The Way Trans Posts Will Switch Rapidly From ‘if You’re Not With Us, You’re With The Fascists’

Social Construct Masterpost

I was inspired to make this post because of the mass confusion on tumblr about what social constructs are and how they function. I will start with a simple example:

This is a one dollar bill. It is an excellent example of a social construct. This piece of paper represents a specific amount of spending power in the society that it exists in (the USA). An individual person could decide personally that it represents 1000$ worth of spending power, but it would not matter because like all social constructs, the collective agreement between individuals in society is what determines the meaning of the construct. There are laws on the books about currency but it doesn’t stop society from changing the meaning of a dollar; after all, in times of scarcity a dollar is a much more valuable asset than in times of plenty. The exact value of a dollar is something that fluctuates in tune with other factors, including things like consumer confidence- meaning, how consumers feel about the economy. Social constructs can change based on changes of opinion in the population. 

One way to test if something is a social construct is to remove it from its native society and see if it retains the same functionality. The US dollar is accepted in some foreign countries, but in other places, it is just a piece of paper. 

Another way to test if something is a social construct is to remove people from the picture entirely and see if it retains its functionality. Without people to give a dollar meaning it simply becomes paper. 

Contrast the attributes of a dollar with say, biological sex.

Male humans produce sperm and much higher levels of testosterone than females. Females produce ova and offspring if their eggs are fertilized and implanted. Individuals who are sterile still have either male or female anatomy which serves sexual functions for the individual. Virtually everyone on earth qualifies as one sex or the other, with or without malfunctioning or variations. Is this binary a social construct?

Does the collective agreement of society give male and female organs their functionality? Absolutely not. Humans did not always have an understanding of how pregnancy happened, and yet it happened anyway. Individuals who don’t know about or understand reproduction can and do get pregnant via sex. No matter how many people got together and decided that females inseminate males there would be no change in the function of testes or ovaries. 

The functionality of human reproductive organs is also impervious to cultural or geographical differences. All over the world people get pregnant and have babies by mixing sperm from males with ova from females. There is no exception. 

Removing humans from the equation also has no effect on the biological reality of mammalian reproduction. Male mammals are male, female mammals are female, and only one of the two can give birth. 

Biological sex is not and never has been a social construct.

Another example is gender. Femininity is the easiest example to discuss. Lets look at different examples of femininity from around the world:

As you can see, what it means to be feminine or girly is very different depending upon the society. None of these is the “correct” femininity, just different versions from different cultures. There is no objective way to determine what makes someone feminine in any given culture- you have to ask people. 

The nature of femininity is totally subjective and relies on the collective agreement of society. If you move one of these women into a different society their defining feminine characteristics instead become physical characteristics with no gender designation at all. In fact, what would make you gender conforming in one culture would make you gender non conforming in another. Gender also changes in individual societies over time, so the meaning of being feminine in America in the 1800s would differ markedly from what it means to be feminine in America right now. How people feel about the construct changes its meaning.Thus we can easily say that gender is a social construct. 

anticapitalist e-commies when you say that the sex industry is exploitative

Hey so

Why isn’t the left trying to appeal to the ‘Work is shit’ girls and young women?

Girls and women are expressing a dissatisfaction with labor as it exists currently in the western world especially, a system where the rich have obscene amounts of money to spend on bullshit while people starve. A system where they work for hours and hours get no free time and at the end of the month barely have enough to scrape together for rent, and if they get into medical debt? They’re fucked and they know it.

The Right says ‘that’s because you’re a woman, and woman are built for the home’ and the Left is going… ‘you dumbasses don’t you know that when you aim for that Tradwife bullshit you’re setting yourself up to be abused? You’re setting the feminist movement back. I hope you get abused.’ While males are allowed to make the same complaints about work and it’s NOT considered a natural result of male biology OR a justification to take away the rights of males.

… Tbh it feels weird to judge any female celebrity for being mediocre while males get to be as boring as they want and make millions from it (and get to be the ones in charge of the industry at large)

I want a wife by Judy Brady really is a summary of why the patriarchy continues to exist. If your capable of never thinking of what the other person might want, if you’re able to dehumanize them enough to never consider that they exist in their own right… Who wouldn’t want a sex mommy who does everything for you and is always pleasant. That’s fundamentally why I don’t think males can escape the patriarchy merely by embracing their own femininity. If the choice is between ‘sometimes people make fun of you if you act a certain way… But you get the (often unhappy but never unpleasant) sex mommy I mentioned earlier’ or ‘You can cry or wear a purse, be as feminine as you want but female people have rights and most of them won’t want to be your sex mommy and will might even require you to help them while they work.’ The only reason to pick the latter is if you actually see female people as human and her wants and needs as equal value to your own (or if you’re not attracted to females, that can build a bridge of empathy but well. Sometimes it’s just a continued expectation of labor except without the sex. Sometimes they still believe in male supremacy but see us as lacking value altogether.) So much of regressive politics around female people are built around this deal it’s kind of ridiculous when people act like it doesn’t exist.

Dear god, I thought shitty modern art would stop at "banana taped to a wall" but now it's escalated to "keep three piglets caged in an art gallery and make them slowly starve to death in front of audiences".

they've been doing that sort of thing for a while, there was one maybe ten years ago where someone displayed a bunch of individual goldfish in powered blenders that the audience could choose to turn on or not

the thing about this sort of stuff though is that the audience response and the audience response TO the audience response is also part of the art, so "me beating your ass in an art gallery for liquifying a fish in front of me" is now a commentary on the the place of individual choice in a larger society.

also someone broke in and stole those piglets, which is an even funnier response, because now this art piece is a commentary on general human decency and there's nothing the artist can do about it

to keep it simple, i don't think any abuser deserves the privilege of being able to go "but im sorry!!" and be forgiven by the internet for what they did. i dont think any victim should have to see their abuser be put on a pedestal. only victims can forgive our abusers. and we do not have to

Criticizing the flaws of your own side does not automatically make you a member of the oppressor. I am not anti-black if I point out that the Blank Panthers were hypocritical and violent towards their own womyn. I am not a conservative for pointing out that the left is too obsessed with perfect victims and perfect representatives. I am not anti-feminist for pointing out that womyn often play a part in their own oppression.

If you think in black and white like this, you are asking people to ride on a boat with weak spots in the name of blind solidarity.