A physical basis for social constructs

[Ingenieur]

A recent article from the US discusses the issue of social constructs arising from the physical reality of a person's body.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/race-change-to-another-trend-online-rcna93759

The article is discussing transracialism, but many of the forcefully-put arguments will he well familiar to those on this board insofar as they also relate to gender.

One of the interesting nuggets is a statement that:

The modern concept of race is inseparable from the systemic racial hierarchy hundreds of years in the making. Simply put, changing races is not possible, because “biological races” themselves are not real.

This seems to be a perfect analogue for gender, that while sex is real, gender cannot be separated from hundreds (thousands?) of years of hierarchy, and that genders themselves aren't real.

I'm really interested that in the US, such a statement can be so blatantly stated, but one would not be able to say the same about sex (or indeed gender) in the same way.

I'm really interested that in the US, such a statement can be so blatantly stated, but one would not be able to say the same about sex (or indeed gender) in the same way.

The way I see it, is that racism and race discussions affect black and brown people the most. Misogyny and sex/ gender discussions affect women the most.

We have neither race nor sex equality but the one thing going for the racial equality rights movement is the group most affected by racism includes men. Therefore they are at least allowed to own their own movement. The group most affected by misogyny and gender ideas does not include men, so even the existence of a rights movement is under constant threat.

Thanks for posting, very interesting read.

It was striking that there is no rationale given about WHY transracialism is different to being transgender. Just the assertion that it is, and has been around longer: "Race historically emerged as a social construct to establish a racial hierarchy with the white race at the top, whereas variances in gender identity have existed for thousands of years, he said."

Race historically emerged as a social construct to establish a racial hierarchy with the white race at the top, whereas variances in gender identity have existed for thousands of years, he said.

But that isn’t true, neither sentence. Does he think there were no forms of racial hierarchy in societies that hadn’t experienced white people?
Variances in gender identity: what even is that if we know that gender is unstable and varies over time and place?