10 ms·

It actually is to many.

tachyonbeam 9y ago
Very much so. Have people not heard the line "gender is entirely a social construct"? That is mainstream thinking where I'm from. Also referred to as the blank slate hypothesis.
- KekDemaga 9y ago
  I never understood the "X is a social construct" argument. People seem to use it to dismiss ideas out of hand in my experience. Freedom of speech, rule of law, and consenting to sex are similarly "social constructs" as in they aren't fundamental laws of the universe but they seem to be pretty good ideas. What is intended to be inferred by this argument?
  - Pfhreak 9y ago
    There's a large group of people who believe that gender is a natural force in the world -- you are either a boy or a girl, because that's the way genetics is. I have had people tell me that boys like trucks and girls like dresses because of chemical differences in their brains. The gender is a social construct argument is the voice that believes the opposite -- that gender roles and expression are learned behavior in our society. Our parents and peers teach us what it means to be a boy or girl from a very young age, and what is socially unacceptable for those genders. (They also commonly teach us, here in the US, that there are only two genders.)
    - Chris2048 9y ago
      You are talking about gender, as opposed to biological sex? But then, what is gender by that definition? If it is a social construct, what does it even mean to number them - they would be intangible constructs in the first place; it's like arguing there are only X canonical Marvel universes..
    - kodt 9y ago
      Isn't it possible your biology gives you a natural tendency towards certain interests or activities and that these are reinforced and strengthened by society?
      - tachyonbeam 9y ago
        I think that's the most sensible hypothesis. Whenever there is a nature vs nurture question, the answer is usually "it's both".
    - KekDemaga 9y ago
      >I have had people tell me that boys like trucks and girls like dresses because of chemical differences in their brains. In regards to gender differences I find some of the primate evidence[0][1] rather compelling. This doesn't mean that I believe any gender should be treated differently than the other of course but it seems rather obvious to me that some differences exist outside of any conditioning that human societies may provide. [0]http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/101220-chimpanzees-play-nature-nurture-science-animals-evolution/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/101220-chimp... [1]http://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-29418230/monkey-test-shows-gender-choices http://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-29418230/monk...
      - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
        Note that the primate evidence showed that the girls played equally with the stuffed animals and the wheeled toys. This reminds me of colour preference, where girls are more likely to say they like pink than boys and so people conclude pink is for girls and blue is for boys, yet if you ask what their favourite colour is, the top pick for both sexes is blue. So the evidence on trucks doesn't support the claim you replied to, but maybe they'd be on firmer ground if they said boys had proportionately less interest in stuffed toy animals than trucks.
        KekDemaga 9y ago
        Not all instances of playing with something are equal. In terms of total interactions the females played with both the same number of instances but they also played with the dolls a significantly longer period of time.
        ZeroGravitas 9y ago
        Specifically talking about this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ It seems the duration shows the same pattern as counting the number of interactions: "males interacted for a greater total time with wheeled than with plush objects while females did not differ in the duration of interactions with the toy types"
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    There is a book call the Social Construction of Reality and, exactly like you're saying, everything in our society is a social construct. Schools, legal systems, states, money, war, debt .. they only exist because we believe they do. You can choose not to exist in something like the police and law, and go murder some people, but enough people believe in those constructs that they'll lock you up, or at the least, put you in a mental institution. There are people who have trouble understanding society with mental illnesses, and many of them end up on the streets. Hallucinations, bi-polar, schizo-effective people often have trouble working within the social constructions the rest of us take for granted. This wasn't really meant to answer your political issue, but just to provide a context of what is and isn't socially constructed.
  - hyperpape 9y ago
    In general, social constructs aren't bad. But consider something like the lower representation of women in math. If it happens because of genetically different altitudes/interests then it's inevitable, and there's no use complaining about it. If it's because of society discouraging women, that's just plain dumb. (Btw: your examples are highly debatable. You can argue that consent and freedom of speech are social practices which respect objective moral/ethical facts).
    - yorwba 9y ago
      > If it happens because of genetically different altitudes/interests then it's inevitable, and there's no use complaining about it. That's not actually true. Even when something is the expected outcome of certain biological factors, that doesn't make it inevitable. With the right kind of intervention, very little is completely biologically determined. That's what medicine is all about. In many ways, culture is also about overcoming the limits and defaults of human biology. There's no reason to suppose that differences between the sexes can't be influenced into a direction that appears more desirable.
      - hyperpape 9y ago
        That makes sense. I just wanted to point out that a purely cultural difference should be presumed guilty, whereas if there were genetically driven ones, they might not be. The real meat of the point is that a culturally driven difference in this realm is a bad thing.
  - jMyles 9y ago
    > Freedom of speech, rule of law, and consenting to sex are similarly "social constructs" as in they aren' t fundamental laws of the universe This varies across philosophical traditions. Common-law traditions do, in a sense, hold these sorts of rights as part of the origin story of the universe.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Sacho 9y ago
  I don't know what idea your statement is supposed to express. Let's start with this - what is gender? I know what biological sex is, roughly; I thought gender was a synonym for it(this may be a translation/communication barrier). From googling the topic, it appears that gender is defined as "the expectations a society places on an individual of a given sex", which makes the "gender is entirely a social construct" statement tautological. I read about the "blank slate hypothesis", and it seems to be about something else entirely - it seems to be pretty vaguely referring to the "knowledge" and "experience" a human being might have from before they were born vs after. It seems rather naive to be aware of all the other biological differences between men and women but demand that they have no effect on "the mind", or more appropriately, on the expressions of will that a human being exhibits. I'm not an expert though, so maybe there's a deeper truth out there somewhere.
  - lr4444lr 9y ago
    "Gender is distinct from sex" is a scientific hypothesis. It could be true, false, or true with qualifications. The second of those three options appears to be pretty reliably refuted by the evidence we have. Unfortunately, it is a politically problematic to say this in "progressive" circles. Sound familiar to some other hot-topic science debate we've discussed on HN before?
jacquesm 9y ago
Sadly, yes, you are right.
- hungerstrike 9y ago
  Why do I need to be aware of every mental illness that exists? There are way more important things for society to deal with. This issue is a complete distraction for all but those who it affects directly. I don't support making major changes to society in order to benefit an infinitesimal minority of mentally ill people.
  - chc 9y ago
    You don't need to be familiar with or pay attention to this stuff, but you can't both reserve the right to ignorance on a topic and take a stance on the same topic. If you don't want to pay attention to what's going on with transgender people, then go on and live your life — that is 100% your prerogative. If somebody tells you they're a woman, you can just let it pass without any burden on yourself — you don't have to think about the validity of their statement or the implications or what they've gone through in their life. But if you loudly proclaim your lack of knowledge about transgender people while also loudly proclaiming that they should be treated disrespectfully, I don't think the transgender people are the ones being unreasonable in that situation.
    - hungerstrike 9y ago
      > ...you can't both reserve the right to ignorance on a topic and take a stance on the same topic. Sure I can. My stance can be "I don't want to know very much about this topic and if you keep trying to bring it up ahead of much more important topics, then I will have to ignore you more loudly." > If somebody tells you they're a woman, you can just let it pass without any burden on yourself... That alone is certainly is not a burden on myself. The burden begins when the issue of societies behavior towards transgender people continually eclipses more important issues. I feel sorry for people whose issues get used to polarize people for political theater. > ...if you loudly proclaim your lack of knowledge about transgender people while also loudly proclaiming that they should be treated disrespectfully,... I don't know who is "loudly" doing anything or where this argument is coming from. Did I say something loudly? Is that the same thing as just saying the words "I don't care about this topic and please stop telling me about it...?" All I said is - why should I care? If you say "because they're people", then I would say "we have more important types of people to worry about". For instance, who is doing anything about the sociopaths and psychopaths that seem to gravitate towards positions of power? Where's all the attention for that?
judah 9y ago
You're getting political here, but I'll bite. It's not that we political conservatives believe transgender people are faking it. Transgenderism is real. We conservatives acknowledge some folks are born with a sincere belief or feeling they are the wrong gender. I personally sympathize with such people; it must be torturous and painful to be a particular biological sex, with hormones and chromosomes of one biological sex, but feel and believe you are a different biological sex. Where we differ with leftists is how to view the transgender phenomenon. This article, for example, states that this "girl" became a boy due to a "rare genetic disorder occurs because of a missing enzyme which prevents the production of a specific form of the male sex hormone - dihydro-testosterone - in the womb." It was a genetic disorder; a birth defect. Thus, this "girl" wasn't a girl at all. Biologically and scientifically speaking, he was a boy with an undeveloped penis. So it is with transgender folks in the West. We see transgenderism as an outgrowth of the medical condition known as gender dysphoria. Folks suffering with gender dysphoria should seek help, whether that be a medical sex change operation or counseling.
- Chris2048 9y ago
  There is also the issue of language policing, which confuses the issue; As a political device, some demand trans-women be called women, which confuses discussion of the issue. There are times that I think this might be the aim - to shut down rational discussion so only the emotive appeal remains. A whole other issue is segregated bathrooms; I have yet to see people get past the label-flinging stage to ask the fundamental question: why are bathrooms segregated (hetero/cis M/F) in the first place?
  - Mz 9y ago
    why are bathrooms segregated (hetero/cis M/F) in the first place? I think a much better question would be "Why aren't they all private?" If you create individual bathrooms with lockable doors, you just label it "rest room" and you don't need to assign a gender or make a private matter a public issue. Why should trans individuals have to deal with the question of which bathroom they "belong" in? What's next? Questioning which bathroom gay people belong in? Making private individual bathrooms the norm would also eliminate many other issues. The line to the women's room tends to be longer than to the men's because using a urinal takes less time and the use of urinals is more space efficient, so a men's bathroom sometimes has more toilets plus urinals than a women's bathroom has toilets. This has caused some people to decry this as yet another form of sexism that they would like redressed. Meanwhile, the men's room can have a long wait if you need to have a bowel movement. Lots of urinals is great if everyone just needs to pee, but problematic if that is not the case. Small public men's rooms often have only one toilet, the rest urinals. What if two men are traveling together and both need the actual toilet? Historically, men's bathrooms tended to not have changing tables, reinforcing the expectation that only women change diapers. Individual bathrooms also eliminates that issue. The list of problems it would solve is no doubt much longer, but you get the idea.

Very much so. Have people not heard the line "gender is entirely a social construct"? That is mainstream thinking where I'm from. Also referred to as the blank slate hypothesis.

KekDemaga 9y ago
I never understood the "X is a social construct" argument. People seem to use it to dismiss ideas out of hand in my experience. Freedom of speech, rule of law, and consenting to sex are similarly "social constructs" as in they aren't fundamental laws of the universe but they seem to be pretty good ideas. What is intended to be inferred by this argument?
- Pfhreak 9y ago
  There's a large group of people who believe that gender is a natural force in the world -- you are either a boy or a girl, because that's the way genetics is. I have had people tell me that boys like trucks and girls like dresses because of chemical differences in their brains. The gender is a social construct argument is the voice that believes the opposite -- that gender roles and expression are learned behavior in our society. Our parents and peers teach us what it means to be a boy or girl from a very young age, and what is socially unacceptable for those genders. (They also commonly teach us, here in the US, that there are only two genders.)
  - Chris2048 9y ago
    You are talking about gender, as opposed to biological sex? But then, what is gender by that definition? If it is a social construct, what does it even mean to number them - they would be intangible constructs in the first place; it's like arguing there are only X canonical Marvel universes..
  - kodt 9y ago
    Isn't it possible your biology gives you a natural tendency towards certain interests or activities and that these are reinforced and strengthened by society?
    - tachyonbeam 9y ago
      I think that's the most sensible hypothesis. Whenever there is a nature vs nurture question, the answer is usually "it's both".
  - KekDemaga 9y ago
    >I have had people tell me that boys like trucks and girls like dresses because of chemical differences in their brains. In regards to gender differences I find some of the primate evidence[0][1] rather compelling. This doesn't mean that I believe any gender should be treated differently than the other of course but it seems rather obvious to me that some differences exist outside of any conditioning that human societies may provide. [0]http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/101220-chimpanzees-play-nature-nurture-science-animals-evolution/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/101220-chimp... [1]http://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-29418230/monkey-test-shows-gender-choices http://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-29418230/monk...
    - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
      Note that the primate evidence showed that the girls played equally with the stuffed animals and the wheeled toys. This reminds me of colour preference, where girls are more likely to say they like pink than boys and so people conclude pink is for girls and blue is for boys, yet if you ask what their favourite colour is, the top pick for both sexes is blue. So the evidence on trucks doesn't support the claim you replied to, but maybe they'd be on firmer ground if they said boys had proportionately less interest in stuffed toy animals than trucks.
      - KekDemaga 9y ago
        Not all instances of playing with something are equal. In terms of total interactions the females played with both the same number of instances but they also played with the dolls a significantly longer period of time.
        ZeroGravitas 9y ago
        Specifically talking about this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ It seems the duration shows the same pattern as counting the number of interactions: "males interacted for a greater total time with wheeled than with plush objects while females did not differ in the duration of interactions with the toy types"
- djsumdog 9y ago
  There is a book call the Social Construction of Reality and, exactly like you're saying, everything in our society is a social construct. Schools, legal systems, states, money, war, debt .. they only exist because we believe they do. You can choose not to exist in something like the police and law, and go murder some people, but enough people believe in those constructs that they'll lock you up, or at the least, put you in a mental institution. There are people who have trouble understanding society with mental illnesses, and many of them end up on the streets. Hallucinations, bi-polar, schizo-effective people often have trouble working within the social constructions the rest of us take for granted. This wasn't really meant to answer your political issue, but just to provide a context of what is and isn't socially constructed.
- hyperpape 9y ago
  In general, social constructs aren't bad. But consider something like the lower representation of women in math. If it happens because of genetically different altitudes/interests then it's inevitable, and there's no use complaining about it. If it's because of society discouraging women, that's just plain dumb. (Btw: your examples are highly debatable. You can argue that consent and freedom of speech are social practices which respect objective moral/ethical facts).
  - yorwba 9y ago
    > If it happens because of genetically different altitudes/interests then it's inevitable, and there's no use complaining about it. That's not actually true. Even when something is the expected outcome of certain biological factors, that doesn't make it inevitable. With the right kind of intervention, very little is completely biologically determined. That's what medicine is all about. In many ways, culture is also about overcoming the limits and defaults of human biology. There's no reason to suppose that differences between the sexes can't be influenced into a direction that appears more desirable.
    - hyperpape 9y ago
      That makes sense. I just wanted to point out that a purely cultural difference should be presumed guilty, whereas if there were genetically driven ones, they might not be. The real meat of the point is that a culturally driven difference in this realm is a bad thing.
- jMyles 9y ago
  > Freedom of speech, rule of law, and consenting to sex are similarly "social constructs" as in they aren' t fundamental laws of the universe This varies across philosophical traditions. Common-law traditions do, in a sense, hold these sorts of rights as part of the origin story of the universe.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Sacho 9y ago
I don't know what idea your statement is supposed to express. Let's start with this - what is gender? I know what biological sex is, roughly; I thought gender was a synonym for it(this may be a translation/communication barrier). From googling the topic, it appears that gender is defined as "the expectations a society places on an individual of a given sex", which makes the "gender is entirely a social construct" statement tautological. I read about the "blank slate hypothesis", and it seems to be about something else entirely - it seems to be pretty vaguely referring to the "knowledge" and "experience" a human being might have from before they were born vs after. It seems rather naive to be aware of all the other biological differences between men and women but demand that they have no effect on "the mind", or more appropriately, on the expressions of will that a human being exhibits. I'm not an expert though, so maybe there's a deeper truth out there somewhere.
- lr4444lr 9y ago
  "Gender is distinct from sex" is a scientific hypothesis. It could be true, false, or true with qualifications. The second of those three options appears to be pretty reliably refuted by the evidence we have. Unfortunately, it is a politically problematic to say this in "progressive" circles. Sound familiar to some other hot-topic science debate we've discussed on HN before?

jacquesm 9y ago

Sadly, yes, you are right.

hungerstrike 9y ago
Why do I need to be aware of every mental illness that exists? There are way more important things for society to deal with. This issue is a complete distraction for all but those who it affects directly. I don't support making major changes to society in order to benefit an infinitesimal minority of mentally ill people.
- chc 9y ago
  You don't need to be familiar with or pay attention to this stuff, but you can't both reserve the right to ignorance on a topic and take a stance on the same topic. If you don't want to pay attention to what's going on with transgender people, then go on and live your life — that is 100% your prerogative. If somebody tells you they're a woman, you can just let it pass without any burden on yourself — you don't have to think about the validity of their statement or the implications or what they've gone through in their life. But if you loudly proclaim your lack of knowledge about transgender people while also loudly proclaiming that they should be treated disrespectfully, I don't think the transgender people are the ones being unreasonable in that situation.
  - hungerstrike 9y ago
    > ...you can't both reserve the right to ignorance on a topic and take a stance on the same topic. Sure I can. My stance can be "I don't want to know very much about this topic and if you keep trying to bring it up ahead of much more important topics, then I will have to ignore you more loudly." > If somebody tells you they're a woman, you can just let it pass without any burden on yourself... That alone is certainly is not a burden on myself. The burden begins when the issue of societies behavior towards transgender people continually eclipses more important issues. I feel sorry for people whose issues get used to polarize people for political theater. > ...if you loudly proclaim your lack of knowledge about transgender people while also loudly proclaiming that they should be treated disrespectfully,... I don't know who is "loudly" doing anything or where this argument is coming from. Did I say something loudly? Is that the same thing as just saying the words "I don't care about this topic and please stop telling me about it...?" All I said is - why should I care? If you say "because they're people", then I would say "we have more important types of people to worry about". For instance, who is doing anything about the sociopaths and psychopaths that seem to gravitate towards positions of power? Where's all the attention for that?

judah 9y ago

You're getting political here, but I'll bite. It's not that we political conservatives believe transgender people are faking it. Transgenderism is real. We conservatives acknowledge some folks are born with a sincere belief or feeling they are the wrong gender. I personally sympathize with such people; it must be torturous and painful to be a particular biological sex, with hormones and chromosomes of one biological sex, but feel and believe you are a different biological sex. Where we differ with leftists is how to view the transgender phenomenon. This article, for example, states that this "girl" became a boy due to a "rare genetic disorder occurs because of a missing enzyme which prevents the production of a specific form of the male sex hormone - dihydro-testosterone - in the womb." It was a genetic disorder; a birth defect. Thus, this "girl" wasn't a girl at all. Biologically and scientifically speaking, he was a boy with an undeveloped penis. So it is with transgender folks in the West. We see transgenderism as an outgrowth of the medical condition known as gender dysphoria. Folks suffering with gender dysphoria should seek help, whether that be a medical sex change operation or counseling.

Chris2048 9y ago
There is also the issue of language policing, which confuses the issue; As a political device, some demand trans-women be called women, which confuses discussion of the issue. There are times that I think this might be the aim - to shut down rational discussion so only the emotive appeal remains. A whole other issue is segregated bathrooms; I have yet to see people get past the label-flinging stage to ask the fundamental question: why are bathrooms segregated (hetero/cis M/F) in the first place?
- Mz 9y ago
  why are bathrooms segregated (hetero/cis M/F) in the first place? I think a much better question would be "Why aren't they all private?" If you create individual bathrooms with lockable doors, you just label it "rest room" and you don't need to assign a gender or make a private matter a public issue. Why should trans individuals have to deal with the question of which bathroom they "belong" in? What's next? Questioning which bathroom gay people belong in? Making private individual bathrooms the norm would also eliminate many other issues. The line to the women's room tends to be longer than to the men's because using a urinal takes less time and the use of urinals is more space efficient, so a men's bathroom sometimes has more toilets plus urinals than a women's bathroom has toilets. This has caused some people to decry this as yet another form of sexism that they would like redressed. Meanwhile, the men's room can have a long wait if you need to have a bowel movement. Lots of urinals is great if everyone just needs to pee, but problematic if that is not the case. Small public men's rooms often have only one toilet, the rest urinals. What if two men are traveling together and both need the actual toilet? Historically, men's bathrooms tended to not have changing tables, reinforcing the expectation that only women change diapers. Individual bathrooms also eliminates that issue. The list of problems it would solve is no doubt much longer, but you get the idea.