Gender is a complex social concept that broadly refers to characteristics, like roles, behaviours and norms, associated with masculinity and femininity.  

Historically, gender in Western cultures has been a simple thing to define because it was seen as an extension of biological sex: ‘women’ were human females and ‘men’ were human males, where female and male were understood as biological categories. 

This was due to a view that espouses the idea that biology (i.e., sex) predetermines or limits a host of social, psychological and behavioural traits that are inherently different between men and women, a view often referred to as biological determinism. This is where we get stereotypes like “men are rational and unemotional” and “women are passive and caring”.  

While most people reject biologically deterministic views today, most still don’t distinguish between sex and gender. However, the conversation is slowly beginning to shift as a result of decades of feminist literature.  

Additionally, it’s worth noting that outside of Western traditions, gender has been a much more fluid and complex concept for thousands of years. Hundreds of traditional cultures around the world have conceptions of gender that extend beyond the binary of men and women. 

Feminist Gender Theory 

Feminism has had a long history of challenging assumptions about gender, especially since the late twentieth century. Alongside some psychologists at the time, feminists began differentiating between sex and gender to argue that many of the differences between men and women that people took to be intrinsic were really the result of social and cultural conditioning.  

Prior to this, sex and gender were thought be essentially the same thing. This encouraged people to confer biological differences onto social and cultural expectations. Feminists argue that this is a self-fulfilling misconception that produces oppression in many different ways; for example, socially and culturally limiting attitudes that prevent women from engaging in “masculine” activities and vice versa.  

Really, they say, gender is social and sex is biological. Philosopher Simone de Beauvoir famously said: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”.  

Gender being social means that it’s a concept that is constructed and shaped by our perceptions of masculinity and femininity, and that it can vary between societies and cultures. Sex being biological means that it’s scientifically observable (though the idea of binary sex is also being questioned given there are over 100 million intersex people all over the world). 

Philosophers like Simone de Beauvoir argued that gendered assumptions and expectations were so deeply engrained in our lives that they began to appear biologically predetermined, which gave credence to the idea of women being subservient because they were biologically so. 

“Social discrimination produces in women moral and intellectual effects so profound that they appear to be caused by nature.” 

Gender and Identity 

Gender being socially constructed means that it is mutable. With this increasingly mainstream understanding, people with more diverse gender identities than simply that which they were assigned at birth (cisgender) have been able to identify themselves in ways that more closely reflect their experiences and expressions. 

For example, some people identify with a different gender than what they were assigned at birth based on their sex (transgender); some people don’t identify as either man or woman, and instead feel that they are somewhere in between, or that the binary conception of gender doesn’t fit their experience and identity at all (non-binary). In many non-western cultures, gender has never been a binary concept. 

Unfortunately, with the inherently identity-based nature of gender, a host of ethical issues arise mostly in the form of discrimination. 

Transgender people, for example, are often the target of discrimination. This can be in areas as simple as what bathrooms they use to more complicated areas like participation in elite sports. Notably, these examples of discrimination are almost always targeted at transfeminine people (those who identify as women after being assigned men at birth). 

Additionally, there are ethical considerations that have to be taken into account when young people, particularly minors, make decisions about affirming their gender. Currently, it’s standard medical practice for people under 18 to be barred from making decisions about permanent medical procedures, though this still allows them to (with professional, medical guidance) take puberty blockers that help to mitigate extra dysphoria linked to undergoing puberty in a gender the person doesn’t identify with. 

Gender stereotypes in general also have negatives effects on all genders. Genderqueer people are often the targets of violence and discrimination. Women have historically been and are still oppressed in many ways because of systemic gender biases, like being discouraged to work in certain fields, being paid less for similar work or being harassed in various areas of their lives. Men also face harmful effects of rigid gender norms that often result in risk-taking behaviour, internalisation of mental health struggles, and encouraging violent or anti-social behaviour. 

The Future of Gender 

This has been an overview of the most common views on gender. However, there are also many variations on the traditional feminist view that other feminists argue are more accurate depictions of reality.  

bell hooks was known to criticise some variations of gender that revolved around sexuality because they did not properly account for the way that class, race and socio-economic status changed the way that a woman was viewed and expected to behave. For example, many views of gender are from the perspective of white, western women and so fail to represent women in more marginalised circumstances. 

Along similar lines, Judith Butler criticises the very idea of grouping people into genders, arguing that it is and will always be inherently normative and hence exclusionary. For Butler, gender is not simply about identity, it’s primarily about equality and justice. 

Even some earlier gender theorists like Gayle Rubin argue for the eventual abolishment of gender from society, in which people are free to express themselves in whatever individual way they desire, free from any norms or expectations based on their biology and subsequent socialisation. 

“The dream I find most compelling is one of an androgynous and genderless (though not sexless) society, in which one’s sexual anatomy is irrelevant to who one is, what one does, and with whom one makes love.” 

Gender is currently a very active research and debate area, not only in philosophy, but also in sociology, politics and LGBTQI+ education. While theories about identity often result in conflict due to its inherently personal nature, it’s promising to see such a clear area where work by philosophers has significantly influenced public discourse with profound effects on many people’s lives. 

For a deeper dive on gender, Alok Vaid-Menon presents Beyond the Gender Binary as part of Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2022. Tickets on sale now.

Social philosophy is concerned with anything and everything about society and the people who live in it.

What’s the difference between a house and a cave, or a garden and a field of wildflowers? There are some things that are built by people, such as houses and gardens, that wouldn’t exist without human intervention. Similarly, there are some things that are natural, such as caves and fields of wildflowers, that would continue to exist as they were without humans. However, there is a grey area in the middle that social philosophers study, including topics like gender, race, ethics, law, politics, and relationships. Social philosophers spend their time parsing what parts of the world are constructed by humans and what parts are natural. 

We can see the beginnings of the philosophical debate of social versus natural through Aristotle’s and Plato’s justifications for slavery. Aristotle believed that some people were incapable of being their own masters, and this was a natural difference between a slave and a free person. Plato, on the other hand, believed that anyone who was inferior to the Greeks could be enslaved, a difference that was made possible by the existence of Greek society. 

Through the Middle Ages, attention turned to questioning religion and the divine right of monarchs. During this era, it was believed that monarchs were given their authority by God, which was why they had so much more power than the average person. British philosopher John Locke is well known for arguing that every man was created equally, and that everyone had an equal right to life, liberty, and pursuit of property. His conclusion was that these fundamental rights were natural to everyone, which contradicted the social norms that gave almost unlimited power to monarchs. The idea that a monarch naturally had the same fundamental rights as someone who worked the land would have to fundamentally change the structure of society. 

During the 19th century, some philosophers began to question social categories and where they came from. Many people at the time held that social classes, or groups of people of the same socioeconomic status, were a result of biological, or natural, differences between people. Karl Marx, known for his 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto, proposed his own theory about social classes. He argued that these socioeconomic differences that formed social differences were a result of the type of work that someone did and therefore social classes were socially, not biologically, constructed. 

Today social philosophers are concerned with a variety of questions, including questions about race, gender, social change, and institutions that contribute to inequality. One example of a social philosopher who studies gender and race is Sally Haslanger. She has spent her time asking what are the defining characteristics of gender and race, and where these characteristics come from. In other cases, social philosophy is blended with cognitive psychology and behavioural studies, asking which of our behaviours are influenced by the society we live in and which behaviours are “natural,” or a product of our biology. 

Social philosophy and ethics

Many of the questions social philosophers are concerned with are intertwined with ethics. Part of living in a society requires an (often unwritten) ethical code of conduct that ensures everything functions smoothly. 

Thomas Hobbes’ social contract theory spells out the connection between a society and ethics. Hobbes believed that instead of ethics being something that existed naturally, a code of ethics and morality would arise when a group of free, self-interested, and rational people lived together in a society. Ethics would arise because people would find that better things could come from working together and trusting each other than would arise from doing everything on their own. 

Today, much of how we act is determined by the societies we live in. The kinds of clothes we wear, the media we interact with, and how we talk to each other change depending on the norms of our society. This can complicate ethics: should we change our ethical code when we move to a different society with different norms? For example, one culture may say that it’s morally acceptable to eat meat, while a different culture may not. Should a person have to change the way they act moving from the meat-eating culture to the non-meat-eating culture? Moral relativists would say it is possible for both cultures to be morally right, and that we should act accordingly depending on which culture we are interacting with.

A significant reason that social philosophy is still such a nebulous field is that everyone has different life experiences and interacts with society differently. Additionally, different people feel like they owe different levels of commitment to the people around them. Ultimately, it’s a serious challenge for philosophers to come up with social theories that resonate with everyone the theory is supposed to include. 

Autonomy is the capacity to form beliefs and desires that are authentic and in our best interests, and then act on them.

What is it that makes a person autonomous? Intuitively, it feels like a person with a gun held to their head is likely to have less autonomy than a person enjoying a meandering walk, peacefully making a choice between the coastal track or the inland trail. But what exactly are the conditions which determine someone’s autonomy?

Is autonomy just a measure of how free a person is to make choices? How might a person’s upbringing influence their autonomy, and their subsequent capacity to act freely? Exploring the concept of autonomy can help us better understand the decisions people make, especially those we might disagree with.

The definition debate

Autonomy, broadly speaking, refers to a person’s capacity to adequately self-govern their beliefs and actions. All people are in some way influenced by powers outside of themselves, through laws, their upbringing, and other influences. Philosophers aim to distinguish the degree to which various conditions impact our understanding of someone’s autonomy.

There remain many competing theories of autonomy.

These debates are relevant to a whole host of important social concerns that hinge on someone’s independent decision-making capability. This often results in people using autonomy as a means of justifying or rebuking particular behaviours. For example, “Her boss made her do it, so I don’t blame her” and “She is capable of leaving her boyfriend, so it’s her decision to keep suffering the abuse” are both statements that indirectly assess the autonomy of the subject in question.

In the first case, an employee is deemed to lack the autonomy to do otherwise and is therefore taken to not be blameworthy. In the latter case, the opposite conclusion is reached. In both, an assessment of the subject’s relative autonomy determines how their actions are evaluated by an onlooker.

Autonomy often appears to be synonymous with freedom, but the two concepts come apart in important ways.

Autonomy and freedom

There are numerous accounts of both concepts, so in some cases there is overlap, but for the most part autonomy and freedom can be distinguished.

Freedom tends to broader and more overt. It usually speaks to constraints on our ability to act on our desires. This is sometimes also referred to as negative freedom. Autonomy speaks to the independence and authenticity of the desires themselves, which directly inform the acts that we choose to take. This is has lots in common with positive freedom.

For example, we can imagine a person who has the freedom to vote for any party in an election, but was raised and surrounded solely by passionate social conservatives. As a member of a liberal democracy, they have the freedom to vote differently from the rest of their family and friends, but they have never felt comfortable researching other political viewpoints, and greatly fear social rejection.

If autonomy is the capacity a person has to self-govern their beliefs and decisions, this voter’s capacity to self-govern would be considered limited or undermined (to some degree) by social, cultural and psychological factors.

Relational theories of autonomy focus on the ways we relate to others and how they can affect our self-conceptions and ability to deliberate and reason independently.

Relational theories of autonomy were originally proposed by feminist philosophers, aiming to provide a less individualistic way of thinking about autonomy. In the above case, the voter is taken to lack autonomy due to their limited exposure to differing perspectives and fear of ostracism. In other words, the way they relate to people around them has limited their capacity to reflect on their own beliefs, values and principles.

One relational approach to autonomy focuses on this capacity for internal reflection. This approach is part of what is known as the ‘procedural theory of relational autonomy’. If the woman in the abusive relationship is capable of critical reflection, she is thought to be autonomous regardless of her decision.

However, competing theories of autonomy argue that this capacity isn’t enough. These theories say that there are a range of external factors that can shape, warp and limit our decision-making abilities, and failing to take these into account is failing to fully grasp autonomy. These factors can include things like upbringing, indoctrination, lack of diverse experiences, poor mental health, addiction, etc., which all affect the independence of our desires in various ways.

Critics of this view might argue that a conception of autonomy is that is broad makes it difficult to determine whether a person is blameworthy or culpable for their actions, as no individual remains untouched by social and cultural influences. Given this, some philosophers reject the idea that we need to determine the particular conditions which render a person’s actions truly ‘their own’.

Maybe autonomy is best thought of as merely one important part of a larger picture. Establishing a more comprehensively equitable society could lessen the pressure on debates around what is required for autonomous action. Doing so might allow for a broadening of the debate, focusing instead on whether particular choices are compatible with the maintenance of desirable societies, rather than tirelessly examining whether or not the choices a person makes are wholly their own.