Really Tired Of People On This Hellsite Acting Like Being Gay Comes With Political Obligations

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. 

You don’t get to argue that only males experience oppression based AND call yourself a feminist book.

”Feminists think the goals of Tra’s and MtFs are unconnected-“ and you spent an entire book giving me really good reasons to continue to think that. This book says that the reason males are misogynistic is their fear of being perceived as feminine, therefore feminism should focus on helping males out of that brain hole. And the thing is… Feminism has tried that. Libfem bullshit has BEEN babying men and blaming women for males cruelty for supposedly being the people who won’t let them hold purses or whatever the fuck.

Has it worked? I wouldn’t say so. I look around and still see women suffering. I think the reason males are misogynistic is because they benefit from a hierarchical system that treats women as property. I think this happens regardless of any secondary factors. I’ve seen too many feminine males defend pornography to think defense of pornography comes from some place of self loathing instead of their desire to get off no matter what. The goal of radical feminists is female liberation from a system that sees them as the property of males. The goal of ‘trans feminism’ is the liberation of femininity from the shackles of masculinity. I can say that’s a fine goal, but they are so fundamentally different that they require different movements.

Feminism is just fun & games to these losers. They don't give a damn about women's rights, they just want to belittle JK Rowling. How can you see the horrors these women faced and how amazing it is they were able to be helped, and just brush it off with a stupid joke?

”No one is saying you have to-“

Well ignoring the last post that literally said, ‘there is no version of no to a penis that I consider morally acceptable’ - when you call something an ‘-ist’ or ‘ic’ you’re making a negative value assessment of a behavior. If I said, ‘that’s misogynistic’ it is saying that the behavior negatively impacts female people and there’s a moral obligation to change it.

So when you call refusing sex an ‘-ist’ or ‘-ic’ act you are saying there is a moral obligation to have sex with people based on a given trait.

why can't i mock your religion lmao U literally think i'm going to hell

Do not interact if you're under 19.

[TW rape mention, sa mention, sex work]

so people who can see the exploitation of women in industry and they don't like it are "puritans" now. What's the point we missed? That women are sold into this industry, forced, and raped on camera? What's the point we missed? How can you be sure that these women aren't on drugs? I saw an interview with few of the sex workers and one said that she couldn't do that until she was on drugs and all her colleagues endured it and received physical and psychological traumas. What's the point we missed?

Y'all will be "listen to sex workers!" Until thousands of them come out and say they were exploited, abused, and traumatized, and then you tell them to "shut up!" and just ignore their experience, you are not "progressive", you just hate victims and women.

If you ever see me writing something like this, know my body has been snatched.

They absolutely should be, those videos should be removed and YouTube and Tiktok should be held liable for the damage that they do when they show people at their most vulnerable and turn them into clowns for entertainment. I’d be willing to support a movement built around stopping the idea that existing in public means agreeing to having your image posted for billions to see and mock and for YouTube to make money from.

Call me none of the above. If someone is drugged they are considered incapable of consent, pornhub is not making sure their actors are sober.

My criticisms of the porn and sex industry come from a place of worker’s rights and safety and from the importance of consent as a freely given act so people who just decide to video tape themselves having sex, have proper safety precautions for dealing with seminal and vaginal fluids, all of whom have the right at any point to destroy access to those videos, all of whom are in a mindset to consent, none of them necessarily needing the money to survive (because fuck me or starve, fuck me or die on the streets, fuck me or get deported aren’t actual choices. The same applies to ‘work for me or starve, die on the streets, get deported.’), who get to actively decide who’s watching to continue their consent. Those people are fine, power to them, but I don’t think they represent a majority of the industry and I to get to the point where they are the industry needs to be looked at critically.

the fact that criticizing the sex industry is seen as more oppressive than the sex industry itself should really make people think

L