I basically just made it up...

[youcantspellawesomewithoutme]

...quillette.com/2019/09/17/i-basically-just-made-it-up-confessions-of-a-social-constructionist/

quillette.com/2019/09/17/i-basically-just-made-it-up-confessions-of-a-social-constructionist/

Too little, too late.

This won't be enough to stop the juggernaut that's steam rolling it's way over Women's Rights.

He still mixes up sex, gender and gender identity.

By now many people recognise that sex and gender are different (even if they don’t say so out loud), but are getting terribly confused about gender and gender identity.

AWAs pretend that the fact that gender is a social construct means anyones individual claim about their gender is as valid as everyone else's understanding and perception.

They assume ‘social construction’ = ‘individual claim’, whereby gender, which is social, is substituted with something internal to any given personsp’s head.

This author seems to think that if gender identity doesn’t make a lot of sense, it must be, that gender isn’t socially constructed after all.

It is very easy to tell gender, the social construction, and gender identity, the entitlement claimed by men, apart. AWAs behaviours show male socialisation very clearly, and the support they get from the powers that be show that they too, see them for the men they are.

We are helping no one, by arguing gender isn’t socially constructed. But we do need to hammer home that gender and gender identity are very different concepts (and most people don’t have the latter).

I recently saw a video called "is intersectionality a religion"? They argued exactly this. When women's studies became gender studies everything went downhill, and nothing was academic anymore. People made stuff up, others cited it and that was again cited and what was unproven speculation became 'proof'. That is one of the first things he mentions in this article.

Will probably finish it tonight but maybe not because as was said above, too little too late.

He seems to be suggesting that social expectations of men and women are innate. He's gone from one extreme to the other.

I didn't think he was mixing up sex, gender, and gender identity?

It's a fascinating essay and really skewers a lot of the way the social sciences operate.

He says

This confession should not be interpreted as arguing that gender is not, in many cases, socially constructed.

So I don't think he's gone from one extreme to the other. He's just saying that alternative hypotheses should be considered, and that conclusions should be viewed as provisional until sufficient evidence is in. Which is what the scientific method is about.

Great read, thanks for sharing

I agree with kesstrel, it didn't seem to me like he was advocating for the other extreme, but rather encouraging a broader range of perspectives and critique and seeing if evidence fits the theory rather than cherry picking evidence to fit into an ideology that is unquestioned.

Christ, how the hell does anyone with two brain cells to rub together ever fall for this claptrap?

How could you say that being a man or a woman was rooted in biology if we had evidence of change over time? What’s more, I insisted that “there are no ahistorical foundations for sexual difference rooted in biological or some other solid foundation that exists prior to being understood culturally.”

Um, there is no evidence, none, zero, zip, nada, not a single sausage of 'change over time' in what men and women are.

Fashions associated with men and women change over time. What men and women are permitted to do and how they are permitted to behave changes over time. But being a man or a woman is absolutely fixed and absolutely rooted in biology. Men still do the impregnating, women the gestating.

Fuck me, what a steaming pile of pseudo-intellectual wank he espoused. Why didn't everyone laugh in his and his ilk's faces from the get go? Why did anyone ever fall for this shite? Just how stupid are academics? I really, really don't get it.

That whole blog was the biggest steaming pile of wordy bullshit. Even in admitting he got it wrong he's STILL getting it wrong, because he's continually mixing up sex and gender.

Gender IS a social construct. SEX is rooted in material reality and can't be changed.

What a thicko. Why did people take anything he said seriously?

Isn't it a symptom of the post modernist stuff that is rife in academia?
That there's no objective truth or reality? If that's your starting point then any outlandish idea is up for grabs.
Social constructionists seem to have a big aversion to listening to scientists.