Sex as a social construct

[IamAporcupine]

I was discussing the biological reality of sex with someone who seems quite keen on J Butler et al.

She started with 'sex is a social construct' and when enquired a bit more said that biological sex does exist, but what it is socially constructed is the 'category' of sex. That is, that humans observed the differences and decided to categorise that observation (and not a different one) and that this is what is socially constructed (and politically orientated).

I somehow intituvely think this does not make sense, but cannot put it in words. Can anyone help me please?

@KaycePollard

But of course *@WeeBisom*'s further explanation is the important one, and one I emphasise if I have to refer to Butler ...

I have taught queer theory, and it is possible to teach it from a radical feminist perspective, if one reads QT properly - it gives one the opportunity to talk about fluidity of practice, presentation etc - ie you are free to dress & love as you like.

I then usually go on a bit of a rant about how nowadays we think we're so progressive, but we still put have a tendency to put people in boxes, and that Shakespeare knew a thing or two about the playfulness of presentation of self (as fid Erving Goffman). Then I mentionJ S Mill, and his ideas about how no-one has the full truth, and we build new knowledge through partial & sometimes conflicting truths.

That the truly radical thing is to allow for flow & fluidity and not categorise people in terns of gender or sexuality (let's abolish gender, I whisper).

Students either complain about my transphobia, or lap it up and say it's the best module they've studied!

🙋 Umm I'd like to attend this lecture, please?!

I have enjoyed attending the lectures on the pages of this thread. What a lot has been made clear. Thank you.

Every animal species is able to tell the difference between the sexes.

When you say the “choice” to categorise based on sex , what do you mean? In one way it’s no choice at all. We don’t get a choice in deciding who gives birth and who doesn’t. That choice has been made by nature. If you mean the choice to categorise humans based on sex for things not to do with reproduction, like who gets to be in charge , who does what jobs etc then that decision is a social construct but I would argue that is now in the realm of gender. Nature says that only females can give birth, but humans say that females aren’t suitable for high powered careers because they are female. So whether it is a social construct depends on what categorisation choice you are making. Categorisation for what purpose?

Philosophy is a social construct, and so is Judith Butler.

@Melroses!!!

Sorry for hogging the thread, but here's another question I would ask your friend. Where is she going with this? Let's say sex is a social construct, in the way she describes. So what? One fallacy that I see quite a lot is people assuming that because something is a 'social construct' it is somehow less real or more malleable or can be changed on a whim, and this isn't true. Money is a social construct, but that doesn't mean I can self declare myself a millionaire. So I would be very curious to know why she is so invested in the fact that sex is a social construct, and I would be concerned that she's fallen into this trap of thinking that social construct= not real.

@Melroses

Philosophy is a social construct, and so is Judith Butler.

Love this!!

@ScrollingLeaves

I have enjoyed attending the lectures on the pages of this thread. What a lot has been made clear. Thank you.

Me too, thank you everyone

@WeeBisom

When you say the “choice” to categorise based on sex , what do you mean? In one way it’s no choice at all. We don’t get a choice in deciding who gives birth and who doesn’t. That choice has been made by nature. If you mean the choice to categorise humans based on sex for things not to do with reproduction, like who gets to be in charge , who does what jobs etc then that decision is a social construct but I would argue that is now in the realm of gender. Nature says that only females can give birth, but humans say that females aren’t suitable for high powered careers because they are female. So whether it is a social construct depends on what categorisation choice you are making. Categorisation for what purpose?

I assume you are asking me?

I really do not know what she meant! I too thought she meant the associated roles/jobs/etc atributed to those sex categories (ie as you say - gender), but I do not think it was that. She went on - we could use other categories, such as who is fertile and who is not, but instead we chose sex,and that makes it a social construct.

The on-line interaction was in Spanish, I can transcribe it word by word if that helped!

My reading of Butler's Gender Trouble is that she makes an interesting argument about cultural constructions of sex, not that sex itself is a cultural construction.

And yet Butler is full on TWAW...

Oh, and as an aside, as you leave the lecture theatre remember: if someone's argument has you turning it around, as though looking for the end of a ball of string, it is a flawed argument. Should you not find the end of the string you simply cut yourself a new piece and discard the useless short length... you can just as easily discard their whole argument as that short length

One fallacy that I see quite a lot is people assuming that because something is a 'social construct' it is somehow less real or more malleable or can be changed on a whim, and this isn't true

Indeed. History is full to the brim of the material consequences of ideas.

The French and Russian Revolutions
National Socialism
Democracy

and so on ...

But I suppose that if you have an ideology which talks about "society" in terms of discourse, and "identities" rather than the people who actually live in it, then changing choices is simply a matter of talking about things in a new way. We have "chosen" to define women in terms of sex because that is the dominant discourse, where power lies. By "choosing" to define it in a different way, we are doing a revolutionary act.

It's horrible. It's treating people like things. Just social elements.

How do you find common ground with someone whose belief system can come out with gems like "Science is an irredeemably white, patriarchal, cisnormative fiction that exists only to disempower marginalised identities"?

To be honest, that quote id from Titania McGrath, I just found out, but still....

@weebisom thanks, that was a useful way of articulating something which I felt I knew, like the OP, but struggled to put into words

I hate that kind of post-modern relativism bollocks.
Everything is a construct, there are no absolutes, blah blah blah.

I noticed it decades ago among so called progressives, and it makes me gag ("who are we to judge whether child marriage, or even rape, is right or wrong, gotta be respectful of other cultures, etc.")
In my experience, the only sane answer is to introduce them to the relative nature of pain, and the social construct of my fist in your face (in purely theoretical terms, of course. No one seems interested in putting the theory to a test through practical experiments, for some reason)

Maybe I'm a bit biased, as a hard scientist who deals with objective reality, but postmodernism is such a load of shit...

Society didn't decide that I am the one that can give birth to a child, or that my bone density is lesser that the other type of human that doesnt give birth.

So sex is not a construct. The term woman and man simply distinguish the two types of humans.

If we got rid of man and women and use birther or penis haver then we would still need birther only spaces to protect us from the penis havers. Birther only sports teams and statistics seperate from penis havers.

The wording could change but the needs to distinguish would remain the same and that is something that society did not construct

In my opinion, as soon we stray into debating the meaning of sex, we are talking about gender, in the old meaning rather than gender identity.

I hate that kind of post-modern relativism bollocks. Everything is a construct, there are no absolutes, blah blah blah.

I noticed it decades ago among so called progressives, and it makes me gag ("who are we to judge whether child marriage, or even rape, is right or wrong, gotta be respectful of other cultures, etc.")

I would agree with the view that in very many questions there are no absolutes, but that ought to lead us to the conclusion that there is no one but us humans to judge child rape and marriage, so we damn well ought to judge it.

This cultural relativist position as well as the idea that sex can be ignored, both miss the part of post-structuralism that emphasised the involvement of power in the social constructions within a culture. The woke are mostly very good at claiming white people, with all their power, came and ruined things for everyone else, with their new social constructions of sex. They are less keen at looking at how power is operating throughout the current claims that sex is irrelevant, and men should be given free access to women, women’s spaces, and women’s language.

Gender ideology is the biggest backlash against women’s gains since the suffragettes; it is one hell of a demonstration of the power men hold over women. Just look at how much they have colonised in only a few years.

I don’t think the ideology is only fuelled by the pharmaceutical industry. If it were, it wouldn’t have taken hold the way it has. It is a men’s rights movement, based on men’s right to declare women irrelevant. That is what it means in practice when someone says sex is socially constructed: women don’t matter.

And that sure enough is a social construction, and, unfortunately, also very real.

Does any of you know what the 17th Century thought?

It just occurred to me that there might have been interesting ideas as “Nothing is but thinking makes it so” keeps coming to mind.

Sorry, that quote wasn’t right. It is from Hamlet

Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so

It seems to show the idea that everything is moulded but thought as much as by its material reality.

*What happens if you ask your friend if she can think of any reason to sort humans into categories at all?

Would she sort them by, say, strength? Can she see any reason to sort by sex? Provision of health services maybe?*

I have had an intrusive thought about the Goodies episode called Apartheight. Poor Bill.

In this case I think another Shakespeare quote is more apt

( not taking time to check )

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet

The name isn't relevant the thing stays the same

@bordermidgebite,
that is more apt.

I was wondering in a general way about philosophies in the late 16th and early 17th centuries that might have been interested in illusion and reality, the power of thought over the material world, ‘changing’ as in witchcraft, as there seems to be in Shakespeare. There were philosophers earlier on this thread I think so I thought they might have studied that period.

I know very little myself, but thought there may have been experimental thought then that had echos to the OP.

Alchemy was another thing.

Can you make gold out of base metal?
😉