Critical Gender Theories

Cool. Tell me what you think.

So the best way to approach this discussion in my mind would be to establish an agreed-upon definition of gender. I'm a fan of the Aristotelian tradition, so my definitions will be biased toward the teleological (if someone comes up with a better definition, even I admit that teleological definitions are subject to the whims and biases of the public every so often).

So the question to answer is this: what function does gender serve? As an aspect of identity, as a social role, and/or as possibly a reproductive or biological aspect (which, I'm sure we've all agreed simply by the community of this board, is not an aspect related to gender in any way, but it's worth examining if only to develop counter-arguments for).

So I'm going to ramble a little bit just to get the discussion rolling. I'm going off of no sources, and just trying to analyze stuff from my own experiences and limited capacity for reasoning, so that can go wrong in a hurry. It's also worth mentioning that I tend to be biased toward social definitions rather than personal definitions, so just take everything below here with a grain of salt, okay?


Here's what I propose: Humans, by nature, are social and tend to create groups, societies, castes, etc. The divisions within society are, in a large part, how we create our identity: in how we are different from some people and the same as others. Gender and sex were originally created as a distinction based on reproductive abilities (I don't have sources on this, I'm taking this as true because this is the prevailing attitude in current western society, but we know that gender politics change rapidly, so who knows!), with lots of trends correlating with each other such as genital shape, secondary characteristics, etc, to the point where members were designated even when the primary definitive aspect (reproductive ability) was absent. Hence the concept of "infertile men and women." This was (presumably) the first step away from strictly biological processes in the definition of gender, and by this point, social roles based on gender were developed.

The problem with looking at it from a strictly social viewpoint is that there are many people who still identify with their assigned gender that make it a point to defy gender roles. Also, the gender roles themselves are far too flexible to base a gender theory on top of (see: change of value of doctors across cultures or software developers across time).

If we leave it up entirely to identity then gender becomes absolutely meaningless. There is a gender, in that case, for every single human on the planet, as everyone interprets their identity differently. In that sense, it also loses it's purpose as a source of social cohesion, as a way for people to identify as part of a group. There is room in this interpretation for a person being allowed to simply "choose a team," as it were, but in my opinion that's not really useful for our discussion on what gender actually IS, or what forms the terms of cohesion of these "teams" and draws individuals to "join" one over the other. (if someone thinks this discussion is useful, we can certainly have it!)

That leaves biological processes (which, if you ask mainstream society, is the basis of gender anyway!) But it clearly can't be based on genitals if we assume trans people are within their rights to identify contrary to the genitals they were born with. In the example I used in the paragraph above, a genital basis of gender isn't valid simply because people tend to identify differently than they "should" according to their genitals. They are drawn to the other "team," so to speak. That also doesn't allow for reproductive ability since, as stated above, "infertile" people of each gender exist. So that leaves us with secondary sexual characteristics and hormones. Considering that secondary sexual characteristics are largely the product of hormones, I think we can consider these one in the same for the purposes of our discussion. There's certainly evidence of this basis if we look at the larger transgender community. Hormone therapy is a marker of transitioning for many trans people. But the point remains, not ALL trans people take hormones or even transition by any medical sense of the word. It could be argued that these people already have the requisite hormones necessary to alter brain biology (and this assumes that there is a biological difference in brain chemistry of the genders, which I assume simply because I believe there must be an internal motivation for identifying as transgender. That is not to say that I believe there to be a difference in intelligence or general performance of these two brain structures, nor that any of my claims are backed up by real science, to my knowledge), and they could believe that that difference, the difference they experience naturally, is enough to identify in one way over the other. The hormonal makeup of a person, like genetic makeup, is impossible to know simply by looking at someone, and is likely unknown even by an individual themself. And it's even harder to measure than genetics due to their ever-changing nature.

Yet again, simply resting our entire argument on "hormones" does little to explain the cultural differences of gender. So. Bascially what I'm saying is I have no idea? Maybe it's a mix of hormones, social cues, and personal psychology or identity? But that answer seems unsatisfying...

Anyway, I want to hear what everyone else thinks!

Happyfork that was awesome



But what would happen if people never associated gender to genitals? Like a lot of agendered people defend being agender by saying gender is a social construct. What would happen if there never were genders?