There is basically nothing I'm willing to attribute confidently to biological factors, and I find this an important part of essentializing gender: it typically asserts not just a functional but a *necessary* relationship between physical or biological markers of sex (insert obligatory note about the contested nature of such things here) and non-physical traits. In this way, it draws patently false and extremely problematic correlations, masking them in relatively acceptable language by eliding the step where your sex + cultural conditioning + performance makes your gender.
One fun game to play in gender studies classes is to substitute the most typical physical characteristics of maleness and femaleness for "men" and "women" in rephrasing your classmates' sentences, particularly those that begin with "men/women are ______." For example, "women are selfless" can be rephrased as "so you're saying that having a uterus makes you selfless?" (This also works sometimes with other identities, although I'm still working on a good application for SES, as the phrase "so you're saying being poor makes you X?" still appears widely acceptable.)
This is a major flaw of this plan, because of course I think what makes you a woman is self-identification. But I have not yet found a slick way to debunk sex-gender linkage *and* gender-trait linkage simultaneously.
(Also, as a subsidiary problem, if you say to most undergrads "so you're saying having a uterus makes you a woman?" they look blankly at you and say "um, yes." I seriously have no clue how to even start there on a systematic level, although I always try to explain it when it comes up in practice.)
I appreciate the impetus behind thought exercises like that, but it really downplays the complexities of gender by confusing causality. Here's an example of another logically spurious response:
"People of European or Asian descent are more likely to get osteoporosis." "So you're saying that having light skin makes you more likely to get osteoporosis?"
Of course skin color does not affect bones, but there is a correlation between the two because both are affected by race (I do understand that race categories are arbitrary).
Right. I think the value of this response is that generally people *aren't* saying that having a uterus makes you X (and in fact, I nearly universally believe that it doesn't make you anything in particular), and so it highlights the spuriousness of an apparently reasonable statement.
One fun game to play in gender studies classes is to substitute the most typical physical characteristics of maleness and femaleness for "men" and "women" in rephrasing your classmates' sentences, particularly those that begin with "men/women are ______." For example, "women are selfless" can be rephrased as "so you're saying that having a uterus makes you selfless?" (This also works sometimes with other identities, although I'm still working on a good application for SES, as the phrase "so you're saying being poor makes you X?" still appears widely acceptable.)
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you: "So you're saying having a uterus makes you selfless?"
me: "So you're saying having a uterus makes you a woman?"
;)
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(Also, as a subsidiary problem, if you say to most undergrads "so you're saying having a uterus makes you a woman?" they look blankly at you and say "um, yes." I seriously have no clue how to even start there on a systematic level, although I always try to explain it when it comes up in practice.)
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"People of European or Asian descent are more likely to get osteoporosis."
"So you're saying that having light skin makes you more likely to get osteoporosis?"
Of course skin color does not affect bones, but there is a correlation between the two because both are affected by race (I do understand that race categories are arbitrary).
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