GC: If race and ethnicity are social constructs and have no biological basis because humans share most if not all of their genes with each other, how can biological sex be real and not be a social construct?

VioletRemi · 2021-03-24T18:11:40+00:00

We share even more genes with monkeys. Species is social construct!

loveSloane · 2021-03-24T18:09:41+00:00

“Or am I missing something here?”

Yeah. The 10-20% differences that are genetic, not socially constructed.

Also everything I said in the post that got deleted in droptheT

BiologyIsReal · 2021-03-24T21:06:57+00:00

Humans share 99,9% of our DNA with each other when comparing people of the same sex. Genetic differences between women and men are greater because of our different sex chromosomes: females are XX and males are XY. Furthermore, many genes are expressed differently in men and women.

But if you don't think there are differences between the sexes, genetical or otherwise, then you could explain to me how human reproductions works.

ZveroboyAlina · 2021-03-26T07:45:36+00:00

Race/ethnicity and sex/gender are not connected with each other, so anything that is happening with one is not representative of the other.

This sounds as classical racist take by TRA: "If black women are women, then why men can't be women?" - implying that black women are somehow less women because we are black.

As far as I am aware, when people saying "race is not real" - they mean mostly that racist stereotypes are not real, same as second wave feminists were saying that gender is harmful and that gender stereotypes are the weapon of patriarchy and they should be abolished. Nowaydas people are full of post-modernist ideas and they do not believe in material reality at all, they think that "thoughts are what is real reality", even thought - thoughts are different for every single person and it is very subjective, so there no reason to measure things based on subjectiveness, as it will be different for every single person, while measuring things on objective reality will give same results every single time for every single person, so it is much better as a point of refference.

kwallio · 2021-03-24T22:57:26+00:00

I swear to god no one on this hellsite knows how humans are made, ffs.

SnowAssMan · 2021-03-25T13:06:20+00:00

How can sex be a social construct? If you wiped out the female sex you would effectively have wiped out the human race, because it'd be unable to perpetuate itself. That's the problem with the dairy & egg industries. They need males to produce more cows & chickens, but they are otherwise useless as neither produce milk or eggs respectively.

That's why sex is not the same as "race". Unlike sex, "race" is a spectrum. "Race" is a construct insofar as "racial purity". "Sex purity", or rather the sex-equivalent of "racial purity" however does exist, exclusively (a male & female "mixing" don't produce a hermaphrodite, just more males & females).

Your parents exist & as always the female parent is the one that did the birthing, just like in 100% of cases (not just 80-90% of cases). Bit of a coincidence for a supposed social construct.

You know what is a social construct? Cross-gender self-identification. So if you're in favour of discarding things based on the fact that they are constructs, let's start with self-identification.

P.S. Forensic scientists can usually tell the ethnicity of a person from their remains. Likewise, certain ethnicities will be more vulnerable to certain medical issues than others & even have different signs & symptoms. Ethnicity isn't literally a social construct, just colloquial understanding of so-called racial purity is. If everyone mixed together, which is not outside the realm of possibility, we would have eliminated ethnicity. No such luck with sex though. Unfortunately an all-female society isn't sustainable longterm.

Omina_Sentenziosa · 2021-03-25T13:40:48+00:00

Race is a social construct, ethnicity is material reality.

Gender is a social construct, sex is material reality.

Race is for ethnicity what gender is for sex.

A female shares at least 80%-90% of her genes with a male and vice versa, then how can there be such a thing as female or male when male and female share most of their genes with each other?

Do you believe in the existence of individuals with the ability of producing ovas, and individuals with the ability of producing sperm? Or is that just an urban legend like Santa Claus is?

Or am I missing something here?

You' re missing brain cells. Tons of brain cells.

SilverSlippers · 2021-03-24T18:20:55+00:00

Everything is a construct. Why have words with meanings?

Also, its not the number of genes that are different that matters, its which specific genes and what their effects are.

Differences between males and females is far greater than differences between ethnic groups. Our social construct of race is fairly new. Our understanding of sex differences is older than the stone age. People have understood, for many thousands of years, that males were typically bigger and stronger, had penises, and couldn't get pregnant or give birth.

loveSloane · 2021-03-24T18:41:19+00:00

New question-

What would we have based the social constructs of race and sex on? Why would we have made them?

pcpmasterrace · 2021-03-24T19:45:57+00:00

This thread is making fun of race realism: https://old.reddit.com/r/VaushV/comments/k3n9w7/terfs_accepting_race_realism_way_more_likely_than/

Peep Fourth holding his own, there's not one substantiative rebuttal in that thread.

Juniperius · 2021-03-25T16:02:55+00:00

Males and females are much more different genetically than two males of different ethnic backgrounds, or two females of different ethnic backgrounds. Go check out some images of x and y chromosomes.

Heimdeklefi · 2021-03-29T01:43:55+00:00

Binary Sex is a social construct

onetwothree123 · 2021-04-09T05:55:51+00:00

The way we've decided to categorize race doesn't represent real distinct categories of people. There is more genetic diversity within the continent of Africa than in the rest of the world combined, and yet we act like "black" is one category and all "black" people have more in common with each other than with any white person. This isn't true, and it's possible that one particular black guy may have more in common genetically with a particular white guy than another particular black guy. The same cannot be said of sex. Sex is categorized based on reproductive roles, not arbitrarily like race is. For instance, there is no man in the entire world who is more likely to get pregnant than any particular woman. There is a lot of variation in skin tone, hair color, facial features, etc. in the world, but these differences can't be put into distinct categories. Sex, on the other hand, has only two types that correspond to specific roles in the process of making babies. Men have sperm. Women have eggs.

theory_of_this · 2021-03-25T09:10:14+00:00

So how essentialist are you?

Do you accept any gendered behavioural essentialism?

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