The social Construction of Gender, and Why We Might Want to Deconstruct It.

      I would say that I am very sympathetic to social construction theses regarding gender, femininity masculinity, etc. I want to clarify, though, that I will not be talking about sex in this post, only gender. The status quo with respect to gender and the norms that come with it could have been constructed in a different way, or perhaps not constructed at all. Men tending to hold positions of political power, or women tending to do domestic work are not inevitable in the way that the law of gravity is inevitable. Our understanding of gender could change given the right historical and societal conditions, and we know this is true because it already has changed in the past.

    So who cares? Why bring up the point that gender is socially constructed in the first place? For me, I think it is important to bring up, because my opinions on gender, as of now, align with third grade of commitment that Hacking identifies in regard to social construction claims. As a reminder, the three main grades of commitment are the following:

1. X need not have existed, or need not to be at all as it is. X, or X as it is at present, is not determined by the nature of things; it is not inevitable.

2. X is quite bad as it is.

3. We would be much better off if X were done away with, or at least radically transformed. 

     When X is replaced with gender, I think the first point is clearly the case. The second point is less obvious to see, but I think it is true when we look at all the ways in which our acceptance of gender has harmed people, mostly women. Until 101 years ago women could not vote. It was not illegal for husbands to rape their wives in all 50 states until 1993. More generally, gender norms are still very prevalent in society, and many of them are harmful to all of us. This article by Mark Greene, for example, shows how the ways in which men are taught to view gentle platonic touch, are harmful to both men and women. So, yes, I do think that our idea of gender is quite bad as it is.

       Because of this, I would say that my views on gender fall into the third grade of commitment. Specifically, I think that gender should be done away with completely. I do not really see what we gain as a society by embracing gender. (I do not completely deny that there are any positive benefits that come from embracing gender, I just cannot think of any. Please, let me know in the comments if you can think of any.) It seems to me that whenever we socially construct human kinds, it only serves to propagate stereotypes, put people into boxes, and divide us. I do not see how gender is an exception to this. To argue that we should keep gender, seems to me to be arguing that there are inherent differences between men and women, and that therefore there are certain things that one group is incapable of doing due to those differences. Why have two distinct groups if there are no real distinctions between them? This is certainly the view that dominated most societies throughout human history, and was used to oppress women. 

    This post felt very unstructured/"ranty." I suppose that the main point of what I am trying to say is that putting a label on someone is by its very nature, putting that person into a box filled with nothing but stereotypes. Gender labels are particularly bad, because gender has been used as a justification to oppress people throughout human history. Even in our modern society we are not wholly free of all the ways in which gender hurts us. Ideally we would live in a society where no one feels held back from doing certain things, or expressing themselves in certain ways based on gender. I think the best way to achieve such a society is to abandon gender, and the norms that come with it completely. I want to live in a world where I am not "A man named Aidan," but rather one where I am simply "Aidan." I know this will not happen overnight, and I concede that in order to achieve such a world we may first have to create a society in which the genders are distinct but equal. However, I still hold that the end goal should be doing away with gender completely.