What do you think of progressive folks using the term "gender essentialism" as something akin to racism?

VisceralSardonic · 2025-06-23T17:20:08+00:00

I think that this is one of many, many discussions on here that needs to be able to be split along the divide of population vs individual. Personally, I’m a staunch feminist, egalitarian (yes, I firmly believe they’re the same thing if applied correctly. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t) and leftist.

I wouldn’t never debate that, for instance, men have more upper body strength on average. They obviously do. If you put the entire population of men on earth in a lifting competition against the entire population of women, I don’t doubt that they would win. I don’t think anyone, including the most rabid feminist, would disagree. The problem is that that’s an utterly irrelevant hypothetical. There’s no all-earth lifting competition planned, and it would be both impossible and irrelevant to try.

Meanwhile, averages are often statistically meaningless to individuals. I’ve personally seen a female friend win in multiple strength competitions against male friends. I have a female family member who chops all of her own wood, builds and maintains structures in and out of her home, and can run circles around other male family members. Are they common examples? Not really. Can we erase them because they would be on the losing side in our imaginary strength competition? No.

The bigotry and bias in gender essentialism is taking “more women than men stay home with the children” to the conclusion “women must stay home with the children and mustn’t work” or even “you’re not a real woman if you don’t stay home with your kids.” Assuming that ALL men are so horny that being raped by a female teacher is totally fine and desirable is another horrible example of gender essentialism. Boy Like Sex So All Sex With Boy = Good is reductive, dismissive, and retraumatizing for many men who face that kind of “assumed consent” myth.

The specifics absolutely matter. Anyone telling you they don’t is lying. Prescriptivism is the problem, not “men and women are often different.”

Outside_Memory5703 · 2025-06-23T17:11:39+00:00

Well, how is gender essentialism different from sexual or racial essentialism?

Lemon_gecko · 2025-06-23T17:32:31+00:00

I had to google because i didn't really understood your explanation.

Anyway, i think genders are different, but we really don't know to which extent because there were always social norms that influence that. We can't say that women are nurturing if we spend centuries forcing women to care for children and elders, and preparing them for it since childhood. There might be some truth to it, but to what extend? and is it personality or gender thing?

What i want is to give people freedom so they are not groomed into gender role and let them choose what they want and who they are.

Tylikcat · 2025-06-23T17:43:09+00:00

That's a weirdly worded take on it. Gender essentialism came out of psychology, and it's about people's personalities, behavior, and cognitive capabilities. It doesn't mean say that our bodies are exactly the same*, but whether all the things in various societal gender roles came out of our biology. (...considering that different societies have different gender roles, clearly this isn't true. And our society has gone through a huge shift in gender roles in the last century.)

Wikipedia has a pretty good neutral take on it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_essentialism

*Though we have more in common than we have differences.

Artistic_Speech_1965 · 2025-06-23T16:31:55+00:00

Never heard about it, looks interesting. Do you have some sources or reference by any chance ?

RelativeYak7 · 2025-06-23T19:59:47+00:00

IMO gender is a useless concept, I believe in biological sex.

wtknight · 2025-06-23T16:34:16+00:00

Well, women and men can be very different, so I don’t have a problem with people getting annoyed with gender essentialists. There do tend to be some patterns based upon evolutionary biology, though.

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esdebah · 2025-06-23T20:10:00+00:00

'Gender essentialism' is usually used pejoratively in good faith to argue that society and technology make men and women equal in arenas of general acumen, economy, intelligence, readiness. So, there are biological differences, but we're not building treehouses. Given the wide range of gender differentiation and our WHOLLY anthropocene built society, there's never a good reason to count someone out of excelling at a goal, excepting some very particular extremes. Those extremes are also pretty much just useless shit like running a 1/4 mile faster than anyone else in the county.

Title	What do you think of progressive folks using the term "gender essentialism" as something akin to racism?
Author	FuuraKafu
Upvotes	7
Comments	71
Date	June 23, 2025 4:13 PM UTC (1 year ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/1liks75/what_do_you_think_of_progressive_folks_using_the/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/what-do-you-think-of-progressive-folks-using-the.1555367 https://theredarchive.com/post/1555367

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