Current Events > If gender is a social construct, you don't get to decide what your gender is

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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Aristotle, Metaphysics

According to the Psychology wiki: A social construction, or social construct or a social concept is an invention or artifact of a particular culture or society which exists solely because people agree to behave as if it exists, or agree to follow certain conventional rules.

The "nuclear family" is a social construct. You don't need to abide by the nuclear family, and no one can force you to make a nuclear family, because it's not a fact that you must have one nor that you must accept that it is in any way ideal or respectable. If gender is the same thing, then ultimately your gender is simply a matter of your opinion. You can say "I am a man", but if I don't accept the construct of gender, I can say "no you aren't, your gender is chair." If you yourself believe that gender is a social construct, then you cannot authoritatively tell me I'm wrong, just as you cannot authoritatively tell someone that the nuclear family is a respectable familial organization; it's just a matter of their opinion.

This is why it's so strange that people who say gender is a construct of society often say, as if they had authoritative knowledge, that gender is also a spectrum and advocate for laws to punish people who don't fit into their social construct. It could be considered that if that's how you personally saw gender, but you can't declare to others that is the case. One could just as easily say "there are two genders according to the social construct I inhabit". How can you tell them they're wrong?
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K
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You just started a CE post by quoting Aristotle.

Lmao.
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shockthemonkey posted...

Oh boy, Mal needs attention today

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I totally agree with TC here. It's sad to see that the lack of arguments of liberals has led them to respond with just 'LOL Mal LOL.'

SAD!!!

COVxy posted...

You just started a CE post by quoting Aristotle.

Lmao.

Too high-brow, huh
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Mal posts truth
SJWs get butthurt

same old, same old...
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Sure you can, you just have to convince other people to believe what you do.
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it's an opinion to feel that you're a male/female/other, regardless of the sex that you were born?
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boxington posted...

it's an opinion to feel that you're a male/female/other, regardless of the sex that you were born?

If you believe gender is a social construct, yes. That is the case.
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Pretty interesting argument from a dude who rejects the CE poll showing an overwhelming consensus that he's the most dishonest poster on the site.
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I mean, language is also a social construct, but it doesn't mean that my believing English is Taiwanese is an opinion, but instead a delusion or a misrepresentation of facts
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A CE topic with an epigraph.
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A_Good_Boy posted...

Pretty interesting argument from a dude who rejects the CE poll showing an overwhelming consensus that he's the most dishonest poster on the site.

Wasn't there also a poll that voted overwhelmingly that black people were more privileged than white people

That's the population sample that voted me the most dishonest person. Just saying.
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I think that in real life, the "gender argument" doesn't matter at all to like 99.9% of people.
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Mal_Fet posted...

This is why it's so strange that people who say gender is a construct of society often say, as if they had authoritative knowledge, that gender is also a spectrum and advocate for laws to punish people who don't fit into their social construct. It could be considered that if that's how you personally saw gender, but you can't declare to others that is the case. One could just as easily say "there are two genders according to the social construct I inhabit". How can you tell them they're wrong?

i feel like you're not getting what people mean when they talk about social constructs. when someone says "gender is a social construct" they are talking about the gender binary.

they're saying that we as a society have collectively agreed that there are two genders, male & female, and because we have all agreed upon this, it's been basically willed into existence when there is (in the sake of the social construct argument) really no such thing as a rigid gender.

so when say that someone could go "there are two genders according to the social construct i inhabit," that's basically verifying the same thing as the above. if you're agreeing that gender is a social construct, you're essentially arguing the same way you'd agree that paper money has no inherent value.
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The only thing this "have it your way" gender movement is going to do is make gender identifications meaningless, which will just make us go back to using physical sex as the means to distinguish people... which will just end up resetting things to the way they were before.
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Romulox28 posted...

Mal_Fet posted...

This is why it's so strange that people who say gender is a construct of society often say, as if they had authoritative knowledge, that gender is also a spectrum and advocate for laws to punish people who don't fit into their social construct. It could be considered that if that's how you personally saw gender, but you can't declare to others that is the case. One could just as easily say "there are two genders according to the social construct I inhabit". How can you tell them they're wrong?

i feel like you're not getting what people mean when they talk about social constructs. when someone says "gender is a social construct" they are talking about the gender binary.

they're saying that we as a society have collectively agreed that there are two genders, male & female, and because we have all agreed upon this, it's been basically willed into existence when there is (in the sake of the social construct argument) really no such thing as a rigid gender.

so when say that someone could go "there are two genders according to the social construct i inhabit," that's basically verifying the same thing as the above. if you're agreeing that gender is a social construct, you're essentially arguing the same way you'd agree that paper money has no inherent value.

This is the point though. If the gender binary is a social construct, then so is the gender spectrum. And if there's no such thing as a rigid gender, then your gender is only a matter of your opinion. Other people, therefore, can decide for themselves what your gender is since they too can have opinions about gender.

At least paper money is backed up somewhat by the value of the commodity it was traded for.
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Here's the thing though. Gender is not a social construct. This is why transgender is a real thing and transrace is bullshit.
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Mal_Fet posted...

A_Good_Boy posted...

Pretty interesting argument from a dude who rejects the CE poll showing an overwhelming consensus that he's the most dishonest poster on the site.

Wasn't there also a poll that voted overwhelmingly that black people were more privileged than white people

That's the population sample that voted me the most dishonest person. Just saying.

Weird how that's a position you've also argued while using AA to justify it. Change your mind about that?
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Their whole point is its because its a social construct, we shouldnt have to obey its laws because times and people and traditions change
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Aristotle is the last philosopher to quote on shit like this. He saw the world as a very black and white place.
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Mal_Fet posted...

This is the point though. If the gender binary is a social construct, then so is the gender spectrum. And if there's no such thing as a rigid gender, then your gender is only a matter of your opinion. Other people, therefore, can decide for themselves what your gender is since they too can have opinions about gender.

At least paper money is backed up somewhat by the value of the commodity it was traded for.

Ok I see what you're getting at now. I would disagree with your stance that if something is not rigid and is socially constructed, then it's just an opinion. As someone else said, language is a social construct, but me believing that saying Como Estas is English is not an opinion.
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Romulox28 posted...

Mal_Fet posted...

This is the point though. If the gender binary is a social construct, then so is the gender spectrum. And if there's no such thing as a rigid gender, then your gender is only a matter of your opinion. Other people, therefore, can decide for themselves what your gender is since they too can have opinions about gender.

At least paper money is backed up somewhat by the value of the commodity it was traded for.

Ok I see what you're getting at now. I would disagree with your stance that if something is not rigid and is socially constructed, then it's just an opinion. As someone else said, language is a social construct, but me believing that saying Como Estas is English is not an opinion.

Language is an even better example

Look at how often people argue over the definition of even very basic words like "violence". Apparently to some people, misgendering someone is an act of violence, but obviously not everyone agrees with that. But you can interpret "violence" to mean literally anything that causes a person distress. Same with gender; if I don't agree with you what your gender is, I can just decide what gender I consider you.
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bump
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This reminds me of that meme with the guy sweating over two buttons: "gender is a social construct" vs. "you can be born the wrong gender"...
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Feels over reals.
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Didn't read lol
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Mal laying down truth. Bodies are everywhere.
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DifferentialEquation posted...

Mal posts truth
SJWs get butthurt

same old, same old...

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Gender is a social construct with purpose. Just dismissing it for the sake of dismissing a social construct is to ignore the purpose and lose sight of something in the process. For example, if somebody says their gender is attack helicopter, the purpose of determining one's gender is lost, whereas there are many helpful implications as to declaring one's self as male, that they probably have male genitals and male bodily construct.
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This is really desperate.
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legendarylemur posted...

Gender is a social construct

lmao
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Mal is right for once. The worst is the people who say that gender is completely subjective and can change on a whim lol, so it literally means nothing. Welcome to post modernism.
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SJWs/regressives routinely use the "social construct" label to dismiss anything they don't like especially when it exists outside social systems, and isn't beholden to them. They're childish.
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The whole point of pointing out that something is a social construct is to make the argument that we can think about it differently.

Gender spectrum advocates feel that conceiving of gender as a spectrum is a more efficient and functional conceptual practice than thinking of gender as binary, and their goal is to reconstruct the idea of gender to that end. There are good reasons for agreeing with them, too.
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this bird has so many slimy neckbeard virgins lmao
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But that said, being transgender is still a thing, you're not deciding what your gender is, you're acknowledging your gender is just opposite of your sex. But it does exclude the Zim, zer, xier nonsense which is just made up baloney.
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MedeaLysistrata posted...

The whole point of pointing out that something is a social construct is to make the argument that we can think about it differently.

Gender spectrum advocates feel that conceiving of gender as a spectrum is a more efficient and functional conceptual practice than thinking of gender as binary, and their goal is to reconstruct the idea of gender to that end. There are good reasons for agreeing with them, too.

Gender isn't a spectrum though. It's a bimodal distribution. There's still two genders. There's a spectrum of the male gender and a spectrum of the female gender, bit you're still one or the other. And most transgender think that way anyways. So the problem isn't the need to relabel genders, at all.
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This topic is like a blind person reading a cheese grater.

Pointless and painful.
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nicklebro posted...

MedeaLysistrata posted...

The whole point of pointing out that something is a social construct is to make the argument that we can think about it differently.

Gender spectrum advocates feel that conceiving of gender as a spectrum is a more efficient and functional conceptual practice than thinking of gender as binary, and their goal is to reconstruct the idea of gender to that end. There are good reasons for agreeing with them, too.

Gender isn't a spectrum though. It's a bimodal distribution. There's still two genders. There's a spectrum of the male gender and a spectrum of the female gender, bit you're still one or the other. And most transgender think that way anyways. So the problem isn't the need to relabel genders, at all.

What's the problem, then?
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nicklebro posted...

But that said, being transgender is still a thing, you're not deciding what your gender is, you're acknowledging your gender is just opposite of your sex. But it does exclude the Zim, zer, xier nonsense which is just made up baloney.

tbf, there are people who don't identify as (fe)male, and the concept of a "third" gender has been around throughout history
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MedeaLysistrata posted...

What's the problem, then?

To me there is no problem, but if I was going to humor the activists pushing this issue, I'd say it's be the need (or want) to come up with distinctions between the different kinds of males and females. But the terms male and female still remain, and are used in the exact same way. I mean we have a term "tomboy" that would be an example of one I guess. Tomboys are still females though.

But to me, when you're getting that nitpicky, you're eventually going to have to acknowledge that every individual is separate from every other individual, and then acknowledge the reason we have genders anyways. It isn't to make people feel good or anything like that, it's simply for communicative purposes, and to make it too convoluted makes it detrimental to that purpose.
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boxington posted...

nicklebro posted...

But that said, being transgender is still a thing, you're not deciding what your gender is, you're acknowledging your gender is just opposite of your sex. But it does exclude the Zim, zer, xier nonsense which is just made up baloney.

tbf, there are people who don't identify as (fe)male, and the concept of a "third" gender has been around throughout history

And they're mistaken.
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regardless, I was just saying that it's not a recent phenomena.
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Gender isn't a social contrast. Gender roles are.

boxington posted...

nicklebro posted...

But that said, being transgender is still a thing, you're not deciding what your gender is, you're acknowledging your gender is just opposite of your sex. But it does exclude the Zim, zer, xier nonsense which is just made up baloney.

tbf, there are people who don't identify as (fe)male, and the concept of a "third" gender has been around throughout history

What people identify as is really irrelevant though. That isn't what genders are for. And how can you know you don't feel like a male or female unless you know what it's like to be a male or female? You can't. There is no third gender, just like there is no third sex. And like I said, the vast majority of trans people identify as the gender opposite of their sex. The rest? Well I just am not buying it. Say what you want about that, I'm just speaking logically and what actually makes sense.
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boxington posted...

regardless, I was just saying that it's not a recent phenomena.

Neither are unicorns.

knutjob posted...

Gender isn't a social contrast. Gender roles are.

Even that's a bit off since gender roles have a biological basis. Cuz Lions have gender roles too lol.
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