Harmful Social Constructions

photo from here

Note: *womyn is used to replace "fab" women.

To assume that females who have lived the experience of being born with a vagina, womb - being born with 'femaleness' as defined by the dominant power is not fairly comparable with women born as males who grew up with male privilege (regardless of how poorly any individual may be treated, there is still the incredible privilege of maleness that is ever-present under patriarchy and capitalism) being born a female automatically puts womyn* and girls as a class in a poor social situation - based on this "femaleness" declared by the people present for our births. The male privilege is not there for females, even if the female child is not socialized to be "feminine" - she still is considered female - she is still a female with all of the oh-so greatly despised reproductive organs. This isn't suggesting that a middle class, white woman doesn't have more privilege than a black woman or something ridiculous like that. This is suggesting that females, regardless of the social construction of "gender," that they may or may not identify with, do not have any privilege over women who were born as male. The phallus is held to the upmost importance in our society.

The phallus is present, the privilege is present.

Unfortunately, many spaces that promote the idea that gender is a biological imperative, fail to include intersex people who obviously know much about gender not being biological. Biological essentalism puts people into small boxes, gender boxes; one is blue and one is pink. It is silly socially constructed oppression. In a patriarchy-free society "man" and "woman" wouldn't exist in such a restrictive way - people wouldn't be driven by greedy medical institutions to get their bodies altered and harmed by pills and knives to feel free and accepting of whatever or whomever they identify as.

Biological essentialism harms men, too - it limits the expression of human emotions and experiences that are always labeled as "feminine" or "masculine" when they are really just human traits. It harms genderqueer people who don't buy into the idea of a "gender" category. If this system of gender is harming everyone, then why are we allowing capitalists to make billions of dollars from "medicalizing" everyone's bodies; the same thing occurred in the past with race. During early science in the 18th-19th Century, craniology and other racializing "sciences" of categorization were implemented to reinforce ideas that "race" exists and the human race is made of sub-races.

Many people now (excluding present-day racists, or polygenists) know that race is a social construction - race has been used to alienate and discriminate against people based on this idea of "inferior races." All of this non-scientific drivel is painted as "natural" or "normal". This is another example of intense social constructions rooted deeply in the institutions that sustain them - patriarchy, capitalism, religion.

Gender is also a social construct. Females, males and intersex individuals are not sub-species. We are not biologically different in any way that is substantial to suggest a plausible hierarchy between us. Why is this idea, then, upheld so widely worldwide?

It is not transphobic of me, as a female human, and whose opinions are constantly thrown out the window, to pose reasonable inquiries from a feminist framework. Transphobia is reprehensible - the status quo will attack everyone for deviating from the prescribed version of "normalcy." Violence, lack of rights, and discrimination are faced by trans people, and this is also reprehensible.


I wish, however, that the silencing of womyn and the overhauling of womyn-only or of lesbian-only spaces would cease. This war against womyn and girls is damaging to everyone - if the status of womyn can't even be changed then everyone else who is not a white, heterosexual male, will suffer.