I just had a long debate with a childhood friend who believes gender is a social construct and it led me to some conclusions I think you guys might find interesting. First off to clarify two points, she really is a friend. She's the closest thing to a sister I've ever had and I've never thought of her in any other way. Her husband is one of my best friends too. Secondly, she goes to a top 5 medical school and has been a rockstar academically all her life, so before anyone gets hostile just keep that in mind. I think she's blinded by society with some things but she is by no means unintelligent.

Alright the debate, so she thinks gender is a social construct. I do not. We went back and forth for a while but I noticed that we kept circling around two major center pieces to our arguments. I am a lab tech (I do oncology research with a emphasis on epigenetics), so a bio logic train seemed to weave into my case. She really likes psych, so she seemed to stick to a society/culture based one. At the end, I think our two takes came together though and I think it makes a lot more sense now.

So from the bio side (and I'm not a evolutionary anthro dude so take it with a grain of salt), imagine being in a proto-human tribe of ape like creatures long long ago. Pretend there's 30 animals in your tribe: 10 males, 10 females, 10 children/cubs/whatever (I know that's an absurd split but hang with me for the model's sake). You don't commonly battle to completely overtake and enslave other tribes, slavery isn't even a concept, you just want to survive. Given that, most of your battles are probably fought for resources like access to a pond when there's a drought or whatever. Now if you're put in a situation where a confrontation occurs, it makes absolutely no sense to have your women fight. If two tribes clash and half the men of a tribe get killed the other five can still go back, regroup, and repopulate with the 10 women left at home. If the women and men clashed that would be really really problematic. It becomes seriously difficult to repopulate with 5 women or less, not to mention the hardships you're going to face while rearing the 10 children with a shortened staff of mothers and a bunch of men who no longer have wives or whatever the equivalent term would have been back then.

So I think this leads to a few points:

  1. It makes sense that men are made for dangerous jobs (military, industrial, handyman, etc...). Men are more expendable from a biological/species prospective and as we evolved towards humans these roles in society would get hard coded into our biological rewards structures. Same for women. It makes sense that rearing children and caring for the injured or other safe jobs would be coded into women's reward structures cause if the whole female section of the tribe was running off to fight battles that tribe wouldn't survive for very long.

  2. Women want dominant men. From a hardwired standpoint, we're still on bio here so don't get too cocky yet, if nature is telling you to stay at home and let the men handle the battles who do you think nature would feel is the best person to help you and your kids survive? The man who is confident, dominant, and intelligent. You don't want a big strong oaf cause he can get killed easily. You don't want a scrawny chicken shit dude cause he can get killed easily. You want a strong, tactical, brave man who can go into battle while leading others and come back alive. As this man survives more and more battles younger men will start to look up to him and let him lead them because he has experience and clearly doesn't just die and they don't want to die either... eventually you have women coded to seek dominant, intelligent, brave men and you have men coded to want to become that person so they can reproduce (or you just mainly have that dude reproducing).

  3. Men like meat, women have an easier time going without it. Think about who needs the protein in a pre-human society. The men do to build muscles so they can stave off attacks. Simple as that.

  4. Who's going to lead this society? Well likely that strong dominant dude who the women want because he can lead and survive and help them and their children survive. That's not to say that men shouldn't consult their wives or others for advice. The women could probably come up with a lot of ideas that the men just didn't think of. It's not like transferring leadership means one becomes intellectually inferior. It just means that the final decision is probably going to be the man's because he is now big and strong and hard coded to lead/fight.

  5. Today we live in a society where a lot of this doesn't matter any more. It's all coded into our reward structures and influences who we seek out as a mate, but it doesn't actually affect our survival that much any more. Soooooooooo, having a transition where women want to lead is not such a big deal. They can do it. They arn't inferior intellectually or strategically. They just are not predisposed to make the calls but they can and have totally come up with ideas behind the scenes. Making the calls isn't such a big leap and now that the survival pressures have been alleviated it totally makes sense that some women with a lower degree of that sort of submissive genetic wiring structure would want to make them.

  6. Population has grown substantially and with it all the less extreme variations of these lead/control/submit genes have seen rises in population numbers. Just like troll doll hobbyists, swing dance enthusiasts, and magic card players they've found each other and formed support networks. All of a sudden, instead of being the 1 dude or dudette in the tribe that felt "maybe I'm not the right gender" or "I kinda want to act like the other sex" there are lots of them and they can make their own little groups. As a result, we see an increase in gay and trans politics as these groups fight for space in our larger society.

  7. Now, there is nothing wrong with being from any of those minor subset groups. Be whoever you want to be and anyone who tries to stop that can go jump in a lake. That said, it makes NO sense to force it on the rest of society and suggest that because you don't feel like the assigned gender fits it means it has never really fit for anyone. Yes, I agree there's a sliding scale of gender but no, I do not agree that people commonly fall towards the middle. I think on average we fall towards the extremes (men and women) and a small subset falls in the middle.

  8. Given modern society and everyone's voice being heard, it makes sense that even women on the more docile end of the gender spectrum want to start making calls because they feel two things: liberated from their own bio telling them no and social pressure from others with more extreme make ups telling them to get out there and take charge. However, I think that translates into your average woman wanting respect more than anything. I'm surrounded by doctors at work and I have had relationships with a number of them. So many want to call the shots in lab or on projects but then when you get home they want to be tied up and told what to do in bed. When going out for dinner they want me to pick the spot and drive. When planning the next year - or in one case our lives together - these women (more accomplished than me) asked me to make the plan and said they would follow. I think that reflects the conflict between the biological desires hard coded into each of us and a society that no longer favors or needs these desires to manifest in the workplace. Ultimately I think this is for the better and I think that's obvious given all the neat and exciting projects I've seen women take the reins on in the last few years while working in my lab.

Conclusion: I don't think gender is a social construct in any way. I think it's a matter of statistics (growing pop) and biology (reward structures to help us survive). I think the social/psych argument makes sense but misattributes biological principals. Yes, gender is a sliding scale based on the intensity of the genes you have (think height) but no, people don't fall towards the middle and society didn't come up with it.

... If you're wondering, I didn't convince her to join my side but the debate was still productive and respectful.

*Edited to remove some personal info that may or may not come back to bite me in the ass