Why LGBT+ people say gender roles are a social construct and they aren’t important while at the same time they give so much importance to gender role at the point they want to be perceived as what they biologically aren’t?
Why LGBT+ people say gender roles are a social construct and they aren’t important while at the same time they give so much importance to gender role at the point they want to be perceived as what they biologically aren’t?
A bit of nuance to what you say there…
LGBT people say gender (not sex, gender) is a social construct because the evidence points to this. How gender has been expressed has varied wildly over recorded human history (from customs to clothes to behaviours to jobs to everything else). In any given point of history someone’s sex has been linked strongly to a particular gender expression, but the fact that those expressions vary deeply from culture to culture show they’re socially constructed rather than purely biologically determined.
When you say they think they’re not “important”, I think LGBT do think gender expression is important. What’s not important is squeezing into the two expressions that society traditionally had. Or welding yourself to society’s expectations based on what genatalia you have.
History (for the most part) had two distinct gender expressions corresponding to the two sexes. But this itself was heavily influenced by society being tightly coupled to the biological reality and differences between men and women. Women had babies. Men were stronger. The gender expressions followed from that and you had to stay in the one society expected because that’s what kept society functioning. Religion is a social construct that enforces this.
But as society has evolved we’re no longer bound to these distinctions in the same way and the gender fluidity of people - which has always been there - is now able to express itself in more variety.
There are people born male who are far more comfortable living in society’s ‘female’ behaviours and traits. And vice versa. There are men who are attracted to men and women to women. There are people born female who have deep seated psychological need for their body to be male. All these people have always existed it’s just in the past they got sidelined as ‘sinners’ or divergent because society basically consisted of childbearing and hard manual labour.
But what even is a “gender expression” if not linked to sex? Why not just call it a personality trait?
Let’s call it a personality trait for a moment, do you think much would change?
It happens to be a ‘personality trait’ that others routinely address you by, and set expectations by, and which might grate if it doesn’t match up with your experience of yourself.
Gender theory investigates the subtlety of what’s going on when people are referred to as “he” or “she” in society. It is not just about what genitals or sex characteristics a person has. It goes far beyond that to your social role, and expected behaviours.
Society has a whole ton of expectations and presumptions towards a “she” and similarly towards a “he” that aren’t biologically grounded. Those things shift about through history and vary by culture. That’s what people mean by “socially constructed”.
Gender queer people would like to be addressed by the social category they internally line up with. Call that a personality trait if you like but it’s such a major one - affecting how people perceive your other personality traits - that it’s in a category of its own.
Or ended up as a priest caste, or a third gender, or were accepted as the gender they expressed in some non-European parts of the world.