The idea that a “woman is made, not born” has been around as long as feminism as a political ideology has been around. Standard feminist doctrine insists that gender, and the qualities of being masculine or feminine, are imposed entirely by culture. Women are not particularly suited to compassion. Men are not particularly suited to aggression. The predominant patriarchal culture insists that women and men display those characteristics, and so they do, and by changing culture, one can change gender. Feminists stay far away from the field of evolutionary biology and psychology because the evidence from those disciplines strongly suggests that, oops, gender is NOT a social construct. Sexual dimorphism is a simple fact. Men are bigger, faster and stronger than women. They have more muscle mass, more testosterone and a larger bone structure than women. It’s an indisputable fact. It’s also why men and women’s sporting events are strictly segregated. There wouldn’t be ANY women’s sports if they had to compete with men. The idea that perhaps a specific psychology evolved along with that dimorphism sends feminists into a tizzy of denial and obfuscation. The website Jezebel (Celebrity, Sex and Fashion for Women- way to COUNTER those stereotypes about women!) consistently excoriates evolutionary psychology because Nah, Nah, we don’t like the conclusions! http://jezebel.com/5941433/you-can-tell-evolutionary-psychology-isnt-true-because-its-not-true You can go to almost any feminist website and encounter the idea that gender is socially constructed. http://feministing.com/2011/06/20/the-personal-is-political-princess-parties/ http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dialogues/features/1997/evolution_and_the_brain/_2.html If gender is simply a social construct, how then can people be born KNOWING they are the wrong gender? Slate’s Dear Prudence advises a woman whose husband is undergoing gender reassignment surgery, transitioning from a man to a woman, telling her that she is well within her rights to dissolve her marriage. I happen to agree with that advice, but the more interesting thing is HOW does HE know that he’s a SHE? http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/2012/11/dear_prudence_do_i_have_to_stay_with_my_transgender_husband.html I can’t imagine anything more horrifying than KNOWING myself to be a man, trapped in the soft, small body of a woman. It must be an intense personal agony to be in that position, and I fully support the rights of transgendered people to have a very necessary surgical correction to a shocking problem. Transgendered people are deeply, disturbingly sick, and they deserve to have treatment for their sickness. It’s a medical issue, in my opinion. It’s not a cultural issue, although there are probably catalysts in the culture (like artificial hormones) that create the problem in the first place. But it’s a very real problem, and that offers irrefutable evidence that GENDER IS NOT SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED. Most men are men, and they know themselves to be men. Most women are women, and they know themselves to be women. Some men are actually women, and some women are actually men, but everybody knows INTRINSICALLY which gender they are. There is no element of social construction to it. Why then are feminists so insistent that gender is socially constructed? I think it’s because feminism is not a doctrine of equality (that’s not possible, because we ARE different from men, like it or not), but rather one of supremacy. Feminism seeks to define women as not equal to, but better than men. It’s a political ideology determined to supress masculine qualities and venerate feminine ones, and the idea that one CHOOSES whether they are feminine or masculine makes it reasonable to enforce the feminine on everybody. http://www.angryharry.com/esEqualityNotAchievable.htm I wonder about the poor man in the Dear Prudence letter, trapped in the wrong body, who is now going to lose his marriage and his wife. Does he choose such torment? I don’t think so. The existence of transgender people is proof gender is innate. We know who we are. And we all deserve to live in a world where we are allowed to BE who we are. Allowed to be women, and allowed to be men.