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Comment by Revanche1367 | Hacker News Reader

>gender is very clearly a social construct and we shouldn't get hung up on colors or names

Why? Is there some reason we shouldn't get "hung up" about social constructs? Can you argue a reason for this without reference to other social constructs?

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Can you argue the reverse, i.e. why we should get hung up on social constructs, without reference to other social constructs?

The reason is we already do, humans like to get hung up about social constructs, we do it all the time, just like we’re doing now talking about social constructs. Talking about social constructs is itself a social construct. So no, I can’t without reference to social constructs and I don’t need to, I’m not the one arguing that social constructs are somehow not worthy of getting hung up about, my point was the opposite, we do so all the time and only for some social constructs do some people feel the need to say that we shouldn’t engage about it because it’s a social construct, even while they are engaging in a social construct (conversation) in order to do so.

> Talking about social constructs is itself a social construct.

No, it's not, and this gives me the distinct impression you don't know what people mean when they talk about "social constructs".

It absolutely is, you're just clueless about pragmatics. There's a whole branch of linguistics centered around the idea of conversations as a means of human communication and it is decidedly a social science. Maybe don't assume you know what you're talking about and form impressions about people while missing basic ideas yourself. I also distinctly get the impression of you being a pseudo-intellectual given you use vague terms without clarifying your own idea of them. How about you define "what people mean"? Sounds very similar to Trumpian "people are saying" imo.

In that case, please help me understand your initial objection:

>> gender is very clearly a social construct and we shouldn't get hung up on colors or names

> Why? Is there some reason we shouldn't get "hung up" about social constructs? Can you argue a reason for this without reference to other social constructs?

How does this question relate to the initial quote? You seem to interpret "we shouldn't get hung up" in some way I don't understand, e.g. as "we should get rid of all social constructs", when it obviously doesn't imply that? Still, why would you ask for something you define to be impossible, without sharing that definition?

You could just voice your critique from the start, and then others could argue with your actual position and interpretation.

Sure, in this context I feel that using something like a color or a name to infer characteristics about the individual person is arbitrarily decided, prone to inaccuracies, and generally does not provide much material benefit. I’m not saying all social constructs are not worth getting hung up on - I do rather like governments / modern social contracts and would not advocate for anarchy - but recognizing and dismissing or deprioritizing some constructs should occur more often. Organized religion largely fits in that bucket, at least to me.

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