Social Construction of Sexuality and Gender

To the song "Taste" by Animal Collective, a collection of images which
represent the social construction of a heterosexual male

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Construction
• Collective
• Animal
• Premiere_Elements_8
• Taste
• Social

[prschuster]

@DrArchieFitz Clothes & hairstyles are part of one's socially constructed sex role, along with occupation and social status. But gender itself is not the same as sex roles and neither of these are the same as biological sex. These 3 things - gender, sex roles & biological sex - are separate things. If feminism has done away with much of our socially assigned sex roles, it has not deconstructed gender itself anymore than it has done away with male & female anatomy.

[prschuster]

@DrArchieFitz If gender can be socially constructed then I can learn to be an alpha male, or I can be taught to act extremely effeminate... NOT. If gender is socially constructed then why would a little boy consciously try to act effeminine and suffer ridicule from classmates? Sex roles in society are socially constructed. One's masculine or feminine temperment is not so easily contrived. Feminists often conflate gender identity issues with sex roles in society.

[DrArchieFitz]

@DrArchieFitz The problem is that you have assumed that gender dynamics, femininity, masculinity, belong to a person. They exist BEFORE they aquire gender. They are given a sex, true, but this sex does not stipulate what they should wear or how they should act.

[DrArchieFitz]

@prschuster Ah, but transexuals HAVE gone along with a gender socialisation, they have just chosen the opposite. Simone de Beauvoir can demonstrate that gender is socially constructed in her book The Second Sex. Read it, it is very interesting.

[poweredxbyxhope]

@shangrigreige I like you too.

[shangrigreige]

@poweredxbyxhope I like you.

[prschuster]

@poweredxbyxhope And you can't demonstrate that gender identity is socially constructed any more than I can prove it has an innate component. I am closer to being androgynous than being an alpha male and that wasn't a conscious choice. John Money's experiments with intersex children, and the experiences that transexuals recount about being unable to go along with their gender socialization give me good reason to suspect that there is something innate about someone's gender identity.

[poweredxbyxhope]

Anyways, I'm not sure we really disagree much. It seems we simply have different definitions. You seem to be hung up on the idea that people feel prone to certain behaviors. You call these behaviors genders, but also seem to believe there are more than two, which makes me giggle.

Gender politics is just a big word game, really, which is why I enjoyed this video. It got the point across without having to resort to the labyrinth of language.

[poweredxbyxhope]

you simply can't have much of a case.

Also, of course some males fit into a certain model of masculinity (masculinity and femininity having many different, often conflicting definitions according to the culture). Some females fit that model also, even despite social conditioning. Being born prone to certain behaviors is not what I am disputing. I'm simply saying that even if there are patterns, they are not laws. And they certainly are not immune to environment.

[poweredxbyxhope]

You can't suddenly change everything you do subconsciously. The moment you are born, someone is either saying "It's a boy!" or "It's a girl!", you get wrapped in a pink or blue cloth, you go home to dolls or footballs, and are basically subjected to years of both subtle and apparent gender-specific treatment and imagery. Unless you can demonstrate that people are born with personalities specific to their gender, and that these personalities cannot change due to environment,(cont)