Constructed by Society (whether you like it or not)

I am a science major, and graduating this May. But it is fascinating how much I have learned this last year as an undergrad. I got most of my hard core sciences classes out of the way my first 3 years (chem, biochem, ochem, genetics, physics, microbio, anatomy, physiology etc etc.) So when I finally went to see what else I needed to graduate it was mostly general education requirements. This was a breath of fresh air from my typical semester, and I ended up taking a Sociology class “Race Relations” and a Family and Social Science class “Intimate Relationships”.

I was first introduced to the idea of the social construction of race. It was one of those moments when a light bulb turned on. Our professor asked the first day “so what is race?”, “How is one able to determine their own race? Or is it decided for them?” I was grasping for answers and could not come up with a definition. Skin color? But how do you explain the classification of someone from Venezueala but they look like they are Black but would they be Hispanic? A child with one black parent and one white parent is typically classified as Black, why can’t they be White? A person who just moved to the United States from Japan has never claimed the racial identity of being Asian, it is only once they move to the US that they are described as Asian by everyone else. Race is socially constructed, it is not a fixed term, it changes based on location, culture, and history.

In intimate relationship, the idea that gender is socially constructed was introduced. I thought to myself, “here we go again.” But it made sense, it was society that decided boys are blue and girls are pink. Girls should be given dolls, be told princess stories and a play in a small kitchen. Boys in contrast have a toy tool set, watch sports games, and play with rescue hero action figures. This upset me because I had always been a “tom boy” growing up and hated barbies, but again I saw that there was a lot of sense.

As a science major I had been so use to a direct definition for every term, it had been discovered or scientifically proven. I could memorize the steps and intermediates of the Calvin Cycle and spit it back out on an exam. This is straightforward, no need for interpretation. So the concept of social construction took me awhile to grasp.

I was shocked then when I started reading through Sterling’s Dueling Dualisms and she brings up that sex is also socially constructed!

“Choosing which criteria to use in determining sex, and choosing to make the determination at all, are social decisions for which scientists can offer no absolute guidelines” pp. 5

Again something that I has always thought was a concrete idea. You are male or female, but while reading I just kept thinking but Sterling has a point, what are the actual features that make someone a female or a male. It really does become way more complicated…. Reading Sexting the Body took awhile for me to read, it is a lot of facts and information to digest. It really did make me rethink some concepts that I had always believed were set in stone. You have a XY chromosome therefore you are a man, but it is not always that simple. Sterling made the question circle in my mind,

In how many ways does society really impact our lives without us realizing it? Race gender, now sex what else? Going back to Latour, does society construct our reality?