A social construct is any concept that has both been created and widely accepted by the people who live around you.

An example of a social construct is a “year”. If humans did not exist, would years exist? Saying “2021 will be better than 2020” is nonsensical, as the switch from December 31, 2020 to January 1, 2021 is nothing - it’s a social construct.

Does God exist? Does time exist? Do borders exist? Does money exist? What about race? Gender? Marriage? Institutions? Religion? Status?

What roles do we take on that are real, and what roles do we take on because we have always been told they are real?

What about ourselves, our worth, our value, our place? What is real?

Humans create social constructs to organize the world. To put it in other words, to make sense of the world around us we create things that don’t exist and then we make them legitimate by collectively believing in them.

This is why I place so much faith in my own senses. To me, nothing is more certain than what I can hear, see, touch, taste, feel.

This is how I know most things are a social construct, and how I know you’re real.

Stereotypes are a social construct. Like boys play with trucks and army men while girls get an easy bake oven.

Genders are determined by sex chromosomes. In humans it's XY or XX in the vast, vast majority of people. There are some cases yes where people have XO resulting in complex hermaphrodism.

But being born a male and feeling like a female doesn't change your chromosomes. You can do hormone therapy, you can have the cosmetic surgeries to augment breasts or remove genitals and if all of that makes you happier, that's fantastic. It doesn't change your genome.

If a male wants to wear feminine clothes, who cares? If a female wants to play football, go for it! But just because you're an effeminate male or androgynous doesn't mean the world just “invented genders.” It doesn't mean you're non-binary or two spirit, you're still a male or female.

I’d say that it’s more of a social abstraction rather than construct.

It’s not that it has no objective basis. However, what we usually call “love” is a collection of many physiological and behavioural components, many of which are not really related. Even worse, the exact constituents vary from case to case, and there’s no agreement on what they should be in order to qualify as love.

You say: “I love you.”

You mean: “I feel some from the list towards you: sympathy, sexual attraction, attachment, desire to share the household, rushed pulse, worry, admiration etc — although I won’t be specific about which ones are included and which ones aren’t.”

There are also examples of blatantly unrelated things being called with this same word. “Love of a mother towards her child” and “love between lovers” — how did those drastically different things happened to be under the same umbrella term, I surely dunno.

One could say that love is a shortcut word, or something. Very vague and unspecific: one could easily call “love” anything he/she wants, and there’s no way to prove or disprove it.

I don’t like this term - “social construct.”

Now, I’m not exactly sure why I don’t like it. Is it because it feels like a put down?

“Oh, that’s just a social construct.”

Well what isn’t?!

Any concept we communicate about - anything you can describe with language - is by definition a social construct, we’ve constructed the idea using each other and using language.

So perhaps I don’t like the term because I feel like it is a tautology, like it’s saying something that seems like it has some meaning but really is void of anything new.

It seems like a gimmick, you know? Like it’s a marketing ploy, like its a term used most often in propaganda because it sounds like it means something but it doesn’t.

Well, to answer your question then, yes the concept of being human is a “social construct,” as much as anything else you can talk about is…

Great job, we now know nothing more than we did 2 minutes ago.

We can’t help it.

There are a couple of factors in play. One is that reality is complicated and we have to model, abstract, and come up with shortcuts. We must intellectually simplify reality in order to deal with it effectively.

Another is that we’re social animals. We communicate and share ideas, and in order to take advantage of our social nature to survive, we must hold ideas in common.

What we end up, then, is a bunch of shared ideas which must necessarily involve drawing arbitrary lines, cutting corners, leaving out edge cases, making stuff up, or otherwise addressing a complicated and messy reality in a way we can deal with. These can become less than ideal in some circumstances, but without those commonly held ideas, we become unable to communicate [1]. Language, in fact, is a social construct. By common consent and practice, various combinations of sound represent things, actions, states of being, qualities, and so on. They are manipulated in various ways to indicate broader concepts, sequences, complex and detailed actions, and relationships. And language is fundamental not just to human interaction, but indeed, apparently, to human development; children who grow up in extreme isolation for their early years seem fundamentally disabled by their lack of language development and are physically incapable of catching up. I generally think that anybody appealing to “human nature” to explain anything can be safely ignored because they’re mistaking their own cultural biases for something we’re hard-wired for, but in this case I’m making an exception: cultural constructs are a fundamental aspect of human nature, and without them, we’re not fully human.

1. I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but there’s a phrase I’ve seen used a lot around here, “lies-to-children.” I don’t like it. This is a phrase used to describe simplified ideas about how the world works. They tend to portray broad generalities but fall down on exceptions. For example, “organisms can only interbreed with members of their own species” might be regarded as a “lie-to-children” because it’s often true—slime molds can’t mate with hummingbirds—but there are occasional exceptions—horses and donkeys, lions and tigers, etc. The problem, though, is characterizing an incomplete description as a deliberate falsehood. See, absolutely every statement we make is necessarily incomplete. There are always exceptions, uncertainties, and details we’re not communicating. To characterize simplification out of necessity as an attempt to mislead is wrong and slanders a teaching profession which must by necessity work in an incremental, stepwise fashion. Call “Rover went to live on a farm” a lie-to-children, but not simplified science.

To answer that question, we first have to understand it…

And most people who push this concept don’t seem to bother explaining what it actually means.

To some people, it seems to mean “Our general ideas of gender roles are social constructs… The ideas of what men and women wear, for example, or their chosen careers”.

Now, this isn’t an unreasonable statement, though I would note that there are physical differences between biological sexes that make this more complex.

To other people, it seems to extend to this “Gender itself is really just a collection of those roles and how they wrap up into a particular set of things that define our expression as individuals”

And I think that is a bunch of bullshit. Liking trucks does not make you male. Liking a tea party does not make you female.

I will posit that except for a few outliers Biological sex and Gender are the same.

I would also posit that Gender roles are indeed a social construct.

And I would finally add that Gender roles do not actually define Gender.

I read here on Quora the other day a comment to the effect of “I’m a woman and I like cars, so I guess I’m transgender/queer”.

This is a terrible thing. I thought that the idea of so much of our progress was to not put people in boxes… But this idea that preference and interest define gender is not only wrong, it’s deeply harmful. Like trucks? Oh, you are transgender… here’s some drugs to fuck your body up because that’s what transgender people do. The fuck? You can be a woman who likes trucks. It’s okay. There’s nothing even kindof wrong with that. Women are allowed to experience the full breadth of human likes and dislikes and loves and hates and everything else. With the sole exception of having a penis. Sorry. But us guys don’t get to experience having a vagina and boobs, so that’s even.

The worst of it, of course, is in children.

Many children are confused about their identity… Because they are children. They literally don’t know who they are because they haven’t been around long enough to find out. So our kids experiment. They do different things. But you see parents who see Bobby playing with a tea set and suddenly he’s trans. No he’s not. He’s playing with a fucking tea set. It has no deeper meaning. Give him 20 minutes and he’ll be playing with a truck… But nooooo…. Next thing you know all the adults in Bobby’s life are telling him that it’s just perfectly fine that he is playing with tea sets and if he feels confused about who he is it’s okay and maybe he isn’t really a little boy… OF COURSE THIS POOR KID IS CONFUSED!!!! For fucks sake! All the adults around him have lost their fucking minds! 99.99% of the time, little Bobby would figure out on his own who he was, if a bunch of “well meaning” adults didn’t throw a bunch of really complex questions at him that he’s literally incapable of answering. The fact that we put kids on puberty blocking drugs because we’ve confused them about themselves is abuse. It’s wrong. We are preventing them from discovering who they are out of some perverted sense of moral flexibility, and then broken the very process by which they find out!

Now, I’m not saying that trans people don’t exist. There are people who indeed really really feel that they were born in the wrong sex. (Though one might reasonably argue that such people may be transexual rather than transgender, yes?) And these people should be treated with compassion and their rights should be respected under the law. They should not be discriminated against. The same would apply to intersex people and in other cases where biological sex is more complex than simple XX/XY science. Those cases do exist, but they are also rare.

But this creation of trans-gender individuals that seems to serve a political narrative rather than the actual needs of vulnerable children? It’s disgusting. It’s wrong. It’s objectively immoral. And it should not be tolerated in a civilized society.

I’m not saying not to let your girls play with trucks. I’m just suggesting to let them play and figure out on their own who they are… Which, thanks to the wonders of biology, is going to match their biological sex 99.7% of the time. Don’t try to make them trans because you want to appease the Social Justice god.

Indeed god is a social construct. Notice how the concept of god changes throughout history and cultures. The very first mention of god in the bible doesn't refer to a single god but many gods, because back then Jews were polytheists, meaning they worshipped many gods and not one. The very first sentence in the bible actually reads “In the beginning gods (elohim) created…". The singular word for god in hebrew is eloah, so the bible is mistranslated in english. Some Christians today claim that “gods" refer to the Trinity but that would not make sense since god is supossedly one entity that simply takes different forms, thus “gods” seems a weird way of describing the Trinity. They are simply trying to make this inconvenience fit their own personal belief. Also the Trinity is a Christian concept from the new testament (even though it is not actually mentioned) and Jews dont believe that Jesus was god himself, and the old testament in which the plural word of god is mentioned was, after all, written by Jews. That slowly changed over time and many gods became one god instead. Also notice the difference in god’s personality in the old testament and the new testament. In the old testament god is vengeful and does many things that people today would consider horrible acts similar to that of the devil. It's because back then cultures were more barbaric and therefore their concept of god was also barbaric. By the time the new testament was written, culture had changed a lot and god was completely reimagined. Now god was no longer vengeful and demanding child offerings, but a peaceful creature who preached love and turning the other cheek. This change brought about the conflict between Jews and Christians because Jews wanted to hold on to a conservative world view but Christians wanted change. Today many Christians no longer believe that it's a sin to be gay, despite what the old testament says, because now god loves all his creatures. Again, god is a reflection of how people view gays and other things in society. Back in the day god hated gays because the people who made him up hated gays. Today he accepts them because people accept them. The concept of god is everchanging because cultures change. Back in the day people believed that heaven was a place in the sky, so they made up the story about the tower of Babel. But now we have been higher than any tower of Babel could ever be, and we know that there is no heaven in the sky. So now the concept of heaven has also changed and religious people now believe that heaven is a metaphysical world that exists in another dimension… until that is also proven false, most likely. As science continues to disprove the bible, religious people try to fit in god in new ways. God did not create man in his own image, it is man who created god in his. And as man changes so does god.

A social construct is something that certain groups of people agree on, but is not set in stone.

For example, English speakers might agree to all call a certain animal a “dog”.
But French speakers might say that it’s a “chien”, and German speakers might call it “Hund” instead.

There isn’t really any sound, or sequence of sounds that is more correct than another, each group can construct things in whatever way they want.

My friends and I could agree to call it a “woof maker” instead, and we could even call it a “blehrg” if we wanted, and we could still achieve the same final result of being able to communicate with each other about fluffy barking creatures.

Eye keewd rite deepherentlee, end eet wood steal bee pausseeble 4 u 2 andurstend mee.

I can speak in a different language, and for many people, it’s not only possible to understand me, it’s the only way they can understand me at all.

The important thing isn’t really what sound we make, or what spelling we use, just that we can understand each other.
Languages and conventions about which words to use when referring to certain things just make it easier to understand other people.

That’s why we have social constructs, like a bunch of people agreeing that a certain animal is called a “dog”.

A lot of gender insignia is based around social agreements.

When you see a man wearing high-heels, kohl, make-up, or a skirt, you either assume there is something is wrong with him, or that he is subverting gender norms, but here are some facts:

• High heeled shoes were originally meant for men.
• Men have been wearing makeup since centuries: The Fascinating History of Men and Makeup.
• Before pants were a thing, Men wore skirts.
• Now, what do you think about kohl? Definitely a feminine eye cosmetic for the females, right? Well, not in the Indian subcontinent. These photos are all supposed to represent the manly men:

We need to have an unbiased attitude towards the research about the question of biological essentialism of gender. I haven’t found enough evidence to convince me to either side, but I know that a lot of ways in which popular culture defines gender, is plain absurd and devoid of historical context.

Race is clearly a social construct in my opinion, after I did a social experiment with someone from the Dominican Republic in a conversation. He said he is not white because he is Latino and that Spaniards from Spain are white because they’re European. I told him that this makes no sense because he looks whiter than probably half of Spanish population. I showed him a picture on fb of my Spanish friends and I asked him: “Are they white for you?” He said: “Yes, they’re white if they’re from Spain”. I said: “But don’t you see with your own eyes that you’re whiter than half of those in the picture?” He said confused: “Yeah, now that you mention it, it is so.” He was pretty confused though because he was passing through a cognitive dissonance now that I insisted he trust his eyes rather than his deeply engrained since childhood racial social construct of European= white and latino= brown.

The conclusion is that people have such a preconceived idea of who is of what race just judging by their geographic origins, that they don’t believe their own eyes when clearly it shows otherwise. It’s needed independent thinking to draw conclusion from what you really see with your own eyes.

I follow my own eyes and I say it to their face: “Sorry dude, I trust my own eyes and you’re not white. I don’t care about your Europeanness argument. You should just go and look into the mirror objectively and see the obvious that you’re brown”. Really wierd is that I met in Spain a white suppremacist that was very brown. I mean, dude!! Am I taking crazy pills??!! Nobody else sees this white suppremacist Spaniard is just as brown as half the North Africans???

Look at Daniel Conversano, leader of a white suppremacist movement in France:

He went to Moscow in visit once where nobody knew who he was and Muslims were greeting him with “Assalamu Aleykum” thinking he’s one of them. He felt very offended by it given that he hates Islam from deep inside his guts. Funny anecdote that proves race is a social construct.

P.S. Another anecdote in my personal life is I met once a Maltese and I asked him to speak to me sentences in Maltese. I told him after he said his sentences: “I haven’t taken a single lesson of Maltese in my entire life but I do speak Arabic and what you just said, I understood every single word of it.” At this he got really offended and started screaming: “ I’m European, I’m white! We Maltese are white and we don’t speak Arabic! Maltese language is a European language!!” I was like “Ok I should just shut up because I really hit in his sensitivity there, and I don’t want him to get all emotional about it. Just chill dude! It’s not my fault I can understand what you’re saying because I know Arabic.”

Given that we live in society and have to communicate and interact with each other, yes, social constructs are valid. Social constructs are the way society has tacitly agreed to interpret an idea, and are valid just the way language is valid, language being the most fundamental social construct.

How one wants to deal with them is up to the individual, but one must be aware that unilaterally disregarding social constructs can garner confusion or hostility from those one is trying to interact with. Working to change social constructs that are harmful is also valid, but first it requires realizing (and convincing others) that they are social constructs, and thus both real and subject to change, rather than their being “just the way things are.”

This is all very abstract. To give an example:
1. For a long time, society considered that people were divided strictly into “male” and “female” (sex) and that was “natural” and “just the way things are.”

2. Then some people began to realize idea that “masculine” and “feminine” (gender — the social constructs around sex) are two mutually exclusive states demanding different attitudes, appearances, behaviors, opportunities and responsibilities is a social construct. (The idea that they are based on immutable biological characteristics has proven to be an oversimplification, historically, scientifically, and practically.)

3. Many people think this social construct should be modified, because it is harmful to people who do not fit into or feel unfairly limited by its binary strictures. So they are working to change the social construct, first by making people aware that it is a social construct, and then by changing it, by changing the way society views “masculine” and “feminine” and the relationship between them. They are doing this by challenging and changing the language (pronoun usage, titles, names, categories), changing clothing (what is “acceptable” for people to wear being another social construct), and changing behaviors (what it is “natural” for men, women, and others to do being another social construct).

4. People are free not to agree to such changes, but they must be aware that their unilateral resistance will have consequences — not for change, but for them. They can be seen as hidebound and ignorant if they try to use arguments such as appealing to outdated social constructs such as what is “natural” or “God’s law.” They can be seen as valuing grammar rules (which are always changing anyway) over other people’s wellbeing if they resist inclusive linguistic changes. And they risk being seen as simply arrogant jerks if they insist that they know better than someone else what that person’s own gender is just by looking at them. Society, language, fashion, manners, morality and all other social constructs tend to move the way the majority want them to move. There are always those who will drag their feet. But they can’t stop the change any more than someone on the platform can stop a train full of people heading off to its next destination.

Anyone who says “gender is a social construct” is an opinion doesn’t understand what gender is. It’s a fact. It’s in no way an opinion. Some people just don’t understand what social construct means. Saying gender is a social construct doesn’t mean you’re saying male and female brains (or any other part) are the same. Are males (or females) biologically different in different cultures? In different time period? No. But how men and women live their lives is different. Because the gender part is a social construct.

In non-academic terms people often use the word sex and the word gender interchangeably - which is what leads people to talk about “biological…” this, that, and the other when talking about gender. You can have a penis but still be classified as a woman based on your actions, feelings, and how those are interpreted in the society you’re living in. The definitions of man and women come from the larger groups of male and females - the statistical averages. And that’s where people get confused but it doesn’t change the fact that gender itself is a social construct.

I have red hair, and freckles.

This is a hereditary trait, that affects the color of my hair and my skin.

Does that make me a different “race”?

On my father’s side, people are quite tall.

It’s also a trait that is hereditary, and it’s also visible.

Is there a tall “race”?

On my mother’s side, people are quite short. Which is also a hereditary trait.

So would that make me “mixed race”, half tall half short?

People have all sorts of hereditary traits that affect the color of their skin, their hair, how tall they are, the color of their eyes, etc.

Yet we don’t really talk about a green eyed race, or a red haired race, or the freckled race, or the tall race, or anything like that.

Which means that it’s a completely arbitrary social construct.

I have freckles, it’s visible, and hereditary.
My girlfriend has dark skin, it’s also visible and hereditary.

In both cases, there are correlated traits: She has very curly hair, and I have red hair.

In reality, we are all part of the human race, and everyone has slight differences to other people, and similarities with some people.

And declaring that green eyes, or pale skin or whatever, is a “race”, is completely arbitrary, indeed just a social construct.

• What is not a social construct?

Most things aren't social constructs. Things found in nature are not social constructs, nor are physical objects created by people. Social Constructs are things that would cease to exist if people stopped believing in them. Sexuality is not a social construct.

• What is gender as a social fact?

Gender as a Social Construction. If sex is a biological concept, then gender is a social concept. It refers to the social and cultural differences a society assigns to people based on their (biological) sex.

• What does it mean to say that gender is socially constructed?

Gender is socially constructed means society has made a framework of what male and female roles in and out of the home are supposed to be. Gender is made by our society's guidelines on what is “acceptable” gender roles.

• Can you change your gender?

Gender Affirmation (Confirmation) or Sex Reassignment Surgery. Gender affirmation surgery refers to procedures that help people transition to their self-identified gender. Gender-affirming options may include facial surgery, top surgery, or bottom surgery.

There is a difference between “sex” and “gender.” Sex is “biological” while gender is “psychological,” “social,” or “cultural.” A person's gender can be different from a person's sex. Gender is thus “socially constructed” in the sense that, unlike biological sex, gender is a product of society.

Largely but not entirely. It would be foolish to pretend that there aren't anatomical differences between certain groups of people. Skin color, hair types, bone structure, and so on. You can tell the difference between an indigenous African and a European thigh bone from the curvature. Physical anthropology was founded in an effort to figure out how this stuff works. But it predated modern genetics, so most of its early findings were off-base.

People have read way too much into these minor differences, mistaking cultural qualities for racial ones. For example, British polar explorers thought that Inuit native Americans were lazy because they didn't hurry. The Europeans didn't know something important about living in the Arctic: you try never to sweat, because it condenses inside your clothing, freezes, and destroys its insulating quality. It has nothing to do with laziness; it's about the right behavior for the conditions. Europeans were very prone to this kind of judgmental, misguided thinking about race, because they mistook their technological superiority for moral and cultural superiority.

The main thing about race is that the differences are too small to justify any discrimination between them in law, policy, or other behavior. Anatomically, I have some minor differences, mostly cosmetic, between myself and a person from East Africa. Who cares? Why in the world should the shape of my thigh bone affect how we are treated?

Yes! Exactly! This is entirely the point, and I’m very happy that this seems to be sinking in. Everything we say and do, all the ways in which we interact with the world, is mediated by the social construction of the world which we get through acculturation and participation in interaction with others.

Now, it’s important to keep in mind that “socially constructed” doesn’t necessarily mean false or wrong [1]. For example, money, which is to say the idea of a universal standard of value by which the values of unlike objects can be compared and exchange facilitated, is absolutely socially constructed. But that doesn’t mean that the use of money is somehow fictional. It’s a very real social phenomenon. It just means that it works because it’s a widely socially accepted idea. Marriage is a social construct, but that doesn’t mean I’m leaving my lovely and talented spouse. But yes, it’s social constructs all the way down, and that includes the way we categorize the way we think about our ideas.

1. Some things are, but not everything.

It’s the best argument.

First, to clear something up. A lot of people misunderstand the concept of the social construct. They think that means it isn’t “real.” No—social and cultural constructs are very real. They exist because human beings are genetically determined to be social animals and also culture bearing animals, which means that through socialization and the process of growing up we internalize a huge number of culture-based norms, values, assumptions, paradigms, and ways of symbollically organizing the world into categories. So for example, genetics demonstrates that race does not exist biolgocially—there is no such thing, genetically, as a race. Ah but. Because our cultural system thoroughly depends on racial categories as a way of seeing and understanding the world, race has a profound impact on our perceptions and experiences. It’s real. It’s just real as a social and cultural construct.

Same with things like money. Or marriage. Or national borders. Or seeing yourself (in the past) as a subject of the crown as opposed to (now) seeing yourself as a citizen of a state. All are social and cultural constructs.

The only caveat is that there is nothing that can make a social and cultural construct permanent. They change from society to society and across history.

So what is some evidence that gender is a social and cultural construct? (As opposed to biological sex, which is a stable, material, anatomical fact).

The evidence that gender is a social and cultural construct is that it changes—both throughout history and from culture to culture around the planet. What counts as masculine/feminine at one point in history does not remain permanent. Things shift their meaning, so that what counts as masculinity changes, what counts as femininity changes, and what is seen as gender neutral changes.

I have seen that kind of change happen in my own lifetime. Plus I know enough about history to be aware that gender and ideas about gender are always changing.

The exact definition may differ depending on your source, but the general consensus is that a social construct refers to an idea that has commonly been accepted by the people of a society.

An example would be intelligence, beauty, or even race and nationality.

For the first two you could say they are subjective, not objective. The idea is that what some consider beautiful may not be beautiful at all to another. Some might say someone is dumber than a box of rocks, whereas others see him as a genius.

For race and nationality… those tend to defer to what are ‘generally’ established. For race, race is a relatively inaccurate term, because it could mean “does this person have ANY of this ancestry in them?” Likewise, nationality can be created and taken away simply by the founding or abolishment of a nation, could it not?

So… the idea of a social construct being ‘proven’ is in of itself a fallacy. Because the very notion of a ‘social construct’ insinuates that it’s “something that a society agrees upon.” But just because people agree on something doesn’t mean it has concrete definition. Discrete things are generally ‘social constructs.’

So I mean, can you put an exact, concrete definition on what beauty actually is? Or intelligence?

Age(ing) itself is entirely predictable and natural and would appear at first glance to be free of social structures. Unfortunately, the opposite is true.

There are many occasions and instances when age becomes a social construct, not least in the way in which societies and cultures interpret different ages: so expectations and stereotypes that attach to, for example, children, teenagers, young adults, middle age, old age.

A further age construct occurs in our own minds. So how the individual themselves accepts the dominant view of their particular age. For example, is it entirely natural that all teenagers are rebellious, or is there some external expectation acting upon them which then turns their behaviour rebellious? Not all teenagers are rebellious. So are some simply acting out a societal expectation?

Similarly, what does it mean to be old? And when are we old? These questions should be for the individual to decide. Unfortunately, none of us can entirely disassociate ourselves from the dominant discourses around old age that operate in our society/culture, so too often we end up playing the role that society has given us. Sociologists would interpret that as a structural imposition, and lacking agency.

A further example is the age of adulthood. When I reached 21, in 1970, I was deemed an adult by UK society. Today, a British person reaches adulthood at 18. What has changed? Only the law. However, even this change of law is accompanied by different social expectations which the individual is forced to accommodate.

An aspect of age which is most compelling relates to social gaze and accompanying ability. Western societies tend to be more ageist than Asian ones. The reasons for this are complex but largely to do with Confucionist thinking. So when Westerners get old, they all too often find themselves unable to get employment, isolated from their family, and left to fend for themselves. They lose social status. When Asians get old the dominant expectation is that the family (children and grandchildren) will look after them without complaint, indeed, lovingly. They actually acquire higher social status and increased respect. Which in my view, is how it should be.

Finally, there is the question as to how age interacts with other identity variables. For example, does society have different age expectations for men than for women? Of course. And these expectations (structural in essence) operate in every society and continue to do so, though there is now increasing resistance. Where a man in his 60s may not be judged badly if he acquires a wife 30 years his junior, a woman in her 60s would be looked upon in an entirely different light. Though again, this is another example of where we now see positive structural changes taking place (e.g. Brigitte Trogneux, the wife of Emmanuel Macron, the French President, is 25 years his senior). The very fact of their highly public and loving relationship challenges many of the ageist assumptions which we all have to live with to varying degrees.

Imagine you were born in isolation, on a desert island, but you’re a smart fellow and figured out many concepts about the world. You understand big and small from observing plants and animals. Maybe you see and understand colors, in an idiosyncratic scheme that you devise. Maybe you develop an aesthetic sense and think that something has beauty or not.

But beyond this, are there some concepts that you could never develop in such an isolated situation? Not even if you were really smart? Are there some concepts that intrinsically require social interaction and knowledge of that interaction to even create the concept?

For example, what about the concept of “justice”? Could you come up with that as a solitary person? Would you understand the difference between a tree falling on your leg, which might just be bad luck, versus another person breaking your leg and getting away with it? Would you understand the moral pain, that indignation, associated with injustice?

Another example: You would, by observing the natural world, come to understand the biological concepts of male and female. But would you come to understand the concepts of masculine and feminine?

That’s what a social construct is, a concept that can only come about through social interactions.

Yes. There are real physical differences between different groups of people, but the “identity” part is a social construct.

There is nothing in the human brain that innately gives you a racial identity. There is no racial part of the brain. A person born into a society that had no ideas around race would not ever think about it. A baby raised in one culture will have a different concept of race than if it had been born somewhere else.

It’s different from gender identity, which is something you bring with you. If your innate gender is male, you will be male regardless of what culture or society you are born into, because your maleness is part of your brain structure to enough of an extent to make the feeling of it a core part of your experience.

There is no analog for race - there is nothing in your brain that tells you what race you are. In fact, you can only know about by being exposed to people who look different. If you spent your whole life with people who looked exactly like you, you probably would never think to identify as a race. You would just be “people.”

So to have a racial identity, we need people who look like us, and other people who don’t. We need to be part of a society. If you are truly alone, you have no racial identity.

Are social constructs nothing but illusions?

“Nothing but” you say. That sounds rather dismissive to me. It sounds like illusions are not important, of no consequence, nothing to pay any attention to and bother about.

Those “illusions” you are referring to are, I assume, experiences that don’t have a physical, material aspect. Something you can’t see, hear, smell, touch, taste. Like thoughts, feelings, ideas, beliefs. Like memories. Like plans, aspirations, goals. Like all the ideas that comprise your own sense of self, of who you are, of what you’ve experienced, of what you want, what you believe in, what you value.

All of that is nothing but illusion, yes?

And what is not an illusion? A physical body? That’s all, that’s the real you? When all the “nothing but illusions” are removed from your experience and only the “real you” is left - what is it that’s left? A body devoid of mental functions.

Is that what you “really” are, do you think?

Yes, social constructs are “nothing but” illusions, just like you are “nothing but illusion”, just like the reality you exist inside of is “nothing but illusion”. This whole life might be little more than illusion, but it is the only life you’ve got and, therefore, it is absolutely and completely real.

A social construct is a concept that doesn’t exist in the material world independent of human description and belief in its existence. I don’t know why you said “other,” because I don’t know which one you’re thinking of, but here are multiple examples.

If all human thought ceased instantaneously, we would still have the dollar bills we’ve already printed. But they wouldn’t be money, because they wouldn’t have exchange value. Money is a social construct.

Here’s another example. Law. Different countries and states have different laws, and different officers and judges enforce and interpret them differently. This proves that we didn’t pull the law out of thin air. We built it, and it can be rebuilt to serve society, or to serve people with power.

Understanding what’s socially constructed versus natural and immovable is a powerful tool for progress. If we don’t analyze the world around us, then it will keep failing to work for everyone. This would be harmful.

Considering social constructs along a scale of “realness” is fun. That’s where all the arguments happen. After all, you can’t arrive to any “real” conclusions; formal logic does not apply. Instead, conclusions are arrived at with the uses of argumentation and rhetoric. Yet, the establishing of what people believe about their social constructs leads to the support of organizational leaders and politicians. It informs what constructs they will promote and fund. They also sway and stay the mobs. But yes, depending on the audience, some social constructs are more real than others because more members of the audience may share more beliefs, values, and aesthetics that gives the social construct “weight”.

Social constructs should be taken more seriously.

It’s not always the case that a construct contains the same factors as it had when socially constructed in the past.

For example, becoming a man or a woman has changed over the last 100 years. Adulthood is defined differently in legal terms than how one’s community defines it. The ways that society defines adulthood is different from how a person experiences the shift from immaturity into maturity, into adulthood. Often, here in America, the top-down approach of defining a person’s status leads to greater argument these days than it had before the 1950s.

This is also true politically. Democrats are not the same as they were in the past; they don’t prop up the same political platforms or values. Aesthetics of human beauty, which can be statistically expressed in charts or sculpted visually as digitally rendered faces and bodies, are social constructs, and differ from nation to nation, from social class to social class, from era to historical era. Even the value of human life as a social construct differs as laws, rights, and ethics are employed to protect it, not only in terms of how the taking of life is punished, but also in the ways humans are defined as citizens protected by law. Who is included a human as well as a citizen? Who deserves to be protected under the law? What rights is this person endowed with? It’s not only whether or not a social construct is expressed or maintained; it is also about how people empower them.

Social constructs impact decision making.

What is a gentleman or a lady? How does a person behave if they have “class” or “good breeding” or “education”? When is somebody “good”? What ensures just and fair judgments?

Social constructs include virtues, ethics, as well as any enthymemes (or common ground, common places), but they also include classes and categories to which the social constructs belong. What is “effective parenting”? What is a “healthy relationship”? What is being mature or smart or authentic?

So, when you ask which social constructs are more real than others, it definitely depends on who you ask.

If human rights are a social construct, would a victim of human trafficking recognize human rights as real?

What would Martin Luther King Jr. say about justice and human rights as social constructs in the time he led the marches for Civil Rights?

In the past, human dignity was a hotly debated topic among philosophers and political scientists. A good life depended on how human dignity is expressed, protected, enjoyed, and endowed. Now, people struggle to find a definition of the term. Does this mean it is less real as a social construct than it was due to this lack of social and intellectual exploration?

In these arguments, what experiences are accepted as Evidence? When is evidence also proof that can support a position of an argument? Depending on who is doing the arguing, certain social constructs may not exist or are no longer relevant.

It often depends on what assumptions are accepted as true. How does your metaphysics work when it describes which social causes lead to specific societal effects? What is the role of science in the pursuit of proof?

In terms of politics, politicians argue over what is “real” and what is “propaganda.” They argue over what is “effective” and what is “proven false” or illegitimate. What is “self-evident”?

Social constructs are also infused (embodied) with agency. Depending on how a social construct is defined, the concept includes its problem-status (if is seen as a problem), who is to blame for the construct as a problem needing a solution. It includes who can address the problem as social construct, whether it is injustice, the “cost of doing business”, or results from forms of inequality, disparity, or inconsistency. You can undermine the “reality” of such social constructs as “Black Lives Matter” or “White Privilege” or even designations like “Red States” and “Blue States” depending on the data and arguments you use to support your claims. Each of these movements and social phenomena is more real and more relevant to them than they may be for others.

The question makes no sense.

What exactly is it you think a “social construct” is?

The way you set up your question, I don’t think you have a very useful or valid idea of what it is or what the concept means.

It rather looks like a failed attempt to set up a “gotcha!” moment when in fact it seems you don’t actually have a good grasp on the concept.

What is a social/cultural construct? It comes from the fact that human beings create their own material, social, and cultural environments. Social/cultural constructs are concepts, practices, symbolic systems, and paradigmatic assumptions that categorize and organize experience. It includes things like money, national borders, law, gender norms, morality, education, science, and so on. The mistake is to believe that they are something lesser or weaker and stand in the way of something “more real.” But that’s not the case. If you get rid of a social/cultural construct, another just takes its place. They are not lesser things—they are very real and very powerful and define who and what a person is in their social environment.

So is a “social/cultural construct” a “social/cultural construct”? The question is tautalogical. Social and cultural constructs are very real things. Recognizing them and what they are is just an effect of reasoning about human experience.

What are some examples of things that are not social constructs (if possible)?

Not social constructs. A couple few things spring to mind. Mt. Everest. Certainly it has been incorporated into the world’s poetry and mythology, especially locally! But the mass of rock itself is not socially-constructed, and would stand pretty much as it is even if humanity had died out 170,000 years ago. It might be a barely-measurable bit larger, if not worn down by the relentless tromp of we the bold, climbing it because it was there.

The Pacific Ocean! Sure. Again, super-mythologized. We’ve woven it into all sorts of narratives and allegories, yet this salty and frothing abyss just yawns. It itself was never socially constructed. Our constructs to do with it are our feeble attempts to grasp its terrifying depth and gigantic extent with our minds, bobbing like tossed corks adrift in contemplation.

Magnesium? Yeah, I’d say magnesium. All of the elements, really. All matter, if you want to get down to it. All energy and fundamental force. These are not social constructs. We engineer and sketch and draft various depictions and explanations to lay hold of and use them. If you insist, those perhaps are “social constructs,” but really, a social construct whose sole aim is accurate description converging ever-finer upon reality is…far more antisocial than social to construct. In any case, its subject matter, upon which the whole focus and invention is bent, is no social construct. What else.

Wait. All energy and matter in the universe?

I think that covers it. I mean, that’s like…the entire universe. Excluding only ephemeral, notional portions dotted along Earth’s shallowest layer, “existing” only in corresponding patterns of electrochemical fizz and crackle between separate and distinct heads, plus (if you even want to count these), their cultural extrusions, immaterial patterns modeled in matter. I wouldn’t count these, actually. They aren’t social constructs, just spinoff product and merchandising. Oh! Also hypothetically excluding any as-yet undiscovered social exobeings (they certainly haven’t behaved very sociably yet! HI! Hi…?). Pretty much the whole world and the universe is no social construct at all.

Social constructs, then: at most, these cover some of the ways we conceptualize, frame, order and use what is. Including each other. Ritual and ceremony, with their attendant roles and parts to play. Style, including many kinds of identity - how we style ourselves in fit with the world - but style can reference established types, roles, and fashions, or it can be perfectly personal. Convention, such as manners and law. The ways we agree to behave as standard, which allow for wide range of deviation (personal definition in one of the definite directions away from the standard), and sometimes the ways we agree that all must be bound to act - more usually, bound not to act: the judgment and punishment of law.

Those are the social constructs. I could go on and on with examples. People who dismiss social constructs as “not real” reveal themselves as a) gigantically unobservant, b) tragically immature, or c) obliviously antisocial/incompletely socialized to a breathtaking extent. Social reality is the realest reality most of us deal with and know. Far realer than Mt. Everest, which is only part of story. Far realer than magnesium, which operates below the scale of notice for pretty much any of us. Rare exceptions. Chemists. People in industrial accidents, where a ton of magnesium drops from a height and crushes them. Otherwise, inconsiderable. Beneath or outside real notice and real concern.

As compared to, say, the person in front of you. Who is not a social construct. Though they probably have achieved an intimidating degree of mastery, where social constructs are concerned.

Hope that helps.