Understanding Social Constructivism and Essentialism

It is the idea that social categories develop in social contexts.

It is the idea that naturally occurring sets of traits defines a particular group of people and that these characteristics are unchanging over time and across cultures.

"The Egg and The Sperm" by Emily Martin argues that the egg is portrayed as a damsel in distress while the sperm competes to be the first one to reach her. Society has fabricated these ideas.

Sexuality has been constructed by society. Sabine Lang, in her piece on homosexuality and Native American cultures, says that before colonization, "gender variance" and homosexuality were accepted as part of the natural order of things. There were four different genders. Colonization and western influence led to the disappearance of acceptance and lesbians/gays have to go into hiding. This proves that gender is a socially constructed concept. It can be different in different cultures.

Ian Haney Lopez, in his "The social construction of race: some observations on illusion, fabrication, and choice" says that race is not based on genetic makeup. The concept of race arose from societal ideologies in a process called racial fabrication. Human forces produced this idea of race, and it compares people to other people. It cannot happen in isolation of a single group.

"The Bell Curve" proposed to statistically prove that Blacks are less intelligent than Whites, even though it has now been proven that there are no biological differences between races.

"Women's Brains" by Stephen Jay Gould critiques Broca's scientific work attempting to explain women's inferior intelligence based on the hypothesis that women have smaller brains. The hypothesis proved correct, but research was faulty due to various factors such as a small sample size.

"The Ethics of Genetic Research on Sexual Orientation" by Stein and Shuklenek argues that there is a posibility that sexuality and sexual orientation are direct results of biological differences between gays/lesbians.

Positivism is research that assumes a distance between the researcher and the object of study. The absence of emotion ethics and values should be separate from research. Scientists have trouble separating themselves from their personal biases.

Social constructivism places blame on women for their inferior treatment on society and societal norms rather than on any one specific biological characteristic of the female body.