Gender
Jan 04, 2005Are gender roles and differences fixed, once and for, all by biology? Or is gender socially constructed and culturally variable?
Gender Fluidity & Social Construction
30 January 2018
It is popular in certain circles to think of gender as a fluid spectrum: People can fall on many points between "very feminine" and "very masculine," and where they fall can change over time. In this Prospect article, Julian Baggini provides his own tweak to this framework. He argues for gender viscosity instead of gender fluidity, where one moves along the gender spectrum over a longer time frame.
In making this argument, he advances some interesting claims regarding the status of gender as both biological and socially constructed. For me, it raised the question—how much of gender is left after we take away its socially constructed component? Would the difference between biological sexes really get us any closer to our system of gender differentiation?
Here's the article:
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Related Shows
Gender
Jan 04, 2005Are gender roles and differences fixed, once and for, all by biology? Or is gender socially constructed and culturally variable?
Feminism
Oct 12, 2004Some feminists hold that there are specially feminine ways of knowing, and the current scientific research is flawed for not recognizing them.
Science and Gender
Mar 02, 2014What does gender have to do with science? The obvious answer is ‘nothing.’ Science is the epitome of an objective, rational, and disinterested enterprise.
Queerness
Mar 05, 2017Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual… it is safe to say that new ideas of gender and sexuality have broken into mainstream consciousness within the past few decades.
Blog Archive
Why do some people have a strange desire to do weird things for no (good) reason? There's something fascinating about kids who eat laundry soap as part of a “challenge,” or people who deliberately... Read more
Making a better world would be a great thing—but do we need philosophers to help us do that? Famously (or infamously), not all philosophers have been such great people. So are they the folks we... Read more
In her time—the 4th century CE—Hypatia was one of the most famous philosophers in Alexandria, and indeed in the ancient world. She studied and taught mathematics,... Read more
Mexican philosophy is full of fascinating ideas, from Mexica ("Aztec") and Mayan thought to Sor Juana’s feminism and Emilio Uranga’s existentialism... Read more
Your friendly neighborhood Senior Prodcuer here, once again stepping out from behind the mixing board to bring you some bonus content from this week's 17th (!) annual Summer Reading special.... Read more
Gender is a controversial topic these days. To some, gender is an oppressive system designed to keep women down: people go around saying "girls are made of sugar and spice and boys are made of... Read more
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Does reading that strike you as something out of The Secret—like if you... Read more
Derek Parfit was a really interesting thinker when it came to identity and the self. He had a particularly cool thought experiment involving tele-transportation.
Suppose you’re on your... Read more
When philosophers talk about perception, they tend to focus on what we see and hear, and rarely on what we smell. But olfaction is a strange sense that deserves greater philosophical scrutiny. For... Read more
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This week we’re thinking about how to create a world in which our leaders are not just effective legislators, but also good people.
Some might think there are not enough leaders like that... Read more
This week we're thinking about the British Liberal tradition and its relationship to colonialism and self-government. Classical Liberal thinkers, like John Locke and John Stuart Mill, held that... Read more
This week we’re thinking about Collective Action and Climate Change. With floods and fires getting more frequent and intense, and with the summer just ended shattering heat records around the... Read more
This week we’re thinking about cultural appropriation and asking who owns culture—which may be a weird way of thinking about it. It's easy to see how somebody can own the rights to a song they... Read more
This week we’re questioning Effective Altruism. That’s Peter Singer’s idea that you should do the most good you can, and you should figure out what that is by doing your homework and choosing the... Read more
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Comments (1)
Harold G. Neuman
Thursday, February 1, 2018 -- 8:44 AM
I read Mr. Baggini's accountI read Mr. Baggini's account/description of what he calls gender viscosity. Interesting. If we operate on the premise that gender is at least partially a social construct, it is pretty easy to see how perceptions of gender identity can and have changed over time. In my view, part of this has to do with the notion that we are less morally-bound by traditions and beliefs, particularly in societies where emphasis on these has eroded---if you do not like that word, then choose another you find less offensive. In any case, here in the west and in other modern cultures, there seems to be, more and more, an anything goes sort of approach to, well, anything. Experimentation is a popular way of saying: I can be anyone or anything I want and don't have to feel badly about my choices, as long as I am hurting no one else. That as-long-as gets increasingly vague with the passage of time and relaxation of constraints. Frame this any way you wish. As the Kinks put it in their immensely popular song, Lola, (and as it was similarly phrased in Baggini's Prospect piece): "Girls will be boys and boys will be girls, it's a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world...and so's my Lola. L-o-l-a Lola...") Anything goes.