Some thoughts about gender as social construct that I wanted to get down on paper before I forget.

That gender is a social construct does not mean you can just dismiss it. Gender is not a material reality like the body, this is true. But material reality isn't the only reality. Social constructs can shape material reality. For example the social practice of footwear can and has changed foot structure. In our society’s very individualist view of things, there isn’t an allowance for the fact that social pressures and assumptions do define the borders of how we are or can be. Gender has power and force and is not easily thrown off.  It is true that without coming to the understanding that gender is a social construct, I wouldn’t have found the psychological strength to transition. Prior to that understanding, however, I have battled with my personal gender one way or another for the whole of my life. Now I specify my personal gender here because of course that is not the only way gender is used oppressively. Of course there is the oppression of gender supremacy, but for now I want to focus on oppression rooted in what gender is thought to be.

I have found that there are at least four different categories of social pressures and assumptions concerning what gender is:

1. Gender expression: clothing, hair, make-up, affectations, etc.
2. Gender roles: Mother, Father, Truck Driver, Nurse (ways in which our society assigns gender to activities or interpersonal relationships)
3. Gender “norms”: Ways in which we gender personal qualities; emotional vs stoic, good with math, nurturing, etc.
4. Gender identity: Your own personal resonance (or lack thereof) with gender.

Prior to understanding gender as a social construct, it became clear to me that categories 1, 2 & 3 were not determined by the binary sex one was assigned at birth. That people who never questioned their gender identity could and did challenge expectations of their expression, roles, and assumed norms. This clarity was no doubt informed by being a teenager during the second wave of feminism. And the enforcement of these first three categories was oppressive. However the fourth category, that of personal identity, that WAS “biologically” determined (under the prevalent misunderstanding of biology as limited to binary sex categories.)

And yet, that was my primary struggle. Expression was never all that important to me. Roles were more of an issue, but due to privilege that was given to me because it was assumed I was male, most roles could be worked around (except motherhood, but that’s a whole essay in and of itself.) Norms were more challenging. Initially, as far back as first grade, it was clear to me that my personality, the qualities I possessed were much more like those our society considers normative for women than men - that they would be more acceptable if I had been “born a girl” (the language I had at the time.) For the longest time, I thought that if these “norms” were challenged enough, if our culture could allow for “both” genders to be who they were inside, that would be enough.

Sometime in college it finally occurred to me that there was something deeper going on. It wasn’t simply a matter of acceptance of qualities I had, it was something else. It had to do with an interiority, a sense of self, what mattered to me within myself, what I found valuable about me, and even deeper what resonated with something that wasn’t even conscious. Trouble was, I didn’t have the words for this something else. What I did know instinctively was that if my primary and secondary sexual characteristics were different, this something else would be recognized in some manner. And that absolute lack of recognition I felt was oppressive.

So when finally, the social construct understanding came to me, it allowed for me to see that gender identity itself was something other than one’s sexual characteristics, and I could finally admit out loud that I was transsexual. It was freedom, it felt like an escape from oppression. It allowed me to embrace my interior gender. The thing is, I now understand on some level that what I refer to as my interior gender is something that is still bound by social constructs. Transsexual, transgender, genderqueer, agender, gender fluid, non-binary, these are all cultural understandings that exist because of the social constructs of gender in our society. In a different culture, in a different time and place, none of these terms would make any sense at all. To assert any of these terms is not a dismissal of social constructs, not an escape from them, but rather attempts to create new constructs that better fit the experience of those oppressed by the limits of the prevalent social constructs.