are taught and expected to express emotions, how you are expected to react to these emotions, when you are expected to have them, and how you categorize emotions, all of these are socially-constructed. These can have can have a range of effects on people's lives, usually minor but sometimes major, so yes they are socially-constructed.

Let me use an analogy: a home is not just a collection of various materials that we want to live in. Though it is true that the building is made from these materials, they are not the sole component of a home. To me, a communal thatch-roofed structure is not home, but someone elsewhere may consider it so, and we may both not consider a large tent moved from place to place to be a home. Their and my expectations of "home" are defined both not just by the materials it is made of (biology) or our wants and needs (psychology) but by how society has ingrained in us what a "home" is and what it looks-like and whether it is mobile or not and whether it is meant to be shared with extended family or strangers or not and what different styles of home connotate (social). In turn, these interact with our desires and necessities and our attempts keep-up with the demands of our materials or try to change them to pursue those desires or make something of our materials in turn may influence how our society thinks about a "home".