You know what’s cute is when pretentious little sociology/gender studies majors on tumblr try to argue that sex and gender is a social construct. Here’s why I think that is incredibly misguided.

Sex Is Not A Social Construct

The human race has two sexes; male and female. The genetic basis for these sexes is laid out by our chromosomes. Occasionally, there are anomalies in chromosomal or fetal development. There is nothing bigoted, offensive, or incorrect about stating a fact. Contrary to what people like to argue, the existence of transsexual, intersex, or chromosomally different people does not undermine the idea of binary sex. Our existence is not a testament to gender diversity; all of these conditions are mistakes of nature, deviations from a standard design. The latter two occur on the genetic level, the former is believed to occur during foetal development. Statistically rare, but nevertheless numerous in a human population of 7 billion.

Gender Is Not a Social Construct

The biggest problem here is often an argument of semantics. The same people who want to break down gender roles often can’t discern the difference between them and gender itself. People like to define gender both as a social construct and as one’s “innate understanding” of… something. The innate understanding definition starts to actually make sense when you use gender as another term for “brain sex"— the innate understanding of what your physical body should be, in a way that matches your neurological wiring.

Alternate Gender Roles Do Not Disprove Sex Nor Gender

People also like to talk about two-spirits, katohey, and any number of "third gender” roles in non-western societies as an example of why gender is “nonbinary”. Once again, this proves that gender roles and stereotypes of gender in a society are, but that does not in any way undermine the neurological basis of gender, the idea that your brain has a map of your body which includes a biological sex. You can dress how you want, pursue whatever interests you like, and take whatever social role your desire; do what makes you happy, but don’t presume that what you’re doing has a scientific basis and is going to undermine fact.

Gender Roles and Stereotypes Are a Social Construct— Not Gender

There was a tumblr post floating around recently with links to “scientific journals”, hailing the destruction brain sex as a concept and toting it like some fantastic victory for feminism and trans people. The problem is that people were drawing entirely the wrong conclusions from this research (which, like most things on tumblr, were also written by gender studies and social science majors). What these studies actually disprove is the idea that gender stereotypes have a neurological basis. The idea that women are better at multitasking, men are “naturally” more aggressive, etc. are in fact what these studies are talking about. And in a way they are correct; there is no evidence that in terms of performing such functions there is any difference between men and women.

But that doesn’t mean there is “no difference” between male and female brains. The difference is very simple. Male brains have a sense that their body should be male; same goes for female bodies. Most of the time body and brain match. That is all. A statistically small percent of the time they do not, and this includes people who are born trapped in the body of the opposite sex, and people with ambiguous genitalia.

Remember Kids, Reality Is Not A Social Construct

Literally nothing makes you sound more like an ignorant fool than claiming science is a white cishet patriarchy, struggling to oppress you. I have no patience for bullshit from sociology majors who froth about “Western medicine” and the “pathologizing” of gender. If you truly believe this, chances didn’t pay attention in science class.