Academia / Sociology / Anthropology

[WinterAndRoughWeather]

I’m curious - I did a degree in Archaeology and Anthropology back in the early 2000s and it was generally accepted in the anth circles that gender is a social construct. Has that changed? I can’t really imagine it, based on the way the subject was taught then.

That's still the way it was taught when I graduated in 2018.

Hmm, so how has the sex is the construct / gender is innate thing gained so much traction? Is it just certain institutions that are pushing it?

Judith Butler (sub Goffman). Not just gender but also sex as a social and ideological construct.

Identity as performance meets postmodern fluidity etc.

The traction was gained back then and morphed into 'queer theory'.

Queer now seems synonymous with anything whatsoever that challenges any established norm and is not simply related to sexuality or desire.

Kathleen Lowther is an anthropology prof who has recently been removed from one of her positions as apparently these beliefs make students feel unsafe.
Sex is a social construct too now. and academic rigour has been replaced by ‘not letting biology get in the way of believing in fairies’. HTH.
See also philosophy lecturers requiring security to give lectures. Kathleen Stick, Selina Todd. Etc etc.
They started coming for the academics years ago. Heretics. Burn the witches.

Stock. Typo.

Okay, so is it particular institutions? My university was a very sciencey one, but are the more artsy ones more likely to be into queer theory, or are they all like that now?

When you look at it like this it appears a concerted drive to push women out of professorial positions.

Hi I did an MSc in gender archaeology a couple of years ago (not going to be specific as to when, or where, as it's outing). I found the archaeological theorists, post-processualists of most flavours, were now arguing that sex and gender are both constructs (a fallacy I also fell into and even did my thesis on gender nonbinary whatevers) and the archaeological scientists (mostly processualists) were the ones trying to say "but we have all this obvious evidence for dimorphism from the skeletal record."
So like most other things in archaeology, it came down to the fact that archaeologists who don't/won't try to understand science just dismiss those who do as "old fashioned processualists", presumably without ever troubling themselves to read what Binford actually wrote.
I can't speak for anthropology as I'm never sure where the lines between the disciplines are and my uni didn't have an anth department, it was all arch, and I am not 100% on the theoretical framework.

I only did anth for a year before focussing 100% on Arch, mainly because anth was too unscientific for me.

It was quite telling that the anth students would turn up to a 9am exam in full make-up, neo-classical drapery and beads, while we archaeologists were basically in pyjamas.

Okay, so is it particular institutions? My university was a very sciencey one, but are the more artsy ones more likely to be into queer theory, or are they all like that now?

Basically, yes. The worst disciplines for this are the social sciences, followed by the arts and humanities. The scientists have not lost their grip on material reality yet, though they are pathetically woeful when it comes to actively rebutting the wild claims of the sociologists.

@WinterAndRoughWeather

I only did anth for a year before focussing 100% on Arch, mainly because anth was too unscientific for me.

It was quite telling that the anth students would turn up to a 9am exam in full make-up, neo-classical drapery and beads, while we archaeologists were basically in pyjamas.

Bahaha I met a few people like that on training digs when I did undergrad. They never lasted long. If you get a decent supervisor, you're fine, but if you get some woke twelve-year-old, you're basically screwed. A lot of the best female academic staff had disappeared very suddenly from my uni in the years between me doing UG and PG, so I suspect some sort of sea-change had happened higher up, but my uni was notorious for peer osmosis of transgenderism so I think they had to appease the "vocal minority".