Gender Fluidity & Social Construction

It is popular in certain circles to think of gender as a fluid spectrum: People can fall on many points between “very feminine” and “very masculine,” and where they fall can change over time. But perhaps the gender spectrum is more viscose than fluid.

It is popular in certain circles to think of gender as a fluid spectrum: People can fall on many points between “very feminine” and “very masculine,” and where they fall can change over time. In this Prospect article, Julian Baggini provides his own tweak to this framework. He argues for gender viscosity instead of gender fluidity, where one moves along the gender spectrum over a longer time frame.

In making this argument, he advances some interesting claims regarding the status of gender as both biological and socially constructed. For me, it raised the question—how much of gender is left after we take away its socially constructed component? Would the difference between biological sexes really get us any closer to our system of gender differentiation?

Here’s the article:

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/philosophy/gender-is-not-a-binary-nor-is-it-fluid-the-case-for-gender-viscosity