Like I always say, gender isn’t a spectrum, it’s a graph. And in the top right corner of that graph are JoJo villains, who somehow manage to be the muscliest, most masculine of manly men and the flounciest, most feminine of twinks at the same time, which, let’s face it, is pretty based. 💪👄

On the other hand, it’s also dawned on me that gender can’t be (entirely) a social construct, because - just hear me out on this - that would make having a given gender identity a choice instead of the way you were born, which reads to me as concerningly transphobic and not a belief that I, even (especially?) as a cis person, would want to harbor. Gender-stereotyped assumptions about what people “must” enjoy or be good at, THOSE are social constructs.

Anyway, just a lot to think about. Science marches on, I suppose.

[–] Silentiea@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago

The categories that encompass "man" or "woman" or whatever are socially constructed. The outlines of those categories especially are so far from being absolutes of nature or physical constants.

But people still have an innate sense of themselves and their own identity. So even though the rules are made up and the points don't matter, people can still know which box they go in based on that sense.

For some people, they're just comfortable in the box everyone right they'd go in and never think about it. Stone people don't care which box they're in and so never bother to think about it. There's all our cis folks. Stone people don't really care which box they're in, but they do still think about it and decide they go outside any of them. Some people think they go in one box sometimes and either box at other times. There's the nonbinary folks. And then there's people who can tell they fit in a box, but everyone seemed to think they're actually in the other one until they mistake was pointed out.

The boxes themselves are totally made up, but they still exist. And since they exist, people can still tell which ones they go to. The fact that the boxes are fake doesn't make them not "real", it just makes enforcing them and telling people you know what big they should be on better than they do stupid.

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