Asta and the Social Construction of Gender

   

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The philosopher Asta Sveinsdottir discusses the construction of social categories in her book The Categories We Live By. Some people are unaware of the social categories they have in their every day lives, such as being an American if one lives in the United States, while other social categories such as skin color may play a larger role in one's life if they are a person of color living in an area with mostly white people. Asta states that many of these social categories provide special protections for certain groups of people while mistreating others. She proposes the conferralist theory in which a social category is “defined by a social property”, and an individual’s social property is “a property that someone has conferred on them by others” (Asta, 2). This property implies a social status that gives a person a disadvantage or advantage, and these properties can eventually have significant social implications. An example of a social property leading to social significance would be if a person’s physical features that indicate their geographical ancestry (ie. facial structure, nose shape, eye color, etc) dictate the roles a person can take on at home or the jobs they can have (Asta, 3). 

    The conferralist idea emphasizes that a person cannot have a socially constructed characteristic in isolation or without the influence of other people, as society is responsible for the construction of this characteristic (Asta, 8). When an individual meets a stranger, they attribute social properties such as their profession, sexuality, social status, level of wealth, and gender to the stranger during their interaction. We choose to analyze these specific qualities because society has decided that these features are socially meaningful, compared to attributing other features that society has deemed as less important such as the hobbies or sports one engages in. 

    I have noticed that I make similar gender attributions myself and assume information about others based on the features that are most prominent and noticeable. To a certain extent, I feel that these attributions are automatic assumptions that many people make based on their natural tendency to categorize people at first glance. However, this definitely does not mean that we should not try to actively change these automatic assumptions. While I think many people naturally assume the gender identities of strangers because their brains unconsciously group people into categories to make information easier to process, I do understand that people have the power to change their implicit assumptions. Furthermore, we have a responsibility to rewire our brains to not jump to such conclusions and understand that we should not follow our first instinct to label others since society has ingrained these ideas of gender in us to begin with. At the very least, we should recognize that these hasty assumptions are flawed and that we should critically analyze them. In order to change these gender attributions, individuals must actively try to expand the features they associate with the categories of gender. This is vital to ensure that people do not assume gender information about others based on society's perception of gender.

    Even within social properties, Asta states that in the conferralist framework, it is vital to acknowledge institutional properties as well as communal properties, as having a certain social property such as being a queen would indicate a person's position within an institutional structure (Asta, 16). The conferral of social properties resembles the conferral of institutional properties, but institutional properties are rooted in authority and power while the conferral of social properties is more complex as some "are conferred by subjects in authority, some by citing authority...others by citing power structures that lack normative support" (Asta, 18-21). Regarding the social construction of gender, conferral of membership depends on how other people perceive an individual based on their physical appearance and the resulting attitudes or behaviors towards that person. I think Asta’s conferralist theory provides reasonable evidence for the socially constructed aspect of gender, as a person’s social properties are controlled by other people’s opinions or perceptions of them and as a result, they are created by society. 

    Asta acknowledges that if membership within a social category is completely dependent on conferral from others, one could argue that a transgender man could be told he is not a man just from the inaccurate opinions or ignorance of others. Asta agrees that this is an unfortunate and inescapable result of these socially constructed categories, but she argues that while conferred membership does dictate social categorization, social properties indicate “the properties that do matter socially, not the ones that should matter, but don’t” (Asta, 11). Even if the transgender man is definitely a man, he is perceived as a woman and treated as one due to his physical appearance. Therefore, he is constricted by the female category that society placed on him, and society decided that certain physical features indicated this in the first place. Asta agrees that sometimes individuals are placed in social categories that they do not identify with due to a lack of contextual elements that include all people (Asta, 123). She states that the solution is to “make it the case that there are more contexts in which there are locations that we can identify with” by creating social identities for everyone to “live” in or identify with (Asta, 123).

    I agree with this Asta's solution because I think increasing the available options for people to identify with would help to increase the social categories that people automatically assume when they see others, which would be beneficial for individuals who do not fit into the current social categories of binary gender. Now that we understand that many aspects of gender are socially constructed, the next step towards gender equality would be creating enough social identities that people are familiar with so that misgendering someone or assuming gender information about them is less likely to occur.