>


Most people pick a label that fits their opinions; they don't change their opinions to fit a label.

I think that is overly charitable. Most people pick a label based on a few issues they find important, then kind of just shrug and accept the rest of the party line.
Is anyone saying that social constructs are wrong per se?
Democracy is a social construct.
Marriage is a social construct.
Justice is a social construct.
Absolutely no one is saying that social constructs are bad. The point is - social constructs is something we can CHANGE (to improve). It's not something set in stone. >

Exactly, as OP states social constructs are just groups or terms we use to help us understand the world. Doing so isn't inherently bad and is actually very useful if not necessary. I think what OP is confusing here is that, with many social constructs, they do have a history that is not good. Take race for example, a social construct with an almost exclusively bad history and purpose. Now, acknowledging that fact isn't saying that we should never use any words or groupings around people's backgrounds or that all social constructs are bad, it just means that we should work to both acknowledge the history and work to fix/replace the bad parts where necessary. >

I agree that the way we treated social constructs has been problematic in the past. My point is that it doesn't mean we should tear them apart. Instead, we can embrace differences without discriminating against anyone.
Of course, questioning the system is always a good thing. I definitely do. >

It's not about tearing them apart, it's just about ensuring that we don't trap ourselves within them.  
There's a lot of posts like this on CMV, where everyone sort of just... wonders where some supposed opposition is coming from, because no one's noticing any but the OP. >

except judith butler literally is advocating tearing them apart, she doesn't think "woman" exists in any meaningful sense. >

*Thinks that feminists should not attempt to define womanhood. That doesn't discourage any personal conception of it. >

Well, one, Butler is way the fuck obtuse and is not the best way to get an initial understanding of these things.
But:

We, humans, need reference frames to understand the world. We naturally gravitate to categorizing things. There's nothing wrong with the distinction between "female" and "male." 

The problem is that the distinction between "female" and "male" (sexes) has become a distinction between "woman" and "man" (gender [roles]) that is, generally speaking, oppressive particularly but not exclusively to women. It creates a set of expectations that deny people the ability to pursue their own interests independent of what they themselves actually want.

Butler says there's indeed no such thing as a "woman," since the definition is not widely accepted. She wants to find a new subject of feminism. And this confuses me. Her gender performativity also confuses me. If gender isn't innate but something performed (and doesn't even exist), then what's the point of even saying that people can identify as X or Y? Wouldn't that go against TG?

This is the 8756243876523847562346598th thread that boils down to two distinct uses of gender.
Gender identity is not the same thing as gender roles, norms, or expression, although the two are obviously related. It's the same kind of relationship the feeling of pain has to the word "ow". The word "ow" is constructed, expressive, voluntary to some extent, culturally variable, etc. But pain in and of itself is not. Similarly, gender [as Butler is using the term] is constructed, expressive, voluntary to some extent, culturally variable, etc. But gender identity, which is a distinct underlying thing, is not.

Should we deconstruct reference frames? Wouldn't it be better to accept that there's a norm but people can fall out? And most importantly, if we do deconstruct them, how do we build new ones?

A valid question!
I'd argue the point of deconstruction is to understand the construction itself and decide whether and how to rebuild it. Constructions are too built into the way we view the world for us to totally do away with them, but they're also too often wrong for us to not examine them.
For example, physics needed a bunch of deconstructing after the discovery of quantum mechanics. The foundations on which physics was built - of a bunch of little billiard balls flying around with definite speeds and velocities and bouncing off of each other - were bad ones, and we needed to tear the whole thing down and start from scratch. And so a large part of the initial development of quantum mechanics was just getting back to what we already knew with that foundation.
Or to get back to social issues: transitioning involved a lot of deconstruction and reconstruction in my personality. I was socialized as a man in a way that didn't prepare me for the challenges I'd face as a woman, and it led me to many conclusions that turned out to be false with that new perspective. So I ended up having to treat a lot of things that I "knew" as conditional and uncertain, dig down into the roots of those things, pull out a few roots, and then rebuilt the things that seemed true from that perspective.
Butler might not agree with me on this, but I believe in deconstructing to reconstruct better. Every generation ought to do it at least once, not with the idea of changing everything, but with the idea of being willing to change anything that isn't working anymore, and to follow the consequences of that where they lead. >


Gender identity is not the same thing as gender roles, norms, or expression, although the two are obviously related. It's the same kind of relationship the feeling of pain has to the word "ow". The word "ow" is constructed, expressive, voluntary to some extent, culturally variable, etc. But pain in and of itself is not. Similarly, gender [as Butler is using the term] is constructed, expressive, voluntary to some extent, culturally variable, etc. But gender identity, which is a distinct underlying thing, is not.

This is really informative and explains something that has confused me for a long time. Thank you for educating some of my ignorance. Is there anything you could recommend that explains Gender Identity more? >

There's not really a "more" to explain. It's just a thing that is, in much the same way that sexual orientation is. >

Can you define it? >

Saying something is a social construct isn't saying it's "right or wrong" to begin with. It's drawing a distinction between something rooted in reality vs. something that is real because we collectively believe it's real. Having dark skin is a biological reality, "race" and the way society will treat you as a result of that phenotype is a social construct.
One reason this distinction is significant is that it tells us racism is not an unchangeable natural phenomenon, but a product of human behavior that we can address. The fact that race is a social construct doesn't make racism or the consequences of race any less "real". >

I haven't read that book, but I've read later writings where she addresses Heidegger and my interpretation of her ideas were in line with his phenomenology.
In other words, I don't think that gender as performance means the same thing as socially constructed.
"Social construct" in this sense is meaningless because everything can be said to be a social construct if the term means "ontological". The dichotomy is between things that have an a priori essence and an expressed phenomenon.
Performance means that gender is only something that exists in reality as a phenomenon, not as an abstract ideal.
That's the exact opposite of saying "it doesn't exist.", It's saying that it only pertains to what actually exists.
It's the definition of gender that doesn't "really exist" because it's just something that is made up, or a social construct. >

The tendency to categorise the world, to identify groups of things and to name them, is natural but I think there is a particular problem with social categories that do justify viewing them as problematic, even perhaps evil. The issue is not with the act of categorisation itself, but how social categories acquire (socially) accepted attributes or properties. It is this process, controlled by the dominant group that reproduces their coercive/abusive power. So while “female” may identify something in the world, the meaning of female in a society depends on the power structure of that society. If it is male dominated then negative attributes become bound up with the social meaning of female to justify male dominance. Such a process seems to be intrinsic to social constructs (categories) and I don’t think it’s possible for social constructs to avoid this fate. This justifies treating them differently from natural categorisations such as tree which do avoid reproducing social structures by virtue of not being part of the social world!
When you say about there being no such thing as “man” and “woman” this distinction between natural categorisation and social categorisation is crucial. In principle they would exist if construed as natural categorisations but I don’t think that’s what we mean by these in practice. We mean them as social categories which are somewhat like mythologies. The Sun exists as an object fusing hydrogen into helium in the natural world. But for some societies it was a god in constant war with the Moon. When people in such a society talk about the Sun they mean the god with the attributes they ascribed to it and not the nuclear furnace we know it as. Their Sun story is a myth of course even though there is something 150 million km away. >

Butler isn't saying that social constructs are inherently evil, rather what they're doing is arguing against a view of gender that understands it as consisting of two parts: identity, and performance. E.g. the idea there are women, and there are the social roles and expectations that women are expected to have within the patriarchy, and together those constitute the socially constructed identity of women. Butler is saying that actually, there is only the second part, the performance, because people don't have identities that spring fully formed from their bodies. Rather, only the social construction of gender exists. But this doesn't mean that people are wrong about what their gender is, it just means gender as a thing is inherently tied up with the societal distribution of power, and is complicated by race, class, sex, sexuality, etc. When they're talking about finding a new subject of feminism, what Butler means is that if you confine yourself to thinking about feminism as about separating women from patriarchal norms, you're going to come up short, because "woman" is still defined by those patriarchal norms, forming a dialectic: either you embrace the norms or you go against them, you're still being governed by them. Instead, they argue, people need to attack those norms directly through, for example, parody and deconstruction. It's not enough to just say that women can defy gender norms if they want, what really needs to be done is for a new sort of womanhood to be invented through intentional and repetitive challenging of gender norms and the social structures which reinforce them >

Regarding transgender issues, in later books Butler says that while gender is performative and a social construct, not aligning yourself to that construct generally means not being accepted as a complete person by society — which is painful. (Indeed, the high rates of suicidality and depression among trans folk correlates directly to the degree they do not feel accepted by others.)
And I don’t think Butler ever makes the case that all social constructs are evil though, does she? But they are all the products of power relations. You can’t make people accept new social constructs without power (whether that power is violent, or persuasive, or legal.) Academia is a center of power too.
I also get the sense that Butler, and other critical theorists carrying on the tradition of Foucault (and ultimately Nietzsche) is too focused on breaking things down, smashing idols, and not on building anything new. It’s a common criticism. I think you have to think of critical theory as a tool — it’s a tool that’s great for tearing down old constructs to clear space for something new. But it shouldn’t be the only tool in society’s tool belt. 
Accepting that there is a norm, but that people fall out of it, is creating a new norm. Just ten years ago or so falling outside that norm was a mental illness (according to the DSM-4.) >

So let’s change the way people treat others not in the norm. 
I don’t see why we can’t have a norm and still respect people who don’t fall into it perfectly. 
I don’t understand why we can’t still have a description of non binding gender characteristics and still allow and respect people living outside of those norms. 
I see a direction where the mass is told to reject norms and non binding definitions to make those outside the norm feel comfortable when what we need is people to treat others with respect regardless of what norms they do or do not fall into >

A social norm is a shared agreement of what constitutes acceptable behavior.
Treating everyone with respect regardless of gender norms is a great norm in my opinion. But such a norm necessarily exists in opposition to gender norms. If all gendered behavior is acceptable, there are no gender norms.
Though then again, I wouldn’t want every gender norm to be acceptable. Many westerners would have a lot of difficulty accepting extremely traditional gender norms, or norms that have been proven to be harmful, like locking women away from public view while the menstruate. This would be unacceptable gendered behavior and would therefor be a norm — don’t act this way.
Your just never going to do away with all gender norms, nor would you want to. But you can make some less restrictive and change others. >

U can change your gender not sex your sex. Cis female and cis male will always exist because it's a scientific fact, u can change your team and identify as whatever but u can't ever change the way u were born and most people always feel that. Take for instance trans men who want to get pregnant if they actually wanted to be a man they would use a surrogate not carry >

Sorry, u/jacobsonjohn287 – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 1:

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power is the driving force.

Yes. Power for whom, do you think? >

Everyone engaging in politics. There's two manifestations of power, individual strength and the strength in numbers. If democracy wins, then it's because it's the strongest force. It's literally in the name.
Whenever I criticise the political left on Reddit I get downvoted, that's also a power imbalance.
Did you want me to say "Bad people take power for themselves"? But everyone wants power for themselves. All political discussions are just losers complaining that they have less power than others, and that this is an injustice, and that they're good people and the moral standards which everyone else should be measured against.
I do not believe the positive words with which any force adorn themselves, all political power struggles are ugly, and I find the whole identification with groups to be pathetic, and these groups don't really exist anyway (which is why discrimination is always invalid. You can't judge people for the actions of the group to which you think that they belong, be it their race or anything else) >


Whenever I criticise the political left on Reddit I get downvoted, that's also a power imbalance.

Lol.
Not allowed to have opinions different from yours?

But everyone wants power for themselves.

Yes. 

I find the whole identification with groups to be pathetic,

Lol.

and these groups don't really exist anyway

Then you shouldn't be so upset about it. >

I never said they didn't, but it's not even their opinions, they've just found some group to identify with. Those who think for themselves don't fit under any labels.

Then you shouldn't be so upset about it.

I'm not upset, I'm just calling out nonsense. No progress is being made >


No progress is being made

But things are better now for LGBTQ+ people. Seems like progress to me. 

it's not even their opinions, they've just found some group to identify with. Those who think for themselves don't fit under any labels.

Labels are shorthand. Everybody fits some label. >

Look at the posts being made on this subreddit. They've been made 100s of times before. This conversation we're having now has been had 100s of times before.

Everybody fits some label.

Badly, at best. If your opinion on 20 different subjects are almost the same as other people the same label, then you're not an individual, but some conforming automatron which is afraid of standing out or going against the flow. >

Most people pick a label that fits their opinions; they don't change their opinions to fit a label.
I know it's tempting to think most people are mindless but that's not true.