[Discussion] If gender is purely a construct, how do we account for transgender people and other extreme outliers of their sex?

Mutant_Squirrel · 2015-03-22T02:59:23+00:00

I agree that it is a mix of the two. There are some differences in hormone levels between boys and girls invitro and then again during adolescence that can really change the way they behave. For instance I think on TRP you can find the documentary about the studies they've done that show being subjected to more testosterone in vitro makes infants more attracted to pictures of technical abstract things like cranes and less attracted to social things like humane faces.

The thing is that each child will experience different levels of hormones and each will be different. Some boys will experience less testosterone and will be more socially minded, some girls will experience more testosterone and will be more interested in abstract stuff and less interested in people. We're still not sure whether hormones and different brain structures cause other types of typically masculie/feminine behaviour or if these are socially ingrained patterns. Most likely they are a bit of both.

Probably most people have typical "male" brains or typical "female" brains and fit on a bell curve of sorts, but some people obviously do not. Maybe you don't fit the norm just slightly, maybe you're a tomboy or maybe you're the slightly effemenate guy who loves babies and to gossip. But maybe even though you have a Y chromosome your brain works way more like a womans, when you look at other men you don't see anyone who thinks like you do, maybe when you look at women you do and when you look at yourself you see a brain that is walking around in a body of the "wrong" gender.

We do know that strict gender doesn't fit everyone, but we enforce it like it does. Listen to the way people talk about effeminite guys or butch girls. Watch people not let their boys play with dolls or become hysterical if they want to wear pink. This is gender as a construct. If there is nothing wrong with being a boy and nothing wrong with being a girl it shouldn't be such a big deal when we behave like one if we're "technically" the other.

TRP disagrees with this because there experience is chasing mostly very feminine women who want very masculine men, so showing the wrong behaviours is bad for attraction. Everyone who is attracted to people who are outside of that scope are shit out of luck.

chasingstatues · 2015-03-22T05:17:15+00:00

Gender is a construct because there have been cultures in the past that recognized three or four genders, not just two. These third and fourth genders were regarded as equal to the two that we acknowledge today.

For example, some American Indians, once (still?) believed in a third gender called the Berdache, or two-spirit people. This basically covered men who were feminine, women who were masculine, and hermaphrodites. Rather than these people be an unexplained phenomenon within their culture, their societal role was written into their religion. Regardless of how religious or non-religious the modern, Western world is today, there's no doubt that traditional religious stories about Adam and Eve leave their mark.

But some Native American religions, like the Navajo, dictated a really important role for that third gender. That role basically saves all of humanity in the story. So these kinds of people weren't a surprise but just as much expected and accepted as the rest of it.

Another interesting thing is that gender roles were expected to be taken gradually. This meant that if someone is berdache, it's something they grow into with time. Rather than having a gender-role forced onto you, you're given a literal choice. And it's even written into some religions (like the Zuni people) that if you try to interfere with someone else making that choice, you'll meet dire consequences.

The choice is usually made in a ceremony. Parents will start to notice what gender their child seems to be at around 10-11 years old. So the parent talks to the Shaman and the whole tribe throws a surprise ceremony for the kid--and the kid understands it's significance and gets to choose whether or not to participate.

The Papago Indians did it where they'd build a brush enclosure and then place a man's bow and arrows inside along with a woman's basket. Then they'd send their kid in there and light it on fire. The kid could choose the arrows or the basket. Or nothing. They weren't at risk, but the metaphor is apparent.

With male berdaches in the Mohave tribe, they'd surprise the boy by leading him to a circle of his entire tribe. First, he'd choose whether or not he wanted to stand there and go through with the ceremony. If he stays, then someone starts to sing. And then there's music and if the boy can't help himself but dance, then that's his choice to be a berdache. (This one is my favorite).

The Yuman tribe does it a little different, where there'd be a big social event and the male berdache would cook and serve everyone dinner.

So while I agree that the truth lies in the middle (nature and nurture), our conception of gender in itself is a construct.

GayLubeOil · 2015-03-22T06:44:49+00:00

Anyone who truly belives that gender is a construct should inject testosterone for a couple of weeks and see if they begin exhibiting traditionaly male behaviors such as aggression and risk talking.

Its a very easy experiment that should only cost $80 for 10 weeks.

theory_of_kink · 2015-03-22T01:23:33+00:00

Yeah its more complicated than some models might account for.

I think most relevant scientists see it as a nature nurture mix.

If you want some science video on it, check out these presentations

https://www.youtube.com/user/WhomYouLove2012

ianturpiesmoustache · 2015-03-22T04:04:04+00:00

This one again? Really? Okay.

Your brain knows that you have arms, and uses that to help you move them without hitting stuff, right? Your brain has a map, essentially, to tell you what parts you have, and where they are at any given time to help you control your body.

Transgendered people's brains know they should have a penis when they don't, or know there should be a vagina where that penis is. It's (thought to be) an issue with hormones people are subjected to while forming in the womb, and it changes how the mind perceives the body. It's not about "wanting to be a boy/girl" in a societal sense, it's about the physicality of what you are. The only known treatment is transitioning.

This does not mean a man born in a woman's body will grow a beard and chop down trees or join the army. It doesn't mean a woman born in a man's body will wear pink and frilly dresses or become more submissive. Gender roles are a construct, gender itself is not.

MisterGhosty · 2015-03-22T17:35:26+00:00

I'm in medical school. Relevant to the issue of "gender as a construct," they teach us about people that are born with DSD- Disorders of Sexual Development (they don't let us use the word "Hermaphroditism.")

When we deal with such a patient, the first thing we do is determine whether he is supposed to be a male or a female. We do this by karyotyping, looking at internal sex organs, hormone profiles, etc. We do this because we know that gender behavior is intimately tied to biology.

For example, there is an interesting hormonal disorder called "21-hydroxylase deficiency." In basic terms, 21-hydroxylase is needed to make cortisol. Without it, all progesterone gets shunted to androstenedione, which then starts making androgens.

For a genetically female person, this leads to ambiguous genitalia and all kinds of adrenal issues.

But more interestingly, vis-a-vis gender roles, the excess androgens result in "frequent behavior masculinization," according to my professor and the medical literature.

Regardless of your opinion on transgender people I think the medical literature has shown that gender, while not strictly biologically determinist, is much closer to "nature" than "nurture." On this front, social constructivism fails.

MisterGhosty · 2015-03-23T01:43:16+00:00

It seems to me that the truth lies somewhere in the middle of the nature and nurture spectrum.

As a transman interested in psychology with years and years of google research under my belt, I can assert with confidence that literally this is what it is. I was, myself, VERY interested in the topic even from well before I realised what my gender was supposed to even friggin' be, and continue to follow the science as it is introduced.

So naturally, even though I am Living Proof, the idea that gender is both completely mutable, changes drastically based on location and age-- and yet also an immutable fact of the self-- seemed completely self-contradictory to me. At first, anyway.

I'm not a professional, but from what I gather about the situation, I can paint you a picture. Take this story for consideration:

A fetus is developing in the womb. It already has a predisposition toward creating more testosterone than is typical for a XX chromosomed human. However, at this point, it's a toss-up whether this particular child will grow up to be a tomboy or a transboy, perhaps even a nonbinary child.

Fast forward to infancy. Child is being enveloped in new sensations: bedding/toys/clothes, the characteristics of those around them (dad's cologne and suit, mom's milk and apron, people on tv and in books).

At this point the brain takes what it already knows of sex (instinctual recognition of body shape/hair length/skin texture/height/voice timbre), and applies it to context, making pavlovian connections ("mom" is "humming", humming is female. "dad" sits in the "armchair", armchairs are male). The brain gathers these sex-based cultural assumptions to build "gender roles", what the child is meant to use to interact with others.

Now the brain is also reading from internal hormonal cues, comparing them to its gender role database (I feel male, I want armchairs), creating a self-image repetoire that the child's gender development draws guidance from, influenced as well by all random reward/punishment feelings (things that are impossible for parents to keep track of, but the child's brain absorbs indiscriminantly like a sponge).

Environment and biology are constantly calculated and re-evaluated for years in the child's deeper instinctual mind. By age 5, the child's gender is finished baking, and cannot be influenced beyond this point. It's nobody's decision, it's nobody's fault, but by whatever luck or curse, this child has developed into the male gender, and will feel most comfortable in a male gender role. They may not actualise this until much, much later. (Many children think nothing of gender until puberty hits, where suddenly everything goes right, or 1 times out of 100, everything goes terribly, terribly wrong).

Gender roles are completely a social construct. However, innate, biological, inner, unchangable gender is constructed within the context of society, using the local culture as the foundations upon which the child's mind is developed.

So yeah tldr gender is a elegant duet between nature and nurture. If by nurture we're talking like, natural life situation, rather than "taught" characteristics.

~~Sorry for being a long-winded asshole, I just find the entire topic really fascinating.~~

CursedLemon · 2015-03-22T02:26:31+00:00

I'm pretty sure everyone with modicum of common sense understands that gender has aspects of both nature and nurture...which, in either case, operates and develops in ways we are still very ignorant to. The brain is an emergent system taken to the n'th exponent of chaotic complexity, that's why psychologists and neuroscientists are the ones we listen to on the subject, rather than bloggers and professional Redditors.

RELTIH88 · 2015-03-22T02:14:03+00:00

Another example of leftist hypocrisy. Trannies,gays, and lesbians are somehow born this way, but gender is somehow a social construct. Just more proof that feminists want to destroy the male gender.

ShitfacedBatman · 2015-03-22T13:15:21+00:00

We account for them by setting up subreddits for them to go talk. Just like how we're doing now.

Why do you have to have a theory of everything for you to reconcile everything?

hohamocha · 2015-03-23T02:35:30+00:00

There couldn't possibly be more definitive proof of an inherent 'female' and 'male' than a person sincerely believing that they are trapped in a body of the 'wrong' biological sex; that their mind is inherently incompatible with their body.

In these post-mortem studies had been on oestrogen treatment to feminize their bodies, and it hasn’t been clear whether the differences were due to the effect of this hormone rather than something present before. In other words, when hormones are coming into play, their mind is definitely altering to these hormones. Showing that gender is in fact influenced by hormones.

Looking at this through hormonal point of view, the transgender men are simply the most masculine women and trans women are simply the most feminine men. There was something wrong with their bodies that caused them to produce more of the opposite sex's major hormones. Even gay men have less testosterone than straight men. Considering the rise of major xenoestrogens and other pollutants (BPA) , look at how the gay/transgender population has risen in both humans and other animals.

Plugawy_Nedznik · 2015-03-23T08:12:25+00:00

Gender is not a social construct. That's a stupid idea that only the most hardcore of SJWs still subscribe to nowodays.

kick6 · 2015-03-24T14:34:31+00:00

Gender is not a purely a construct. The point of this thread falls apart because you want to talk fantasy. You might as well ask "if horses are just unicorns that have lost their horns, how do we harvest their rainbow farts?"

refutesstupidnotions · 2015-03-22T05:44:16+00:00

Just bullshit to normalize freaks in the fringe of the bellcurve sense of the word.

cxj · 2015-03-22T02:37:30+00:00

I don't think there is a logical reconciliation of the viewpoints. I think the existence of transgendered people very clearly indicates a strong genetic disposition towards gender, although I'm sure some of gender is socially constructed as well. The only feminists who realize the implications transgendered people have on feminist theory are TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists), and they are hated by virtually every other feminist group.

forbiddenone · 2015-03-22T05:25:36+00:00

Just pick one and complain about how men are responsible for the oppression associated with that one thing. Never bring them up at the same time.

Title	[Discussion] If gender is purely a construct, how do we account for transgender people and other extreme outliers of their sex?
Author	alexdelargeorange
Upvotes	8
Comments	87
Date	March 22, 2015 12:21 AM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/2zuw7r/discussion_if_gender_is_purely_a_construct_how_do/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/discussion-if-gender-is-purely-a-construct-how-do.283043 https://theredarchive.com/post/283043

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