If gender is a social construct, what about age?

[Anonymous]

Gender is not a social construct. It's established at the moment of conception. I don't care who you love but don't insist that male is female or vice versa.

[Anonymous]

I prefer tailored clothing, short hair and button down shirts. It doesn't make me a man.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gender is not a social construct. It's established at the moment of conception. I don't care who you love but don't insist that male is female or vice versa.

Not even sex is established at the moment of conception, for all human beings. Typically it is, but not universally.

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/001669.htm
https://repeatingislands.com/2015/09/19/the-astonishing-village-where-little-girls-turn-into-boys-aged-12/

And then there are the other organisms:

https://www.nature.com/articles/296850a0
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9989/
http://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I prefer tailored clothing, short hair and button down shirts. It doesn't make me a man.

Nobody has said that it does.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gender is not a social construct. It's established at the moment of conception. I don't care who you love but don't insist that male is female or vice versa.

Not even sex is established at the moment of conception, for all human beings. Typically it is, but not universally.

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/001669.htm
https://repeatingislands.com/2015/09/19/the-astonishing-village-where-little-girls-turn-into-boys-aged-12/

And then there are the other organisms:

https://www.nature.com/articles/296850a0
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9989/
http://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/

Yeah. Because how the sex of alligators is determined is completely relevant to this discussion. As are genetic anomalies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gender is not a social construct. It's established at the moment of conception. I don't care who you love but don't insist that male is female or vice versa.

Not even sex is established at the moment of conception, for all human beings. Typically it is, but not universally.

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/001669.htm
https://repeatingislands.com/2015/09/19/the-astonishing-village-where-little-girls-turn-into-boys-aged-12/

And then there are the other organisms:

https://www.nature.com/articles/296850a0
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9989/
http://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/

Yeah. Because how the sex of alligators is determined is completely relevant to this discussion. As are genetic anomalies.

Human beings are relevant to the discussion, no? Sex is established at the moment of conception for human beings, except for when it isn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I remember the 80s too. I even remember the 70s!

I even remember the 1960s. Yet now I bike commute, I drink craft beer, and I am on twitter. You are, indeed, as young as you feel. So while age is a number, "generation" "Age bracket" "middle aged" etc are indeed social constructs.

Y'all should start riding bikes too. You wouldn't worry so much about this gender business, one way or the other (note, in selecting a bike seat, you should go by what parts you actually have, not by either your chromosomes or who you identify with)

[Anonymous]

I don't think we've reached the point of being able to manipulate the space-time continuum, OP. Maybe come back and post your questions when/if we ever figure that out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gender is not a social construct. It's established at the moment of conception. I don't care who you love but don't insist that male is female or vice versa.

Not even sex is established at the moment of conception, for all human beings. Typically it is, but not universally.

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/001669.htm
https://repeatingislands.com/2015/09/19/the-astonishing-village-where-little-girls-turn-into-boys-aged-12/

And then there are the other organisms:

https://www.nature.com/articles/296850a0
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9989/
http://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/

Yeah. Because how the sex of alligators is determined is completely relevant to this discussion. As are genetic anomalies.

Human beings are relevant to the discussion, no? Sex is established at the moment of conception for human beings, except for when it isn't.

You ignored PP's sentence 'as are genetic anomolies.' Because that is what is happening if sex can't be determined at birth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gender is not a social construct. It's established at the moment of conception. I don't care who you love but don't insist that male is female or vice versa.

Not even sex is established at the moment of conception, for all human beings. Typically it is, but not universally.

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/001669.htm
https://repeatingislands.com/2015/09/19/the-astonishing-village-where-little-girls-turn-into-boys-aged-12/

And then there are the other organisms:

https://www.nature.com/articles/296850a0
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9989/
http://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/

Yeah. Because how the sex of alligators is determined is completely relevant to this discussion. As are genetic anomalies.

Human beings are relevant to the discussion, no? Sex is established at the moment of conception for human beings, except for when it isn't due to genetic abnormalities considered outside the norm.

Which really makes them not entirely relevant when this happens in 1/1,000 - 100,000 cases. That is not the norm.

[Anonymous]

The typical collection of the experiences of a 20 year old is different than that of a 45 year old.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sex is not a social construction. Gender is.

Similarly, age is not a social construction, but youth/middle-age/old age etc. are. That's why we have sayings like "you're only as old as you feel" or "youth is wasted on the young" or "50 is the new 40" or "if you're 55 or better..."

This.

I sometimes consider gender as being a performance of traits and qualities that are associated with a given sex. So being perceived as female requires an individual to have certain physical characteristics, dress a particular way, have certain interests, and any number of other actions or markers that culturally are recognized as being female. That is how we recognize a stranger as being male or female, and it is possible to be wrong because not all women have long hair, wear make up, wear dresses or other feminine clothing or colors, speak in a higher register, enjoy children, have difficulty with brute physical tasks, etc.

I know that the OP is trolling, but when you think about age, consider the subjectivity of age-related qualities. If age = wisdom, how do you account for older people who do not have wisdom?

[Anonymous]

I agree with pp about age/middle age and sex/gender analogy. But I think the big difference there is that virtually everyone experiences the age one. I am 33 and frequently thinking, 'my mom was this old when I was 8' and realizing that adults are just people, nothing special. We all go through this age/expectation thing.

The gender thing. Take princesses and puppy dog tails out of the equation and gender isn't REALLY a social construct. It is a biological construct. The nurturing nature of women IS something that society drills into us but it is ALSO something we're biologically predisposed to in order to have our children survive. Men's aggressiveness IS something that society drills in but it is ALSO biologically driven as it sets them up to get a woman to agree to mate with him and then to protect her and their mates. To extract these things is to ignore human biology.

I believe transgendered people exist and I think they should be allowed to live their lives in unmolested unquestioned harmony because they do no harm whatsoever. But I do think they have some kind of body dysphoria type of mental illness. One that can be cured by allowing them to transition so go for it! But the reality is that the vast vast majority of humans are not going through this. They may hate 'girly' or 'manly' things but they are biologically normal and are the man/woman they appeared to be at birth.

I think the current trend of conflating whether it is 'ok' to be transgendered with whether this is common or normal is not the right way to go. It is not normal and it is a medical condition that sometimes requires intense surgical medical intervention. I wish the people who want everyone on the transgender train would cool it a bit because I think we'll lose the war trying to fight that type of thing and I wish the people who are so intolerant towards transgenderism could simply acknowledge it as a mental illness and walk away and stop thinking about it so much.

And don't tell me you could ignore it if it wasn't for the bathroom stuff. Are you worried about little boys alone in the men's restroom? That is a ridiculous non issue that actually will improve a lot of people's lives. Children will be SAFER being able to enter any bathroom with either parent.

[Anonymous]

I have self-identified as 25 for the last 30 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree with pp about age/middle age and sex/gender analogy. But I think the big difference there is that virtually everyone experiences the age one. I am 33 and frequently thinking, 'my mom was this old when I was 8' and realizing that adults are just people, nothing special. We all go through this age/expectation thing.

The gender thing. Take princesses and puppy dog tails out of the equation and gender isn't REALLY a social construct. It is a biological construct. The nurturing nature of women IS something that society drills into us but it is ALSO something we're biologically predisposed to in order to have our children survive. Men's aggressiveness IS something that society drills in but it is ALSO biologically driven as it sets them up to get a woman to agree to mate with him and then to protect her and their mates. To extract these things is to ignore human biology.

I believe transgendered people exist and I think they should be allowed to live their lives in unmolested unquestioned harmony because they do no harm whatsoever. But I do think they have some kind of body dysphoria type of mental illness. One that can be cured by allowing them to transition so go for it! But the reality is that the vast vast majority of humans are not going through this. They may hate 'girly' or 'manly' things but they are biologically normal and are the man/woman they appeared to be at birth.

I think the current trend of conflating whether it is 'ok' to be transgendered with whether this is common or normal is not the right way to go. It is not normal and it is a medical condition that sometimes requires intense surgical medical intervention. I wish the people who want everyone on the transgender train would cool it a bit because I think we'll lose the war trying to fight that type of thing and I wish the people who are so intolerant towards transgenderism could simply acknowledge it as a mental illness and walk away and stop thinking about it so much.

And don't tell me you could ignore it if it wasn't for the bathroom stuff. Are you worried about little boys alone in the men's restroom? That is a ridiculous non issue that actually will improve a lot of people's lives. Children will be SAFER being able to enter any bathroom with either parent.

I think that after millenia of socially constructed gender expectations (w/r/t nurturing and aggressiveness), it is difficult to separate what has been conditioned over many generations from what is biologically inherent. I think that what you associate with a particular age is largely dependent on what your own experiences have been. People whose experiences lie outside the norm will always see things differently than people whose experiences fall within the norm.