You have just repeatedly precisely what I said.
Certainly, some of the traits have their basis in biological traits. After all, these societies didn’t form in a vacuum. We’ve had societies (in the sense of systems that govern our behavior with regards to each other) for far longer than we’ve been human - almost all primates are highly social animals. Lemur, baboon, and chimp societies all form the way they do in part due to physical traits. Bonobos and chimps are different both in social structure - male chimps aggressively fight over groups of females, while bonobos are more egalitarian. This has driven the physical evolution of both species, giving chimps more sexual dimorphism and larger teeth (which in turn reinforces the social structure, with the large male chimps able to use their size aggressively).
Human society, with all its ugliness and hatred, didn’t form in a vacuum. Certainly, our biology guided its path. But we no longer need to let nature run its course. We can open our eyes, understand how we got to where we are, and decide on a path forward through reason rather than inertia.
Except that you appear to think that what you said supports the idea of gender not being a social construct. Which is very wrong.
And in the process, that oversimplified binary massively flattens out the diversity of biological reality. And not just by ignoring the existence of anatomically and/or chromosomally intersex people.
If, for example, childbearing capability is the determining characteristic of “female gender”, then why are prepubescent girls and postmenopausal/infertile women put in the same gender category as fertile women? (Answer: they haven’t always been, as in various Indo-European languages where words meaning “maiden” or “virgin” or just “young girl” have historically had neuter grammatical gender.)
Some languages, e.g., in India, have historically treated neuter grammatical gender as a whole separate third category for human gender identity too. It applies to the hijra or napuňsaka individuals who are considered neither fully male nor fully female, although they may be anatomically similar to fully-male or fully-female individuals at birth.
So, although penises and testes and vaginas and ovaries are definitely real physical characteristics, the binary-gender system that human societies have constructed is neither fully determined by them nor totally consistent with them. That’s how social constructs work.
The way you stated it the cause and effect relationship of genotype to surname within the culture is not really clear, so it’s hard to say.
So consider a hypothetical culture where it is clearer. Suppose that the method of assigning surnames is based on eye color, with a rule that “blue eyed babies are called Svenson”. Then yes - you have a genetic predisposition to have that surname if you are born into that cultural environment. Genetics is literally meaningless unless you specify an environment. In a different cultural environment, the name Svenson might not exist, or the cultural practice for assigning surnames might be different, so obviously the same genotype would not generate the “Svenson” phenotype. But that’s no different from saying that in a different environment the nutrition that contains the chemical precursors required to make blue eyes might not exist, in which case the same genotype would not generate blue eyes.
The fact that in environment B something different would happen does not imply that there is no genetic contribution to the determination of a phenotype in environment A.
( To suggest that the same genotype produces the exact same phenotype in all possible relevant environments is genetic determinism. )
It’s probably more useful if we forget about discussing this using the term social construct, since the only dispute here seems to be about what the term means.
I think what I said supports the fact that gender identity (not gender expression) almost certainly has non-social causal factors (in addition, of course, to many social factors). That by early in life, and probably already at birth, we are not a blank slate with respect to gender identity.
@iiandyiii And I should add that if there were also some fitness advantage to having the surname Svenson in that cultural environment (Svensons are a prrivileged group who have more children), then Darwinian natural selection would operate on the Svenson genotype/phentoype, in just the same manner as it would operate on any other genotype/phenotype.
You’re missing my point – my point is that because these are culturally determined factors, genes are irrelevant. By chance or whatever, some groups are going to be slightly more genetically similar than others, but this is irrelevant; cultural constructs are not genetic constructs. Conflating the two can only cause confusion.
I’m not missing your point, I’m saying you are wrong. The fact that the existence of the “category” Svenson (i.e. the possible phenotype) is entirely culturally determined does not imply that there can be no genetic predisposition to fall into that category when born into that environment.
But who cares? There might be a genetic component, on average, to residing in Pittsburgh (and chances are that people in Pittsburgh are more closely related to each other than to non-Pittsburghese). But living in Pittsburgh is irrelevant to genetics.
I mean whether you care or not is up to you. I don’t know what you’re talking about with Pittsburgh, but the point is that you can have a genetically determined predisposition to a certain gender identity within a given society, even if the way gender is manifest in that society is entirely cultural, and even if in a different society with different cultural practices your gender identity might be different.
To say that something has a genetic basis is not genetic determinism, it does not imply that the phenotype would be identical in all environments. It’s a very widespread fallacy among social scientists, and I think a major contributor to why some social scientists are so resistant to anything having any genetic basis.
Okay. It might have a genetic basis. That seems as far as we could go based on the data.
This Pit thread has gone on far too long without any real profanity or abuse.
So fuck all y’all.
No one is denying that people feel more aligned to one of the two societally constructed genders based on their inherent traits, some of which are geneticlly determined. No one has argued against this idea. No one at all. I’ve never seen anyone make that assertion, here on the Dope or elsewhere.
I’ve never seen a social scientist say that inherent traits with a genetic components have no impact on which gender someone feels they belong to. I’d love a cite for this claim.
It seems to me like you’re still misunderstanding what social scientists mean when they say that something is a social construct. You are arguing against a stance that only exists in your head.
This is all fascinating. The way that language constructs our understanding of the world is absolutely mind-blowing to me.
If your definition of a social construct can include innate determinants, what exactly are you excluding with the expression “ARE completely socially constructed” here?
(I’m not necessarily disagreeing with the statement, I’m just questioning your definitions.)
…what? I honestly don’t understand your question.
It’s a straightforward question. What do you mean by “ARE completely socially constructed” in that post? As opposed to what? What are you excluding with “completely”?
What (to you) is the difference between something that is completely socially constructed and something that is not completely socially constructed? What does the latter have that the former does not?
The hardness of this rock I’m holding is not socially constructed. Neither is the fact that I have a uterus.
I’ve been trying to understand since your post #1582 why you keep stressing this theme of exclusion as though it identified some kind of logical flaw in Babale’s or MrDibble’s arguments, and I’m still puzzled about it:
Where are you getting the notion that the concept of “social construct” is only meaningful if it excludes a lot of things in a society? ISTM that precisely the reverse is true.
The whole point of the idea of a “social construct” is to emphasize that humans in societies organize their perceptions of the world in accordance with categories that we collaboratively make up.
The way we structure the world is not as a transparently objective reflection of physical reality, but in accordance with classification schemes invented through human thinking.
So yes, race is a social construct, and gender is a social construct. “Garbage” is also a social construct (what determines how old and/or rejected a food item must be to qualify as “garbage”?), as is “adulthood” and “bed” and “fruit”, even though all of them are closely related to real physical objects and characteristics. The point is not to isolate a special class of exceptional phenomena called “social constructs”, but to point out the ubiquity of social construction of human ideas.