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> It has only been very, very recently that we have gone from "gender is a social construct" to "sex is a social construct." What? Since when is sex a social c

by mbesto 4y ago

> It has only been very, very recently that we have gone from "gender is a social construct" to "sex is a social construct." What? Since when is sex a social construct?

jl6 4y ago
Some people believe sex is a spectrum, or that it can be changed, but it’s super-fringe and mostly reflects ignorance of the difference between sex and gender rather than being a serious philosophical position.
- searealist 4y ago
  It may be fringe in the sense that people don't state what they actually believe out of fear, but it is not fringe on official policies and the direction they are heading. If you don't agree with the statement "Trans women are women", and all the conclusions that leads to, ie. trans women in sports, then you risk being cancelled.
- howinteresting 4y ago
  "Sex is a spectrum" is hard scientific truth. Unlike computers, biology doesn't work in binaries. Intersex people exist and are surprisingly common.
  - jl6 4y ago
    “Sex is a spectrum” is nonsense: https://areomagazine.com/2022/01/05/race-is-a-spectrum-sex-is-pretty-damn-binary/ https://areomagazine.com/2022/01/05/race-is-a-spectrum-sex-i...
    - howinteresting 4y ago
      Binary means 0 and 1. It does not mean 0, 1, or 2 1.7% (or even 0.018%) of the time. Of course, the word "binary" is a social construct, and "spectrum" is a social construct as well. However I would expect that in a forum focused on computers, binary generally means 0 or 1 with no other values possible even 0.0000001% of the time. "Some men choose to identify as women." Really? This is not a serious statement that engages with the science behind gender transition.
  - the_doctah 4y ago
    Allow me to introduce you to the X and Y chromosomes.
    - howinteresting 4y ago
      Allow me to introduce you to Klinefelter syndrome and the difference between genotype and phenotype.
      - the_doctah 4y ago
        A "random genetic error" (by definition) is not an argument for sex being a spectrum. >A genetic condition in which a male is born with an extra copy of the X chromosome So still a male, got it.
        howinteresting 4y ago
        It sure is an argument for sex being a spectrum. The word "error" is a social construct. I prefer "variation", which also is a social construct, but doesn't imply a judgment. (Of course, judgments are social constructs.)
        the_doctah 4y ago
        "Whoa look, a manufacturing error caused this quarter to have an extra edge" shocked realization "Of course! Number of sides of a coin is a spectrum!"
        howinteresting 4y ago
        Generally a quarter with a manufacturing error that big is trashed. It is also ok to use the word "error" for quarters. Things are not people. In any case the number of sides of a coin is not a binary. It's just 2.
        vore 4y ago
        It seems cruel to use a metaphor of "manufacturing error" to describe intersex people. Humans make "errors", nature just does whatever it wants mindlessly and deals with it. While I think "sex is a spectrum" is perhaps not how I would phrase it because it lets people muddy these kinds of arguments together, I think it's pretty well-accepted that there are people who are neither fully male nor female, i.e. intersex. From a biological perspective, what if you were born biologically male but have no androgen sensitivity and basically develop biologically female? Your genitals appear to be male but you've undergone all the puberty that someone female would: I don't think you can cleanly carve a sex binary here. Actually, maybe as a larger point, I don't think even "biological sex" is as clear cut as people try to make it: do you consider it all of genitalia, chromosomes, hormones, or only some? For what it's worth, don't take my comment as any argument about gender as a spectrum one way or another because I don't want to get into the culture war aspect of it: I only want to point out that people who are resolutely "sex is a binary" are being overly prescriptive about it.
thelopa 4y ago
I think they’re being glib, but sex absolutely is a social construct. What exactly constitutes THE properties of the female and male sex is defined by society more than biology. For example, people who have androgen insensitivity syndrome develop perfectly normal looking “female” bodies, but their genetic sex is “male”. People generally still consider those individuals to be “female”. If you want to get down to it, all words are socially defined. They usually attempt to describe or capture reoccurring details about the observable world, but nature (especially biology) has too much variety and weird exceptions for any simple linguistic model to perfectly match the physical world. That’s doubly true for a linguistic model used in everyday life as opposed to scientific discourse. That’s not to say that “sex isn’t real” or some absurd position like that. There is a real phenomenon in biology where genetic and phenotypical variance tends to follow a limited set of patterns. Biologists call those patterns “sex”. But, the idea that “sex” as we use it in normal day-to-day life is a rigidly defined system based on hard biological facts is laughably false. When was the last time you insisted on seeing someone’s genetic karyotype test results? When was the last time you asked someone to drop their pants so you could examine their genitalia and determine their sex? The phrase “sex is a social construct” is technically true in the same way that “chairs are a social construct” is true. The word describes a fuzzy subset of the set of all things, and what we consider in or out of the set is largely based on what we think should belong to it, and that is absolutely influenced by societal expectations. Where do chairs end and tables begin? Where does the female sex end? Once you get to that point, the phrase almost has no meaning. If all word definitions are social constructs, then that’s table stakes and it doesn’t make sense to call out a specific word as having that property. Surely the phrase “is a social construct” must mean something more than “is like any other word”. Indeed, the meaning of that phrase is larger than what it literally says. There is a socially defined meaning that is attached to it. That phrase implies the word in question “is arbitrarily defined (more than most words)” and “is up for interpretation (more than most words)”. If you agree with me this far, then the right way to frame this discussion is “should we pin ‘sex’ as it is used in every day life to specific physical properties or should we allow it to be more porous?”. This isn’t as straightforward as it might seem. If we pin it, for example, to genetic karyotype, then we need to stop using it in contexts where the genetics of the person are unknown and must admit the existence of several additional sexes (e.g. X, XXY) AND recognize it’s no longer useful for describing the phenomenon of what a person looks like or how their body works. If we make it porous, then we will endlessly debate about whether boundary cases fall into one bucket or the other and possibly hurt some feelings along the way. The fun thing is that we get to pick what words mean, and we get to pick what we do with “sex”. Language is, after all, a social construct.
howinteresting 4y ago
All language is a social construct. We recognize patterns in the real world and assign words to them, but patterns in complex systems like human biology have all kinds of exceptions. Social construct doesn't mean fake, though. It's real, and it describes a real thing, but is a simplified model of it. The fight is over which model is better.

by mbesto 4y ago

> It has only been very, very recently that we have gone from "gender is a social construct" to "sex is a social construct." What? Since when is sex a social construct?

jl6 4y ago

Some people believe sex is a spectrum, or that it can be changed, but it’s super-fringe and mostly reflects ignorance of the difference between sex and gender rather than being a serious philosophical position.

searealist 4y ago
It may be fringe in the sense that people don't state what they actually believe out of fear, but it is not fringe on official policies and the direction they are heading. If you don't agree with the statement "Trans women are women", and all the conclusions that leads to, ie. trans women in sports, then you risk being cancelled.
howinteresting 4y ago
"Sex is a spectrum" is hard scientific truth. Unlike computers, biology doesn't work in binaries. Intersex people exist and are surprisingly common.
- jl6 4y ago
  “Sex is a spectrum” is nonsense: https://areomagazine.com/2022/01/05/race-is-a-spectrum-sex-is-pretty-damn-binary/ https://areomagazine.com/2022/01/05/race-is-a-spectrum-sex-i...
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    Binary means 0 and 1. It does not mean 0, 1, or 2 1.7% (or even 0.018%) of the time. Of course, the word "binary" is a social construct, and "spectrum" is a social construct as well. However I would expect that in a forum focused on computers, binary generally means 0 or 1 with no other values possible even 0.0000001% of the time. "Some men choose to identify as women." Really? This is not a serious statement that engages with the science behind gender transition.
- the_doctah 4y ago
  Allow me to introduce you to the X and Y chromosomes.
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    Allow me to introduce you to Klinefelter syndrome and the difference between genotype and phenotype.
    - the_doctah 4y ago
      A "random genetic error" (by definition) is not an argument for sex being a spectrum. >A genetic condition in which a male is born with an extra copy of the X chromosome So still a male, got it.
      - howinteresting 4y ago
        It sure is an argument for sex being a spectrum. The word "error" is a social construct. I prefer "variation", which also is a social construct, but doesn't imply a judgment. (Of course, judgments are social constructs.)
        the_doctah 4y ago
        "Whoa look, a manufacturing error caused this quarter to have an extra edge" shocked realization "Of course! Number of sides of a coin is a spectrum!"
        howinteresting 4y ago
        Generally a quarter with a manufacturing error that big is trashed. It is also ok to use the word "error" for quarters. Things are not people. In any case the number of sides of a coin is not a binary. It's just 2.
        vore 4y ago
        It seems cruel to use a metaphor of "manufacturing error" to describe intersex people. Humans make "errors", nature just does whatever it wants mindlessly and deals with it. While I think "sex is a spectrum" is perhaps not how I would phrase it because it lets people muddy these kinds of arguments together, I think it's pretty well-accepted that there are people who are neither fully male nor female, i.e. intersex. From a biological perspective, what if you were born biologically male but have no androgen sensitivity and basically develop biologically female? Your genitals appear to be male but you've undergone all the puberty that someone female would: I don't think you can cleanly carve a sex binary here. Actually, maybe as a larger point, I don't think even "biological sex" is as clear cut as people try to make it: do you consider it all of genitalia, chromosomes, hormones, or only some? For what it's worth, don't take my comment as any argument about gender as a spectrum one way or another because I don't want to get into the culture war aspect of it: I only want to point out that people who are resolutely "sex is a binary" are being overly prescriptive about it.

thelopa 4y ago

I think they’re being glib, but sex absolutely is a social construct. What exactly constitutes THE properties of the female and male sex is defined by society more than biology. For example, people who have androgen insensitivity syndrome develop perfectly normal looking “female” bodies, but their genetic sex is “male”. People generally still consider those individuals to be “female”. If you want to get down to it, all words are socially defined. They usually attempt to describe or capture reoccurring details about the observable world, but nature (especially biology) has too much variety and weird exceptions for any simple linguistic model to perfectly match the physical world. That’s doubly true for a linguistic model used in everyday life as opposed to scientific discourse. That’s not to say that “sex isn’t real” or some absurd position like that. There is a real phenomenon in biology where genetic and phenotypical variance tends to follow a limited set of patterns. Biologists call those patterns “sex”. But, the idea that “sex” as we use it in normal day-to-day life is a rigidly defined system based on hard biological facts is laughably false. When was the last time you insisted on seeing someone’s genetic karyotype test results? When was the last time you asked someone to drop their pants so you could examine their genitalia and determine their sex? The phrase “sex is a social construct” is technically true in the same way that “chairs are a social construct” is true. The word describes a fuzzy subset of the set of all things, and what we consider in or out of the set is largely based on what we think should belong to it, and that is absolutely influenced by societal expectations. Where do chairs end and tables begin? Where does the female sex end? Once you get to that point, the phrase almost has no meaning. If all word definitions are social constructs, then that’s table stakes and it doesn’t make sense to call out a specific word as having that property. Surely the phrase “is a social construct” must mean something more than “is like any other word”. Indeed, the meaning of that phrase is larger than what it literally says. There is a socially defined meaning that is attached to it. That phrase implies the word in question “is arbitrarily defined (more than most words)” and “is up for interpretation (more than most words)”. If you agree with me this far, then the right way to frame this discussion is “should we pin ‘sex’ as it is used in every day life to specific physical properties or should we allow it to be more porous?”. This isn’t as straightforward as it might seem. If we pin it, for example, to genetic karyotype, then we need to stop using it in contexts where the genetics of the person are unknown and must admit the existence of several additional sexes (e.g. X, XXY) AND recognize it’s no longer useful for describing the phenomenon of what a person looks like or how their body works. If we make it porous, then we will endlessly debate about whether boundary cases fall into one bucket or the other and possibly hurt some feelings along the way. The fun thing is that we get to pick what words mean, and we get to pick what we do with “sex”. Language is, after all, a social construct.

howinteresting 4y ago

All language is a social construct. We recognize patterns in the real world and assign words to them, but patterns in complex systems like human biology have all kinds of exceptions. Social construct doesn't mean fake, though. It's real, and it describes a real thing, but is a simplified model of it. The fight is over which model is better.