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Gender Abolitionism is Inherently Transphobic (en.prolewiki.org)

submitted 1 week ago by CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml to c/communism@lemmygrad.ml

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I am unfortunately not at a point yet where I can write my own additions to this piece but I wanted to start venturing into gender and gender roles because there are a lot of marxists who repeat, no doubt because it seems to make sense on the surface, that gender is a social construct or that it should be abolished. A lot of it is Butlerian in nature and I highly recommend Leslie Feinberg who was positioned against the butlerian view of gender.

The sense of self is completely omitted in the Butlerian view of gender (as a performance), in that as a (cis) man if I acted (performed) like a woman and put on women's clothes, then that theory states I would be a woman. But I would not feel like one, because I know I'm not a woman. And if I lived in a false reality that forced me act like a man all my life from childhood to the point that I also believed I was a man (say in the same way you can make someone believe the sky is red if you berate them enough), then what explains that trans people specifically are able to "break out" of this mold? A lot of common (in marxist circles) feminist theory is unfortunately completely dismissive of trans people, trans men especially - if gender is a construct to pit oppressors and oppressed then why would anyone "choose" to be part of the oppressed group? Everyone ought to perform as men if that were the case. As for gender abolitionism, the author makes the case in their essay :)

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[–] shomocommie@lemmygrad.ml 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)

this essay hinges on the fundamental misunderstanding that something being a social construct makes it "fake". copying from wikipedia:

A social construct is any category or thing that is made real by convention or collective agreement. Socially constructed realities are contrasted with natural kinds, which exist independently of human behavior or beliefs.

you seem to use the term 'social phenomenon' as a replacement for 'social construct' without a clear definition for it. is the distinction only in that a 'social construct' is a social phenomenon constructed for the sole purpose of oppression?

Firstly, Gender is not a social construct. It is however, a social phenomenon, but so race in this regard. However with race, we call it a "social construct" because it was constructed (by intention) to discriminate people and support colonialist ideas. Gender on the other hand, would not be considered as such because while gender is a social thing, it is not a thing which was constructed to artificially oppress people.

[–] CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thank you for adding your critique, but just to be clear it's not my essay haha.

On the definition of social construct, the wikipedian definition actually makes the case that it is "fake". Yes, social constructs are real in that they exist in the material world. The definition wikipedia provides however puts them at odds with independent reality, i.e. objective reality, implying that gender or other social constructs don't have an objective reality to them.

In another ressource I read to see what the 'laymen' so to speak (non-marxists) say of social constructs, they posited that money was a social construct, but we know it as a commodity. To call money a social construct is certainly helpful to open the topic, but it's also insufficient to only call it a social construct. Through these shortcomings a lot of diverging in thought can happen, and lead people to widely different conclusions.

Not everyone in the 'social construct camp' is transphobic (and I'm not accusing anyone here of being one to be clear!), but an alarming amount of people are when it comes down to it - I didn't believe it before I saw them for myself. That is because if it's solely a social construct, then where do trans and non-binary people fit on it? Did their gender come about as a result of social interactions or is it in the self? A lot of trans people will say they knew their gender before they even knew about gender roles, rather in their case it was gender roles that was forced upon them to conform, but not gender itself. Even when made to perform as cis, they still know they are trans.

I think this is the distinction the author is making, or as a question: did gender conform to the social construct, or did the social construct (gender roles, patriarchy, etc) conform to gender? In the first case, it means that gender is a product of oppression and exists to exploit people and labor. In the other, it means the social construct arose from objective reality. I don't know if I'm being confusing - if we take societies that recognized more than two genders for example, the 'common' view is that they had different social constructs. But my scenario is rather that they recognized the real existence of more than two genders and fit the social part around that objective existence. Basically one came before the other.

[–] ksynwa@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 1 week ago

I don't know the origin of the term social construct and the tradition around it but if that's the case it should be scrapped because it is useless and even harmful. Literally speaking it makes sense but if the meaning has been distorted to insinuate detachment from reality then using phenomenon as the author suggests might be better. We can add it to the list of left concepts that liberals have coopted and made useless.