Criticisms of the Theory of Gender as a Social Construction and its Pertinence to Transgendered Individuals

This essay is formatted as a letter in response to a criticism which I have frequently received from certain portions of the feminist community. Namely, feminist who understand “the social construction of gender” to refer to a total absence of any “innate” quality to gender identity. In other words, that people develop a gender identity solely based on our societal ideas about what is known as “the gender binary,” or the idea that men and women are entirely distinct from one another, also closely associated with the idea that all people are either men or women, and the idea that men and women should have distinct and separate social roles assigned to them based on their gender. It is a primary goal of many feminists to dismantle the idea of gender binary because it inherently separates and isolates men from women, and simultaneously encourages stereotyping, sexism, and the reinforcing of traditional gender roles. Many such feminists have been guilty of a particularly insidious form of transphobia, in which transgendered individuals are considered to be “unfeminist” or “reinforcing the gender binary” because they are actively enforcing the idea of an innate gender; in other words, having their own personal gender regardless of societal assignment reinforces the idea that a person can be innately either a man or a woman, and thus, it is argued, upholds our traditional ideas about gender and gendered behavior. As previously stated, this is a response and a criticism of that standpoint, an essay in defense of healthy and voluntary expressions of gender as a liberating and empowering practice rather than a coercive or sexist one.