Review of John Skalko's "The Incoherence of Gender as a Social Construct"

John Skalko has a short paper out titled, "The Incoherence of Gender as a Social Construct". He wants to argue that there are good reasons to believe that gender is not a social construct. 

First, he defines a social construction as an entity whose meaning is based on the collective views of society, and not on natural categories. Skalko gives the example of sheriffs. There are no sheriffs out in nature, but rather society invents and defines the role. I think this is a good example as it clearly avoids the error of believing that all social constructs must be unreal. Sheriffs are very real. 

Second, he notes that social constructs are socially relative. What makes a thing true is contingent upon its society. So, if we say, "It is illegal to drive on the left side of the road" this is true depending on which society you find yourself in. And there are some cases in which this is true, and some other cases in which it is false. Applied to gender, there well may be places in which "Bruce is a woman" is true, but it may also be the case that there are some societies in which "Bruce is a woman" is false. It would be culturally relative. 

Skalko then begins to flesh out some of the problems. The first problem is against those who say that gender is innate and unchanging. If gender is a social construct, and social constructs can change, then gender can change. So there is a tension here. It has to be one or the other, but it cannot be both. 

A second problem is that since some societies identify gender with sex, and social constructions cannot really be wrong within their own social context, the proponent of Gender as a Social Construct really cannot say that it is incorrect to identify gender with sex. And this would be counter to the commonly made claims of the proponents of Gender as a Social Construct. And Skalko identifies his own social group as identifying sex with gender, and so Gender as a Social Construct simply isn't true for him, and he can't be said to be wrong. 

Does he show that the position is incoherent? Perhaps it is incoherent for those who say that gender is innate and unchanging but also hold that gender is socially relative. However, I don't know anyone who holds that view, nor have I come across that in proponents who argue along the lines of gender being a social construction (Dembroff, Saul, Diaz-Leon, etc). The link to which he cites in the footnote for the Human Rights Campaign seems to have expired as well. So I worry that he may be attacking a straw-man here. Sure, there might be some people who hold to this view, but that would be very low hanging fruit. So, the charge of incoherence can easily be avoided if you just don't say gender is unchanging. 

His second argument seems to be too quick. It seems to be a common move among Gender as a Social Construct advocates is that there must be moral and political considerations in how we understand gender. And such moral considerations are not culturally relative, and so long as our political considerations are grounded in moral considerations, those can't be too culturally relative either. So, if for example you want to say the misgendering someone is immoral, then that's an objective consideration you have to take into account. Or if you want to say that the most relevant criterion that society should take into consideration is self-identification, then that's an objective aspect of the social context. This would be similar to saying that while each nation must have its own socially constructed (relative) laws, they must at least be (objective) moral or not evil. So likewise, while each society has its own take on gender, it could be argued that it must at least include moral considerations like affirming transgender people (a controversial proposition). So, there is an route out that Gender as a Social Construct people can take here, and it would be too simplistic to brush it aside with general criticisms about social relativism. 

But I understand it was a short paper.