Go Ahead, Make My Gender
The Social Construction of Gender, or Maybe Not
The phrase “gender is a social construct” has become more and more popular in recent years. The increased prevalence of this phrase in conversations about gender can be seen as an outgrowth of society’s evolving views on gender. Over the last decade in particular, there has been an increase in the acceptance of feminine men and masculine women in society at large, and society has become more permissive of gender nonconformity (including trans and nonbinary people).
While gender still stands ironclad and unassailable for many people, others have started to see where old ideas about gender have corroded and holes have opened up. Differences between genders are being seen less and less as natural states of affairs and more as artifacts of society — artifacts that may or may not have a strong basis or reason for their existence. This is a good thing. However, the use of “gender is a social construct” to speak to this evolving understanding of gender is not.
This is because gender isn’t just a social construct. Saying that “gender is a social construct” without further elaboration constitutes an incredibly shallow reading of gender. The fact that “gender is a social construct” is often used to describe the evolution of society’s views seems mostly to do with the fact that it is pithy, and it “seems about right.” However, it has also become a sort of thought-terminating cliche. Rarely is the phrase used correctly, or in a thoughtful way. Most people who utter it do not understand the history behind the position and what it means in more academic contexts.
If people knew what it actually meant, “gender is a social construct” would not be able to stand in for the core message of the last decade of gender politics — what some are calling a “gender revolution.”
The phrase “gender is a social construct” has its roots in social constructionism and can be traced back to early discussions of “gender roles.” Social constructionism puts forward the idea that many of the things people take to be “real” or “facts” about the world are in fact socially constructed in part or in whole. For example: money. The abstraction of value to money, including the way we use it etc. does not appear to exist outside of society. Therefore, money is a social construct — a thing created by society — and not a thing that exists on its own. Someone saying “gender is a social construct” is presumably endorsing roughly the same argument about gender, but it’s more complicated than just “gender doesn’t exist outside of society.”
In feminist philosophy and theory, where “gender is a social construct” developed, the social constructionist position is that “men” and “women,” “boys” and “girls” etc. do not exist outside of a social context. People are born without anything resembling a gender, and gender must be assigned to them — based on their sex. For many social constructionists, sex is itself a collection of physical traits that we have agreed to categorize in a binary fashion that subsequently masks the true variability of human biology and props up society’s binary interpretation of gender. Regardless, according to social constructionists, when a person is assigned a sex, society then assigns them the requisite gender. Thus “male” babies become “boys” and “female” babies become “girls.”
For social constructionists, this is the beginning of a system of oppression whereby individuals are forced into roles (specific behaviors, ways of being seen etc.) and society grants privileges to one gender and not the other. This systematic oppression is made possible through ongoing pressure applied to individuals to conform with expectations of their assigned gender. Once an individual is assigned a gender, so the argument goes, society starts to work in thousands of different ways to tell them who they are and what they are allowed to do. For example, specific pronouns are used, they are given gendered clothing, toys, etc. and they are directed to participate in particular activities.
As time goes on, according to gender social constructionists, individuals start to internalize these things and begin to view themselves the way society does. At which point, they seek out ways to “perform” the gender that has been given to them — engaging in various activities, behaviors, and ways of presenting themselves that affirm their assigned gender. In this process, gender-related bullying and the judgments of others can be seen to serve a dual purpose. They help to enforce gender conformity on others, and they provide the opportunity for the individuals doing the bullying to affirm their gender through attacking the non-conformity of others.
By adulthood, this process of establishing gender is essentially complete and most people have “become” men and women. At which point, the vast majority of people successfully perform their gender based on society’s expectations. Those who fail to perform their gender successfully face continued pressure and marginalization. However, regardless of their successes/failures in performing their gender, society does not stop acting on individuals — their genders continue to be socially constructed and imposed. In this way, gender remains socially constructed and ultimately not in the individual’s control throughout their life. This, in short, is what “gender is a social construct” means.
Social constructionism, with regard to gender, can be seen as a response to older ideas about gender in which it was depicted as innate (people were born with a gender) and mutually exclusive (men and women are entirely different, oppositional things). When seen in this context, it is clear that “gender is a social construct” is an attempt to explain gender without resorting to gender innatism or gender essentialism. In avoiding gender innatism and gender essentialism, social constructionism does a much better job of highlighting the various oppressive structures that find their basis in gender. It also puts forward a view of gender that accounts for the variation that has been observed across cultures and eras regarding what it means to be a “man” or a “woman.” However, it has its own problems.
For one, gender social constructionism leaves individual agency completely unaccounted for. Much like gender innatists/gender essentialists, gender social constructionism leaves individuals explicitly lacking agency. While gender is not termed as innate, and “men” and “women” aren’t thought of as essentially different, gender is something that happens to people, and the ways in which people “do” it cannot truly be said to be voluntary. Everything is about what society does to people, and there is little to no room for individual agency. In essence, social constructionism with regard to gender says that biology isn’t destiny, society is. An individual identifying with, or “performing” their gender is then seen as the result of internalizing the things society has told them about who they are and not as the result of facts about that individual or their decisions per se.
As a result, social constructionists sometimes see trans folks as “failed” versions of their assigned gender. The reasons for this are different depending on who you ask. However, social constructionist accounts of trans men and women fall into three general categories that range from terrible to bad:
- Trans Men and Women as Stereotypes
- Trans men and women are stereotypes of what they think “manhood” and womanhood” mean and cannot be actual men/women because they were not subject to the same pressures and messages as cis men and women. Or, at least, not in the same way.
2. Trans Men and Women as Dissatisfied
- Trans men and women attempt to claim some agency with regard to their gender by resorting to statements of “gender identity” which are really just statements about their preferences, and not what they are.
3. Trans Men and Women as Mistakes
- Trans men and women are people that got their signals mixed up and internalized messages and pressures intended for the other gender.
Regardless of the explanation, trans men and women are still seen as supporting socially constructed gender. Non-binary and gender nonconforming folks are either ignored or denied as failed men and women along similar lines.
The social constructionist account’s inability to account for agency doesn’t just apply to trans folks. Social constructionists go so far in their pursuit to remove any talk of personal agency in gender that they describe the variations in the manliness/womanliness of cisgender men and women in terms of each individual’s particular social experiences, and cultural situatedness. In other words, even cis people are only ever products of their social environments and experiences. If you’re a cis guy who prefers knitting to “watching the game” it’s not ultimately a fact about you, it’s a fact about the social and cultural milieu you grew up in and continue to exist in. If you’re a cis gal who spends her free time rebuilding engines, it’s because the social and cultural milieu you grew up in and continue to exist in made you want to do that, and made it possible to do that.
For gender social constructionists, facts about an individual’s gender, their likes, dislikes, preferences, and desires are placed not in the individual, but in their unique social and cultural situatedness. The best anyone can do is feel good about their particular socialization.
If I had to guess at a reason gender social constructionists deny individual agency, it would have to be that such a denial makes it easier to speak to the oppressive structures tied into and intermingled with gender — people don’t get to “choose” their gender, which makes gender-based oppression that much worse. This is especially true when “gender is a social construct” is bandied about by trans exclusionary radical feminists. Removing agency from the discussion also works to support narratives around class and helps encourage class consciousness in the face of oppression — ”we’re all in this together, what hurts one of us hurts all of us” etc. It also helps guard against gender innatism and gender essentialism by putting everything on society.
However, it is only possible to have this sort of outlook if you are a cisgender man or woman. It is not possible to maintain that individuals have no real agency regarding their gender if you exercise your own agency in opposition to society’s expectations “on the daily,” as the kids might say.
When you’re trans, it’s not possible to believe that you only ever act out stereotypes of “man” or “woman” because the fact you are a complicated and three dimensional person is immediately apparent. It is not possible to believe that your deeply felt identity is just “a statement of preference” because you understand it’s not about what you want, it’s about who you are. It’s not possible to write off your feeling that your gender was incorrectly assigned and say you “internalized the messages and pressures intended for the other gender” because you have felt the difference between being alienated by one gender and feeling at home in another (or outside of gender altogether). It’s not possible to view yourself as a “failed” version of your assigned gender when you’ve successfully operated within and been read as that assigned gender and then given that up for what is often a much more difficult life.
The fact is, “gender is a social construct” does a wonderful job of explaining certain features of society and the way that gender is policed and people are oppressed. However, it does a poor job of accounting for individuals. This is because it goes whole hog into “nurture” and pretends that it can explain everything. Gender is, in many ways, a social construct. But, in many ways it isn’t. A person’s gender is the product of both nature and nurture. “Man” and “woman” are categories created by society, sure, but as I said in “Ecce Femina,” “[f]acts about individual human beings, in concert with facts about societies, come together to generate membership in these categories.” To pretend that either one of these overrides the other is absurd.
Regardless, people should stop using “gender is a social construct,” to describe the evolution of society’s views on gender. This is especially true for those in the trans and gender nonconforming community — where the phrase is often misused to advocate for a laissez-faire “gender doesn’t exist” outlook. But that’s a whole other thing. My beef with that one can be found in “Gender Is Over! If You Want It — Or Maybe Not.”
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