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Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
How can gender be simultaneously a social construct and inherent to an individual?
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Society frames the characteristics and behaviors associated with each gender. The individual knows how they feel and which gender they most associate with regardless of societal framing. They are two very different things.
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How can gender be both self-chosen and a product of socialization?
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How can someone become an Oiler fan living in Calgary?
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What does reifying gender as an innate characteristic mean for efforts to reduce social expectations around what is feminine and what is masculine?
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Social expectations change, frequently. What was considered a masculine norm in the 50s would now be considered toxic masculinity and not acceptable. What was considered femineity in the 50s would be consider subjugation today. Society will continue to frame and reframe what genders look like but to the individual they know whether they identify one way or another. How they choose to represent themselves in society is based on cultural acceptance of those images.
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Only people who haven’t really engaged with those apparent contradictions can claim it’s simple.
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Only people who are locked in their ways of thinking and are willing to project their accepted norms onto others try to make this more complex than it needs to be. Maybe our addiction to the norm is the problem?
Maybe acceptance is the first step to recovery?