These tasks are complicated by the wide, constantly changing, inconsistent, and mutually incompatible usages found in the popular press and in casual conversation in society about this topic.
At the very outset, then, of this task, the philosopher faces a dilemma. He can begin by examining ordinary actual usage of words like ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ and ‘male’ and ‘female’ - and soon find himself in an unwieldy swamp of definition and idiom.
The other option is to largely ignore popular usage, and to begin with a few definitions which are taken as axiomatic.
One example of the contradictions which quickly emerge when studying common usage is that one dictionary defines ‘gender’ as a social and cultural distinction between male and female, while defining ‘sex’ as the biological distinction. Yet a biology textbook may define ‘gender’ as the biological grouping of male or female, and ‘sex’ as activity relating to procreation.
With such rampant inconsistency in usage, sorting out a definition becomes a difficult chore.
Turning to the other task, a philosopher asks, which aspects of such identity are independent of the individual and his experience? This question can be rephrased in slightly different ways: one can ask about the objective versus the subjective distinction between male and female; one can ask about the physiological versus the psychological distinction; or one can ask about whether the various elements of such a distinction are knowable a priori or a posteriori.
Several bits of data form traditional points of departure for such discussion. First, one the level of cellular structure, genetic information codes an individual’s gender, independently of that person’s experiences, prior to that person’s conscious conceptualization of gender, and immutably. No gender reassignment therapy can change an individual’s gender at the level of DNA. (Mitochondrial DNA is a definitive gender differentiator.)
Note here that ‘gender’ has entered the discourse, despite not yet having obtained a working definition. Note also that “experience” includes emotions, intuitions, physical actions and interactions, as well as social and cultural settings.
Second, certain bone structures are determined by, and reveal, gender. Archeologists and paleoanthropologists can determine the gender of human remains given no more than a few bones from a skeleton. A scientist can discover the gender of a long-deceased individual, given a fibula, a tibia, a humerus, a radius, an ulna, and maybe a rib, an anklebone, or a finger.
Third, male brain anatomy and female brain anatomy differ measurably and significantly. Not only is the anatomy quite distinct, but also the physiology is quantitatively and observably divergent. The study of the differences between the male and female amygdala and hippocampus has become an entire academic discipline unto itself.
Both the differences in bone structure and in brain functionality are impervious to any attempted gender reassignment.
By contrast, other aspects of gender are social and cultural artifacts, formed by convention, and susceptible to change. Traditional associations of color - pink for girls, blue for boy - or fashion - girls have long hair, boys have short hair - are neither a priori nor necessary. They are mutable.
One area for investigation is, then, the distinction between those gender and sex differentiators which are necessary and immutable, and those which are merely cultural conventions.
There are those who would make the claim that most, or even all, of what we call ‘gender’ or ‘sex’ is a social construct: that it has no objective basis in physical reality. In the words of a 2015 report issued in Missouri:
This is an element of what is sometimes referred to in gender studies as the “social constructionism” movement in psychological theory.
The notion that gender is a social construct entails that it is thoroughly mutable, and that statements about gender identity are incorrigible. Statements made by individuals who “identify as” one gender or the other would therefore be allowed to stand, and no argument against such statements would be possible.
“Gender” has become a matter of uncertainty. Rather than male or female, many see gender as a relative matter, or even a continuum. They consider gender or sexual identity to be less a reality given at conception than a matter of personal discovery. Reflective of such a theoretical perspective, increasing attention is also given to individuals who are personally uncertain about their own gender or sexual identity — in particular, individuals who are “transsexual” or “transgendered,” as well as those who identify themselves as “bisexual” or are “questioning” their gender and in the process of determining what they perceive to be their true gender identity.
Yet not only does empirical evidence in the physical realm speak of a gender identity which is temporally and logically prior to an individual’s self-identification, but data from the psychological realm also presents a case for gender which is independent of the individual’s “identifying as” one gender or the other.
Across all demographic variables, males more than females are likely to commit violent crime. This probability is by a significant statistical margin.
Separately, learning styles between the genders are markedly different, so much so that one can deliberate organize a presentation such that one gender will learn more than the other from it.
It seems, then, that the mutable aspects of gender identity which are social constructs are few and insignificant: clothing styles, hair length, fashionable colors, etc. We see, e.g., how the Scots wear kilts, which to the rest of the world seem like women’s dresses, but which to them are masculine.
The significant and essential aspect of gender identity, by contrast, seem immutable, and independent of the individual’s self-perception or self-description. First-person gender statements may, after all, be corrigible.
