[culturehandy]

I pitched this in the Community Forum and it was well recieved.

This thread is all about the politics and cross cultural and societal views on gender.

I started thinking increasingly about gender when the media frenzy about Caster Semenya emerged. It is my opinion that the only reason people questioned Ms. Semenya's gender is because she appeared to be "masculine". That is, she looked masculine according to the ideas of society at large. Had she had softer, more "feminine" features, questions of her gender would not have come up.

So, what is gender? We know that there is sex, your biological sex, but gender is a social construct.

[koffeewitch]

I (and I assume many feminists) would agree with you culture, that gender is only a social construct. Are we the minority? Is this one of the reasons women claim not to be feminists...they believe there is some sort of genetic basis to gender that makes our sexist society "natural"? And of course if gender is COMPLETELY a social construction would there be so many people who feel that they were born the wrong sex? When I've listened to transexuals talk about their feelings it always seems to me that they are refering more to gender than biology...can these things (gender and biology) be completely separated? Someone wiser than I, please jump in...