Sex and gender are both social constructs because fuck you
For liberals and well meaning people
Saying they’re “the same” is erasure of trans people.
Saying that gender is a spectrum but sex isn’t is erasure of intersex people.
I think you can say they’re both spectrums without saying they’re “the same” and you can also say they’re different without implying that one of them is binary.
Potentially spicy take for people who are exploring their own gender or sex variations
Gender and sex both fit on spectrums in the way that political ideology fits on a compass. It makes people feel like they understand something because they understand the abstraction for the thing. I start teaching my kids using the Gender Unicorn model around the time they start playing with gender at age 2/3. The fact that my toddlers have been capable of understanding a more nuanced view of gender/biological sex/attraction than most adults is really sad.
And if you’re one of those adults, I don’t think you need to feel guilty. Groups of queer people have been trying to build those social constructs for nuanced understanding of these things for hundreds of years now. The Nazis burned some of the world’s most sophisticated research on the subject at the time. The AIDS crisis decimated our population and disrupted the social networks that this information would normally travel through. The most recent attempt at rebuilding these social constructs has been the Tumblr gender renaissance which was targeted by the predecessors to the same reactionary forces which are now attacking drag shows.
Long story short, our society assigns gender, sometimes surgically, to infants based on a vibe check of their genitalia, which is often not representative of their biological sex or their gender identity. And that assigned gender has historically gatekept access to healthcare and social support for queer people.
I stick to the spectrum discussions amongst most people, but among queer people, I think we tend to already live a radical acceptance that’s fertile ground for growing a robust “beacons, not fences” attitude towards this whole system. And to me, spectrums more often feel like fences than beacons.
I think perhaps the most Marxist way to put it is that gender and sex form a dialectical relationship that cannot be fully understood as two enjoined spectra but only through the lives of real people and the way that they interface and feel best interfacing with society. For my wife at least, her understanding of gender and sex was radicalized largely by trying to understand myriad indigenous understandings of gender, and perhaps that's a good inroads for a certain kind of "well-meaning" liberal.
Several levels of answer here.
For chuds
Sex and gender are both social constructs because fuck you
For liberals and well meaning people
Saying they’re “the same” is erasure of trans people.
Saying that gender is a spectrum but sex isn’t is erasure of intersex people.
I think you can say they’re both spectrums without saying they’re “the same” and you can also say they’re different without implying that one of them is binary.
Potentially spicy take for people who are exploring their own gender or sex variations
Gender and sex both fit on spectrums in the way that political ideology fits on a compass. It makes people feel like they understand something because they understand the abstraction for the thing. I start teaching my kids using the Gender Unicorn model around the time they start playing with gender at age 2/3. The fact that my toddlers have been capable of understanding a more nuanced view of gender/biological sex/attraction than most adults is really sad.
And if you’re one of those adults, I don’t think you need to feel guilty. Groups of queer people have been trying to build those social constructs for nuanced understanding of these things for hundreds of years now. The Nazis burned some of the world’s most sophisticated research on the subject at the time. The AIDS crisis decimated our population and disrupted the social networks that this information would normally travel through. The most recent attempt at rebuilding these social constructs has been the Tumblr gender renaissance which was targeted by the predecessors to the same reactionary forces which are now attacking drag shows.
Long story short, our society assigns gender, sometimes surgically, to infants based on a vibe check of their genitalia, which is often not representative of their biological sex or their gender identity. And that assigned gender has historically gatekept access to healthcare and social support for queer people.
I stick to the spectrum discussions amongst most people, but among queer people, I think we tend to already live a radical acceptance that’s fertile ground for growing a robust “beacons, not fences” attitude towards this whole system. And to me, spectrums more often feel like fences than beacons.
I think perhaps the most Marxist way to put it is that gender and sex form a dialectical relationship that cannot be fully understood as two enjoined spectra but only through the lives of real people and the way that they interface and feel best interfacing with society. For my wife at least, her understanding of gender and sex was radicalized largely by trying to understand myriad indigenous understandings of gender, and perhaps that's a good inroads for a certain kind of "well-meaning" liberal.
This is an excellent way to look at it. Thank you