Warning!
This blog will contain a middle-aged man talking about TikTok.
Yes! This blog is going to involve TikTok, okay! I can talk about TikTok and not have to reverse a baseball cap, cross my arms and summon an ice-cold phrase like “your cappin, bruh”.
Stay. Don’t go. That first paragraph may only have been funny in my head.
This month’s blog is a blend of philosophy, sociology and how both those disciplines informed a parenting opportunity to explain a few more ‘whys’ about the world.
If you have teenagers, live with teenagers, or teenagers play a role in your life – it’s good to project a presence in their sphere of influence before they wipe you out completely with one swish of their finger. Fortunately for us, our eldest is still happy to include us (selectively) in his world and it is not uncommon for him to emerge from his bedroom and come downstairs to talk about the latest TikTok encounter that has left him perplexed. Before I get into this – can I just state that I like TikTok (which, given my demographic, has just dropped its share price by 80%). But I do! What I really like is that it does provoke debate. For our eldest (let’s call him ‘Number One) TikTok represents a portal into the wider, more complex world, the world that we ‘parent-bots’ are obligated to prepare him for. So, let’s take this opportunity to dig deep, unpick and hopefully enlighten.
“Come back Number One, and unroll your eyes from the back of your head…this might be interesting”
A topic that has yet to fully shake itself into some semblance of order, and one that has irked him for longer than previous videos is the subject of ‘neo-pronouns’.
Neo-Pronouns or ‘new’ pronouns are an extension of the established singular personal pronouns such as ‘he and she’. ‘He and She’ refer to the establish binary genders of male and female. However, for persons who don’t identify with either male or female binary constructs, (persons referred to as ‘non binary’) ‘neo-pronouns’ offer an alternative ident crucial to their well-being and sense of self. For more insight on what these neo-pronouns look like, check out the link below:
https://www.unf.edu/lgbtqcenter/Pronouns.aspx
Number One had no problem with this, his problem was with some of the more bizarre neo-pronoun epithets being requested via TikTok such as rabbit, pussy-cat and kitkins but I could see that the bigger question was how established truths taught in school and reinforced by social interactions (like boys are ‘he’ and girls are ‘she’) could suddenly be so questionable. What other established truths could be unmasked? Was anything real?
Well, Number One, there’s a handful of threads there we just don’t have time to pull on right now. However, there’s a sociological perspective which might offer an insight into how it can be that whilst it’s obvious what men and women ‘are’ – we can still say that there’s a fluidity in their meaning.
It’s about a sociological perspective called ‘social constructionism’ and its daft Uncle ‘Post-Modernism’ and rational Aunt, ‘Epistemology’. I don’t know if the whole family analogy’s gonna work here – so let’s stick to Social Constructionism and put the ‘Uncle, Aunt’ and the history lesson back in the box.
Social Constructionism rejects ‘meta-truths’ such as pink is for girls, blue for boys and gender is objective based upon the observable and universal truth that girl babies are born with vaginas’ and boy babies have penises. Put as simply as possible: social constructionism is the perspective that our reality (as we know it) is socially constructed – put together by ourselves and others both from our personal sphere (family, school, church) and the larger spheres (government, media) that form our society. It’s not a clandestine, Rothschild operation! It’s a sociological perspective based upon previous philosophical concepts and good old fashioned research. It means that how we understand the reality we daily experience is based upon not only our own subjective experience of the world (what we ourselves touch, taste, see and hear) but the sharing of ‘consensual truths’ (that we all agree the grass is green) and shared semantic truths (how we name things and what those names mean). So we have blend of what we think is so, and what we all fundamentally agree is so.
We must be wary, however, that possibly all semantic truths (taught definitions of things) were given to us by other folks who themselves – constructed those truths. For example – if you want to be a successful fashion model you will need to be thin. Why? Because the people that dominate the modelling industry in recent modern history have claimed the language and the construct of what modelling is. Therefore, if I told you to think of a catwalk model – your mind may picture a tall, thin woman.
We should accept that social constructionism is a solid enough theory to give it some attention. It has been of tremendous use in challenging prejudice, racism and sexism – questioning authority and demanding deep dives into the semantics, cultural norms and traditional values which rule our society and dominate the interactions within our personal and collective lives.
Men and Women both have different reproductive organs, given different names – names we all agree on. But if we were to transplant the male reproductive organ directly onto a woman – would that automatically make her a man? It intuitively doesn’t feel like the reproductive organ does enough to confer gender. It should do because a man has a penis and we all know its called a penis and all agree to what it does and where it is – so that’s enough for a human to be a man, right? The answer of course is that our sexuality and our gender identity is not simply the clump of cell, skin and muscle that make our private parts. We know there are a constellation of psychological, mental, emotional, environmental and cultural stars, creating and defining our sexual and gender identity. And each of those stars are prone to change and are constructed socially, and because they’ve been constructed socially, there’s a chance their semantic construct (what they are named) and the shared ‘truths’ about them (what we all agree on to be so) has been created by powerful persons in the past.
For example, when the powerful maxim that men are the breadwinners and women stayed at home to raise children became societally fixed – there was a consensus on its truth. A truth buoyed by biologists (only women can have babies) evolution theory (men are genetically programmed to hunt and provide) and religious doctrine (Adam the first human in the image of God – man as head of household) and ta-hah…the labor preferences (where each gender’s contribution to society is best served) between men and women became as pronounced and as set as the physiological one and in fact; became an essential component.
But that labor difference of a man and woman’s place in society is not an objective biological truth. It isn’t so that having a vagina and a physical ability to lactate means you stay and raise children. Of course women can have babies, raise a family and work full time and of course men can have babies (adoption ) raise a family and work full time – so the physiological differences are not necessary upon what each gender can do in their family and their societal roles. What made us believe it to be this way? Those who dominate the agenda – dominate the language. As a nice analogy, let’s have Meryl Streep explain it to us:
But even the concrete assertion that our genitalia confirm objective gender can be questioned. Consider the rare condition of ‘ambigious genitilia’. For this condition neither sex is clearly present. The social constructionist has no problems here as they know that gender is socially constructed therefore the person growing and developing with this condition will be defined as more than what the condition delineates for the confused biologist. For whilst the pervasive and powerful elements of society will label and construct meanings for the child, the child as they grow into a more sentient and rational adult will also have (hopefully) the power to construct their own meanings and ways of being. For the objective realist – the lack of certainty of a condition such as ‘ambigious genitillia’ will mean them putting a reluctant foot into a world which questions the kind of grand truths the objective realist swears by every day.
However, this is where I should stop pitting the two sides against each other and to pull back from an ivory tower over-view effect. In the real world, of course we accept that some things appear universally real and agreeing on that is important and equally some are up for debate, whether morally or in terms of their existence. We need to consent on shared knowledge, but we also need to recognize that not all truths are universal. And this is key to social justice campaigns such as gender equality. If some narrow view of evolutionary bioethics is to be believed than men were meant to be hunter gathers and women child bearers and homemakers. Social constructionism saved us from such a myopic and limiting view of the role of the two sexes and now we push back against any suggestion that there should be set gender roles based upon physiognomy. What happened next when it comes to LGBQT and transgender is the next stage in our progress in better communicating and understanding each other’s differences.
Conclusion:
This isn’t a blow by blow account of my conversation with Number One son! I introduced him to how it is possible that seemingly irrational things can exist. Of course men can have babies for what is a man? Of course we can jump to the moon if we employ logical possibilities instead of physical possiblities. Billions of humans all over the globe put their decision-making processes and moral responsibilities into the hands of a divine being that cannot be objectively seen or measured. – and for those rationale theists, there’s nothing confusing about that at all. The purpose of it all is about how we wish to be seen and wish to be heard – flexing our freedom of thought and our sacred individuality. If a TikTokker is laying out their neo-pronoun stance because that is how they wish to be seen and that is how they wish to be heard then there is no harm in that.
But running that freedom of thought and expression, powering that ability to question established truths and co-construct new ideas is the engine of social constructionism. It is not a perfect engine – but it has been a charioteer of change which whilst discomforting for some individuals; social constructionism drives, somewhat ironically, individuality itself.
StoatAubergine 
Leave a comment