A comparison
A quotable:
Some say “sex is socially constructed,” because societies attach expectations, stereotypes, and roles to the sexes.
But this is like saying that astrologers built the stars, by attaching strange ideas to them.
Tip Jar
A quotable:
Some say “sex is socially constructed,” because societies attach expectations, stereotypes, and roles to the sexes.
But this is like saying that astrologers built the stars, by attaching strange ideas to them.
Oh, that’s brilliant. I’m retweeting that.
Says Bogardus, the “Traditional Catholic” who probably believes in Transubstantiation?
There are “theory” people who will look you in the eye and tell you that the stars are socially constructed.
It’s all word games.
The trick goes something like,
Socrates: “The stars are socially constructed.”
Student: “That’s stupid.”
Socrates: “When you say ‘stars’ you are envisioning the idea you have of what that means, and that idea is socially constructed. So yes, the stars, meaning the only things you’re capable of envisioning and discussing when you say the stars, are socially constructed.”
Student: “When I say the stars, I mean the thing in the world that my idea of ‘the stars’ is an effort to describe.”
Socrates: “Doesn’t work like that lol stars means your idea of what that means.”
Student: “But the thing in the world that my idea of the stars seeks to describe exists. What language should I use to refer to it if not ‘the stars’?”
Socrates: “Lol you don’t get to refer to it lol.”
Student: “Why not?”
Socrates: “Lololololol I got a phd for saying this lolololol.”
Ha! Very like Socrates.
Mike B: It is unfortunate that the only people skeptical or opposed to the Trans Agenda are often reactionaries. Almost all liberals, let alone leftists, go along just to get along, even if they don’t really believe.
Patrick: That’s about as perfect a description of Theory’s word games as I’ve ever seen. You get a cookie.
—
I was actually thinking about social construction while rewiring my stereo a couple hours ago, specifically the notion that gender refers to something socially constructed. The word simply doesn’t mean what people think it means. Let me ‘splain what I’m getting at.
Things such as gender roles, performance of gender, or gender norms are often cited as examples of gender as social construction. This is true to an extent. They do, in fact, refer to social phenomena. (We can even grant some measure of social construction, which really just means socially contingent in typical usage, rather than the somewhat more philosophically interesting concepts seen metaethical constructivism, for example.) That these phrases refer to social or socially constructed phenomena, however, does not entail that gender is or refers to a social or socially constructed phenomenon.
Here’s a comparison. The word literally is often used in situations where the phrase it modifies is not true or is only true figuratively. Some dictionaries describe this usage by including an additional sense in their entries for literally, recording this sense as meaning figuratively, virtually, etc. That’s not what it means, though, even in the relevant situations. To demonstrate this, consider the sentence, “He was literally losing his shit.” Is it the word literally that tells us the statement is figurative? If we removed it, would the sentence cease to read as figurative? Of course not. What is actually happening is precisely the same as with words like truly and really. Substitute them and the meaning is unchanged: “He was truly losing his shit.” All three of these words are, in their literal senses, synonymous. They indicate that a phrase is veridical. All three of them are commonly used as intensifiers, and their utility as intensifiers depends on their literal meaning. Literally doesn’t mean figuratively; it means literally. That’s why it works as an intensifier when used to modify a phrase that isn’t literally true.
The use of gender with respect to social phenomena is similar. Crucially, gender is neither sexual activity nor genitalia, but sex is. If we were to speak of performing sex, the intuitive interpretation would be performance of sexual activity. Likewise, sex roles would be understood to be roles in sexual activity, sex expectations would be expectations regarding sexual activity or genitalia, and so on. In order to refer to the norms associated with males and females, we instead talk about gender norms, because gender is maleness/femaleness. Gender norms are thus norms of maleness/femaleness. Gender isn’t a socially constructed phenomenon; it’s a biologically constructed phenomenon. It’s the very fact that the word refers to sex that we speak of gender roles and the like. Or rather, it’s because gender and sex are only partly synonymous.
The partial synonymy works both directions. Consider this sci-fi conversation:
NiV, I wonder if you are much younger than I am, or had a much more modern upbringing (without reading a ton of Victorian literature as a child!) and thus don’t have a more historical view of those words.
What is true is that language is changing all the time, as new generations put their stamp on it. It is also true that the word ‘sex’ has become ambiguous very recently; within the last hundred years. ‘Sex’ used to refer solely to the state of being male or female. It was not a rude word. The act was ‘fucking’, but that word was considered rude. Intercourse was not a rude word, so sexual intercourse was used as a euphemism for fucking (social intercourse also being a common phrase in polite usage). Gender was a word applied solely in grammar, referring to the state of a word being masculine or feminine.
Then some members of younger generations (between the world wars or just after WWII; I’m not sure of the timeline) shortened sexual intercourse (a phrase still in use when I was growing up) to ‘sex’, and suddenly the word ‘sex’ became ambiguous (and, outside of science class, rude). Around the same time, feminist theory pounced on gender as a blanket term for explaining the different roles assigned to, and behaviours expected of, people according to their sex (regardless of aptitude or personality), aka masculinity for males and femininity for females. Those were also called ‘sex roles’, and that phrase had nothing whatsoever to do with the act of procreation.
People of my age and older tend not to use the word ‘literally’ to mean ‘figuratively’ or as an intensifier unless they spend a lot of time around grandchildren who use it that way (even then, many or most of us correct the younger person and suggest better words!)
Your sci-fi conversation only works in the most recent version of English as spoken in the US and the UK for example, and not in other countries and languages where sex still means sex and not sexual intercourse.
@tigger,
Per the Online Etymological Dictionary, the use of “sex” to refer to fucking goes back to at least 1906.
Thank you, WaM. I often consult that site, but didn’t on this occasion. I’m surprised by the lack of references to that 1906 assertion; they’re usually very good at showing examples.
Here’s the OED entry. They have a citation from H.G. Wells from 1900:
(By the way, if the About page is to be believed, it seems like the Online Etymological Dictionary is the work of one man, a copy editor by trade. If that’s true, it’s an even more impressive site than I thought.)
Thank you, WaM; and that is indeed impressive!
tigger, where I come from, it was often shortened to just “intercourse”, which is of course confusing since that word can be used in so many other places to refer to things like conversation. But in Oklahoma in the 1970s, saying the word “sex” was verboten, at least to children under the age of 30. (Yeah, no sexual education in our schools!)
And I agree with what you said about “literally”. I don’t know anyone who uses it that way above the age of 35…and even most of the people I hang around with that are younger would do a better job than that. Maybe not my students, who do intend to engage in hyperbole.
That’s literally how language changes, and only us silly* old folks are bothered by it.
*And by silly, of course, I mean “holy”.
Yeah, the trans movement has done a marvelous job of exploiting the linguistic ambiguities around the word ‘sex’. Near as I can tell, they actually made use of feminism’s arguments in doing so:
“Gender is a social construct created around biological sex, used to oppress one sex and exalt the other,” would now read, “Sex is a social construct around sex, used to exalt one sex over the others.” It’s nonsense, of course, but it’s nonsense that hides behind additional verbiage to prevent being laid out quite so baldly.