Open Philosophy Challenge

Debate Proposition: That Gender is a Social Construct

I. Framework

My opponent has chosen the topic of gender. Pro will endorse the social view of gender. Con will endorse the biological view of gender. The burden of proof is shared. My approach in this debate is to first introduce some serious problems for the Biological View of Gender (BVG). I will then argue that these implausibilities can be overcome by a Social View of Gender (SVG).

II. Implausibilities of the Biological View

Con's view is that gender is a biological phenomenon. This means that ones gender will be identical to whatever biological function they attribute (chromosomes, gametes ect).

II.i Two Thought Experiments

I will present two arguments from thought experiments against the BVG.

II.ii. Argument from Deception

Suppose that gender is reducible to some biological feature. Imagine that you are a man - you have lived your whole life as a man, you look like a man, your genitalia are that of a man, everyone refers to you with he/him pronouns and your hobbies are very man-typical. Now suppose that all this is true, and you discover one day that you actually had XX chromosomes, or that you have large gametes (just imagine that aliens or God created you in this way). In effect, you look like a man, present like a man and live like a man, but have this one biological feature which is typical of females. How should such a person react? It would be highly absurd if they dropped their life and suddenly began living like a women - accepting she/her pronouns, presenting oneself like a women and using women facilities. Yet, this is what would be expected of the BVG. If gender is determined by some underlying biological fact, then learning that fact alone should determine your gender. If BVG were true, then it must follow that we as a society should treat this person like a woman.

P1 If gender is identical with biological sex, then if I were to discover that I had XX chromosomes, then I would be a woman

P2 I would not be a woman even if I were to discover that I had XX chromosomes

C1 So, gender is not identical with biological sex

II.iii. Argument from Attraction and Pronoun Usage

The second thought experiment is very similar to the Argument from Deception. Take the most conventionally attractive woman you believe exists (someone famous like a model or an actress). Keeping all of their physical features constant, suppose that their chromosomes or gametes were swapped with male counterparts. Under the BVG, this individual is a male. This implies that almost all heterosexual men will not be attracted to this individual. But this seems to be quite absurd. Just think about your own attraction to men/women, and think about what it is you are attracted to - surely, it's not the fact that they have certain chromosomes. In fact, this argument can be made without any reference to attraction. In this scenario, merely referring to this individual with male pronouns would seem highly absurd. Hence, BVG fails to account for why people who are attracted to females continue to remain attracted to them, even when their underlying biological constitution is changed.

The guiding motivation behind these two thought experiments is that BVG fails to account for our common usage of gendered terms. In the argument from deception, we saw that upon reflection, there are a lot of other social and aesthetic features which guide our own sense of gender. In the argument from attraction, we saw that BVG fails to predict that heterosexual men (who by definition are attracted to women) don't stop being physically attracted to an individual when some underlying biological fact about them is changed, suggesting that the definition of "women" goes beyond mere chromosomes or gametes.

III. Defending the Social View

III.i Definitions

According to the social view, a woman is an adult human person who has the legitimate desire to be in accord with the set of social and cultural norms typically associated with the female sex. Notice that this view bypasses several shortcomings by combining an element of self identification with an element of social factors. First, the "transitioning on a whim" reductio, where someone asks "can I just say I am a woman if become a woman" is blocked, because my definition requires that the desire be legitimate and that one has to actually be in accord with some set of standards. Second, this definition blocks the critique that "some butch lesbians will be inadvertently labelled as men" because it still requires that one have a desire to be their chosen gender.

III.ii Accounting for Deception

This account trivially accounts for the Argument from Deception. Just because you discover some biological fact about yourself, does not negate the fact that you have a legitimate desire to continue being a man, and that you are well in line with the social typical male. Hence, SVG can account for deception.

III.iii Accounting for Attraction

This account also explains attraction. When the typical heterosexual man sees an attractive individual who looks like a woman, dresses like a woman and presents like a woman, they will naturally be attracted to them. Even if there is some deviant factor about their biology (that they actually have male chromosomes), the fact that this individual both has a desire to and acts in accord with female social expectations is enough for them to be considered a woman. Hence, SVG can account for attraction and pronoun usage.

IV. Conclusion

SVG provides a more natural interpretation of how we consider gender. BVG has several absurd implications about identity and attraction which SVG easily overcome. All in all, our view on what a man or woman is more closely resembles SVG than it does BVG.

I. Overview

I don't see Con's dispute about the topic to be too serious so I'm happy to just adopt their title. Recall that in I. Framework, I stated that

 Pro will endorse the social view of gender. Con will endorse the biological view of gender. The burden of proof is shared

clarifying that the topic is therefore not "the social view and it's negation".

II. Implausibilities of the Biological View

Extend all arguments. Note that many of Con's arguments are implicitly refuted in this section - even if we assume the biological position, it has many implausibilities which render it a poor thesis.

III. Defending the Social View

Extend all arguments.

IV. Rebuttals

I have to admit that I had difficulty parsing Con's argument into concise arguments. But here is what I came up with

IV.I "Animals have genders"

Con's primary argument is that animals have genders, and that this implies that gender is an evolutionarily biological trait, rather than social. However, this completely misunderstands the dispute at hand by equivocating between the origin of gender and the characteristics of gender. To draw this out, the debate at hand concerns whether SVG or BVG is more likely to be true, that is, when considering the statement

1. An x is an x, in virtue of y

where x is a gender and y are the specific characteristics which defines that said gender, Pro is committed to saying that y mostly consists of a set of social facts (presentation, clothing, social norms), and Con is committed to saying that y mostly consists of a set of biological facts (chromosomes, gametes). In light of this, we can see why Con's criticism here is unfounded. What they are arguing is

1. An x is an x, in virtue of y, where y had a origin z

where z is "a biological origin". But this is clearly orthogonal to the debate at hand. Whether or not the defining characteristics of gender are social or not is a completely different question to whether social norms originate in and reduce to biological facts. To give an analogy, suppose that a man is on trial for murder and the prosecutor asks "why did you do what you did?". The man answers, "well, I only did what I did because my mother gave birth to me, and she only did that because her mother gave birth to her, so really it should be my grandmother on this stand!". This answer clearly mistakes the prosecutors question, which was something like "what part of your mind thought that doing this was sensible", was wrongly mistaken for the question "from where did the parts of your mind which thought this was sensible originate from".

In the same way, Con is completely misunderstanding the prompt. Pro can agree that social phenomenons have biological origins (only in the most reductive sense that social phenomenons emerge from animals, and all animals are biological) without agreeing that the phenomenons themselves are not social.

IV.II Cross-Cultural Universality of the Division of Labor

Here, Con argues that gender is biological because anthropic data indicates that societies all across the world exhibit similar gender roles (men as hunters, women as gathers), that this implies that gender is actually biological. Again, the above arguments sufficiently address this argument. Con almost explicitly mistakes the phenomenon of gender with the origin of gender.

The rest of Con's arguments make the same mistake, so IV.I sufficiently addresses Con's case.

V. Conclusion

To reintroduce some resource, recall that this debate pivots around how best to interpret the following statement

1. An x is an x, in virtue of y

Say we substitute x with "a woman" and ask "in virtue of what y is a woman a woman"? Con has not provided any reason to think that a woman is a woman in virtue of her genes, gametes, chromosomes, or genitals. What they have provided is the truism that all people have biological origins. But that is not the topic at hand.

Con has not posted a round 2. As they dedicated their first round purely to their opening statement (and hence did not issue any direct rebuttal to my argument), I am left with no opportunity to defend my arguments, even if they decide to introduce some new rebuttals in their closing statement. In any case, hopefully they do show up for the final round!

Thanks for the debate.