Gender essentialism

Gender essentialism is a theory that is used to examine the attribution of distinct, fixed, intrinsic qualities to women and men. In this theory, based in essentialism, there are certain universal, innate, biologically or psychologically based features of gender that are at the root of observed differences in the behavior of men and women. In Western civilization, it is suggested in writings going back to ancient Greece. With the advent of Christianity, the earlier Greek model was expressed in theological discussions as the doctrine that there are two distinct sexes, male and female, created by God, and that individuals are immutably one or the other. This view remained largely unchanged until the middle of the 19th century. This changed the locus of the origin of the essential differences from religion to biology, in Sandra Bem's words, "from God's grand creation [to] its scientific equivalent: evolution's grand creation," but the belief in an immutable origin had not changed. Alternatives to gender essentialism were proposed in the mid-20th century. During second-wave feminism, Simone de Beauvoir and other feminists in the 1960s and 70s theorized that gender differences were socially constructed. In other words, people gradually conform to gender differences through their experience of the social world. More recently, Judith Butler theorized that people construct gender by performing it. While still strongly criticized by many feminist theorists, gender essentialism sheds light on social constructs surrounding gender that are found in society as well as societal views on sex and sexuality. The gender essentialist claim of biology theorizes that gender differences are rooted in nature and biology. Historical views based in gender essentialism claim that there are biological causes for the differences between men and women, such as women giving birth and men going out and hunting. This claim is analyzed in detail by Emily Martin in her article Medical Metaphors of Women’s Bodies: Menstruation and Menopause.

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Social construction of gender

The social construction of gender is a theory in sociology about the manifestation of cultural origins, mechanisms, and corollaries of gender perception and expression in the context of interpersonal and group social interaction. Specifically, the social construction of gender theory stipulates that gender roles are an achieved "status" in a social environment, which implicitly and explicitly categorize people and therefore motivate social behaviors.

Postgenderism

Postgenderism is a social, political and cultural movement which arose from the eroding of the cultural, psychological, and social role of gender, and an argument for why the erosion of binary gender will be liberatory. Postgenderists argue that gender is an arbitrary and unnecessary limitation on human potential, and foresee the elimination of involuntary psychological gendering in the human species as a result of social and cultural designations and through the application of neurotechnology, biotechnology, and assistive reproductive technologies.

Anti-gender movement

The anti-gender movement is an international movement which opposes what it refers to as "gender ideology", "gender theory" or "genderism", terms which cover a variety of issues and have no coherent definition. Members of the anti-gender movement primarily include those of the political right-wing and far right, such as right-wing populists, conservatives, and Christian fundamentalists. Anti-gender rhetoric has seen increasing circulation in trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) discourse since 2016.

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