5: Social Constructionism

Essentialism and Constructionism

Social constructionist approaches to understanding the world challenge the essentialist or biological determinist understandings that typically underpin the “common sense” ways in which we think about race, gender, and sexuality. Essentialism is the idea that the characteristics of persons or groups are significantly influenced by biological factors, and are therefore largely similar in all human cultures and historical periods. A key assumption of essentialism is that “a given truth is a necessary natural part of the individual and object in question” (Gordon and Abbott 2002). In other words, an essentialist understanding of sexuality would argue that not only do all people have a sexual orientation, but that an individual’s sexual orientation does not vary across time or place. In this example, “sexual orientation” is a given “truth” to individuals—it is thought to be inherent, biologically determined, and essential to their being.

Essentialism typically relies on a biological determinist theory of identity. Biological determinism can be defined as a general theory, which holds that a group’s biological or genetic makeup shapes its social, political, and economic destiny (Subramaniam 2014). For example, “sex” is typically thought to be a biological “fact,” where bodies are classified into two categories, male and female. Bodies in these categories are assumed to have “sex”-distinct chromosomes, reproductive systems, hormones, and sex characteristics. However, “sex” has been defined in many different ways, depending on the context within which it is defined. For example, feminist law professor Julie Greenberg (2002) writes that in the late 19th century and early 20th century, “when reproductive function was considered one of a woman’s essential characteristics, the medical community decided that the presence or absence of ovaries was the ultimate criterion of sex” (Greenberg 2002: 113). Thus, sexual difference was produced through the heteronormative assumption (see chapter 8) that women are defined by their ability to have children. Instead of assigning sex based on the presence or absence of ovaries, medical practitioners in the contemporary US typically assign sex based on the appearance of genitalia.

Differential definitions of sex point to two other primary aspects of the social construction of reality. First, it makes apparent how even the things commonly thought to be “natural” or “essential” in the world are socially constructed. Understandings of “nature” change through history and across place according to systems of human knowledge. Second, the social construction of difference occurs within relations of power and privilege. Sociologist Abby Ferber (2009) argues that these two aspects of the social construction of difference cannot be separated, but must be understood together. Discussing the construction of racial difference, she argues that inequality and oppression actually produce ideas of essential racial difference. Therefore, racial categories that are thought to be “natural” or “essential” are created within the context of racialized power relations—in the case of African-Americans, that includes slavery, laws regulating interracial sexual relationships, lynching, and white supremacist discourse. Social constructionist analyses seek to better understand the processes through which racialized, gendered, or sexualized differentiations occur, in order to untangle the power relations within them.

Notions of disability are similarly socially constructed within the context of ableist power relations. The medical model of disability frames body and mind differences and perceived challenges as flaws that need fixing at the individual level. In contrast, feminist scholars use a critical disability perspective, which critiques the idea that nondisability is natural and normal, which frames the person rather than the society as the problem. The social model of disability shifts the focus to the disabling aspects of society for individuals with physical, sensory, or mental differences or “impairments,” where the society disables those with impairments (Shakespeare 2006). In Feminist, Queer, Crip (2013), scholar Alison Kafer prefers the term political/relational model of disability, contrasting it to the medical model: Whereas the medical model “frames atypical bodies and minds as deviant, pathological, and defective, best understood and addressed in medical terms,” in the political/relational model, “the problem of disability no longer resides in the minds or bodies of individuals but in built environments and social patterns that exclude or stigmatize particular kinds of bodies, minds, and ways of being” (Kafer 2013: 6). Ableism (see chapter 9) then refers to a form of oppression where individuals understood as having impairments are imagined to be inferior to those without impairments, and impairments are devalued and unwanted. This perspective manifests in structural arrangements that limit access for disabled individuals or individuals with disabilities.

Historical and Cultural Variation

What does it mean to be “heterosexual” in contemporary US society? Did it mean the same thing in the late 19th century? As historian of human sexuality Jonathon Ned Katz shows in The Invention of Heterosexuality (1999), the word “heterosexual” was used in medical writing by Dr. James Kiernan in 1892, but its meaning and usage differed drastically from contemporary understandings of the term. Kiernan thought of “hetero-sexuals” as not defined by their attraction to the opposite sex, but by their “inclinations to both sexes.” Furthermore, Kiernan thought of the heterosexual as someone who “betrayed inclinations to ‘abnormal methods of gratification’” (Katz 1995). In other words, heterosexuals were those who were attracted to both sexes and engaged in sex for pleasure, not for reproduction. Katz further points out that this definition of the heterosexual lasted within middle-class cultures in the United States until the 1920s, and then went through various radical reformulations up to the current usage.

Looking at this historical example makes visible the process of the social construction of heterosexuality. First of all, the example shows how social construction occurs within institutions—in this case, a medical doctor created a new category to describe a particular type of sexuality, based on existing medical knowledge at the time. “Hetero-sexuality” was initially a medical term that defined a deviant type of sexuality. Second, by seeing how Kiernan — and middle-class culture, more broadly — defined “hetero-sexuality” in the 19th century, it is possible to see how drastically the meanings of the concept have changed over time. Typically, in the United States in contemporary usage, “heterosexuality” is thought to mean “normal” or “good” – it is usually the invisible term defined by what is thought to be its opposite, homosexuality. However, in its initial usage, “hetero-sexuality” was thought to counter the norm of reproductive sexuality and be, therefore, deviant. This gets to the third aspect of social constructionism. That is, cultural and historical contexts shape our definition and understanding of concepts. In this case, the norm of reproductive sexuality – having sex not for pleasure, but to have children—defines what types of sexuality are regarded as “normal” or “deviant.” Fourth, this case illustrates how categorization shapes human experience, behavior, and interpretation of reality. To be a “heterosexual” in middle class culture in the US in the early 1900s was not something desirable to be – it was not an identity that most people would have wanted to inhabit. The very definition of “hetero-sexual” as deviant, because it violated reproductive sexuality, defined “proper” sexual behavior as that which was reproductive and not pleasure-centered. Heterosexuality became a dominant identity only in the early-mid 1900s when homosexuality became stigmatized, and people wanted to distance themselves from it as a form of protection and privilege. 

Homosexuality also changed over time. Katz, in Gay American History, also documented that its meaning changed from a behavior (sodomy, which included many other nonprocreative forms of sex) to a type of gender deviance (people attracted to the same sex were gender ‘inverts’) to an abnormal personality (people became a ‘homosexual’ which was considered psychologically abnormal) to an affirmative identity (people proudly identified as gay). Similarly, George Chauncey’s work in Gay New York explores how working-class men in the early 1900s weren’t categorized as ‘gay’ if they had sex with another man, but as either ‘fairies’ if they were in the passive role of receiver or as typical men if they were the active role of penetrator (Seidman 2015). Who we would consider 'gay' or 'queer' now were not characterized then by sexuality but by gender – as masculine or feminine. As Weisner-Hanks (2011: 195) explains, “In some cultures, sexuality may be understood primarily as a gendered orientation – as desiring and having sexual relations with individuals who are regarded as one’s own or the opposite sex – while in others it may be thought of primarily in terms of the number or age of one’s sexual partners, or the role one takes in intercourse.” 

The social construction of sex, gender, and sexuality are also evident when we take a cross-cultural perspective. Feminist anthropology examines how gender and sexuality are socially constructed in relation to power dynamics in different cultures across the world. Beauty standards or what’s considered ‘sexy’ or even what counts as ‘sexual’ are all based on culture. The way Western societies (such as the US, Brittain, France, and so on, predominantly white and rich nations) constructed sex, gender, and sexuality is with a binary system (see chapter 6), meaning that there are only two categories imagined as opposite and complementary. For instance, the culture created female or male for sex and women or man and feminine or masculine for gender, which fail to represent the reality of bodies, identities, and other social realities. Other binary systems include Black/white, rich/poor, gay/straight, young/old, and so on, none of which express the variation and complexity of the world. There are spectrums or gradations, but binaries are rare. 

Western culture also constructed biological sex and gender to be nearly identical, which WGSS has challenged for half a century. There are other cultures where sex and gender are not tightly linked. For instance, Lhamana among Zuni indigenous peoples describes a two-spirit person, typically someone who Westerners would characterize as ‘male’ but dresses and works in accordance with feminine cultural expectations, though may still engage in some traditionally masculine activities such as dance or war rituals. This role was revered by the culture rather than disparaged. Further, sex and gender are so unlinked that children may not be addressed in gendered ways, such as with gendered pronouns, until they could express their own gender. In other words, sex did does dictate one’s gender. 

Thus, Western culture socially constructed sex, gender, and sexuality to be closely linked. Gayle Rubin is a feminist anthropologist who was one of the first to make these arguments academically. Rubin coined the concept sex/gender/sexuality system (see chapter 7) to describe how the tight links between sex, gender, and sexuality are products of the culture. For instance, Rubin argues that societies construct gender based on sex (e.g., seemingly biological sex differences are used to justify culturally-created gender expectations), assign gendered divisions of labor in social institutions (e.g., we expect women and men to take on different but complementary roles in heterosexual families), and regulate and assume sexuality in gendered ways (e.g., gender expression leads to assumptions about sexual identity such as for butch women or feminine men). According to Rubin, the tight linkages between sex, gender, and sexuality are not natural as we assume but rather are taught and culturally constructed. 

Learning about Gender and Sexuality

Socialization describes the processes by which we learn cultural norms and expectations. Part of what we learn is how we are supposed to abide by gender and sexuality norms and expectations. For instance, people in our lives such as parents/guardians, teachers, and religious leaders, as well as social institutions such as media and education teach us how to act in gendered ways deemed appropriate by the culture. Socialization occurs in process via social sanctions (praise or punishment), observations, and encounters with gendered toys, books, media, and so on (Millett 1971). Social sanctions are often negative, such as a parent telling a child that “girls aren’t supposed to get dirty” or that “boys aren’t supposed to cry.” However, we must recognize the power of positive social sanctioning such as telling a girl that she’s "so well-mannered" when she’s sitting quietly cross-legged or a boy that he’s "so strong" when he lifts something heavy. 

In addition to being socialized into gender, we learn about sexuality through social interactions. Theorists Gagnon and Simon (1973) proposed sexual script theory to describe how culturally produced and reinforced norms serve as a blueprint to guide our sexual behavior. Scripts are directives, judgments, or skills acquired through the social environment, including the culture at large, social institutions, and individuals. Sexual scripts, then, are messages that teach us what to do with and how to think about sex and sexuality. In other words, sexual scripts tell us how to have sex and what it means (Seidman 2015). This is a theatrical metaphor – theater includes a scene, props, actors, and actions based on a script, and so does sex. We follow sexual scripts when we find people attractive who the culture valorizes, when we bring someone home for a sexual encounter after a date, and when we wear certain clothing to look 'sexy' for others. Sexual scripts are similar to dating scripts. List the expectations of dating in a heterosexual context, and you might find that people follow many unwritten rules of dating such as the man paying for her dinner, the woman laughing at his every comment, and a lack of communication around sexual desires and boundaries. Feminist scholar Srinivasan (2021) discusses the prevalence of porn scripts, which teaches about sex in ways desired by the male gaze – what straight white men desire (see chapter 16). Traditional porn scripts are neither accurate nor healthy as they perpetuate misogyny, sexism, and other harmful systems. 

Another example of theorizing about how we learn sexuality is Ken Plummer's application of labeling theory to sexuality, which argues that internalized messages about stigmatized sexualities guide our understandings of sexuality and potentially our identities as well. Labels are terms used to classify identities and behaviors. We learn through social interaction that some identities are acceptable and others are not. We then may distance ourselves from stigmatized sexual identities or behaviors and are coerced into normative ones (Seidman 2015). This perspective can be applied to gender as well, in that we learn which gender identities are deemed 'normal' or are stigmatized, and may distance ourselves from that stigma. 

Social Constructionism and Social Inequalities

Because social constructionist analyses examine categories of difference as fluid, dynamic, and changing according to historical and geographical context, a social constructionist perspective suggests that existing inequalities are neither inevitable nor immutable. This perspective is especially useful for the activist and emancipatory aims of feminist movements and theories. By centering the processes through which inequality and power relations produce racialized, sexualized, and gendered difference, social constructionist analyses challenge the pathologization of minorities who have been thought to be essentially or inherently inferior to privileged groups. Additionally, social constructionist analyses destabilize the categories that organize people into hierarchically-ordered groups through uncovering the historical, cultural, and/or institutional origins of the groups under study. In this way, social constructionist analyses challenge the categorical underpinnings of inequalities by revealing their production and reproduction through unequal systems of knowledge and power.

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GRCC student Seaira Mikaya contributed to the revision of this chapter.