Is Gender a Social Construct? in 7 Minutes

Gender is a very touchy subject these days - whether you believe it's a social construct or you don't. Both sides of the argument seem to overlook evidence on the opposing view. In this short video I'll go over some of the main arguments and evidence that both support the idea of gender as a social construct and refute it.
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Summary:
In recent years many social scientists have begun to believe that gender identity is not a stable and fixed trait. They argue that it is socially constructed and can vary over time. Some have even argued that there are more than two genders and have created additional classifications by using terms such as cis-gender, transgender, gender queer, non-binary, gender fluid, agender, etc.
Anyways, the two competing ideas about whether gender is a social construct come from the familiar nature vs. nurture debate. In other words, is it our environment that makes us who we are or our biology?
Those who say gender is a social construct often argue the following:
1. There are differences in gender norms in different cultures. For example there are subcultures in India that identify three genders. And in Chile some believe you must channel another gender to accomplish certain tasks. The list goes on. According to the academics Candace West and Don Zimmerman gender is “an emergent feature of social situations: both as an outcome of and a rationale for various social arrangements, and as a means of legitimating one of the most fundamental divisions of society" (West & Zimmerman, 1977, p. 126). By the way I looked up Candace West on Rate My Professor and she only got a 2.1 out of 5. Would you eat at a restaurant that got such a low Yelp score? I don’t think so. Old Donny didn’t do much better.
2. Language forms our reality. The words man and woman are simply words to describe certain phenomena, but don’t describe every option or experience of all people in our culture. Phrases like “be a man” or “boys don’t cry” are used to pressure boys into conforming to traditional masculine gender roles while “run like a girl” and other women-centered phrases pressure girls into behaving in a way that is considered traditionally feminine.
Others say that gender is a feature of nature, not nurture. They say:
1. Being exposed to testosterone and estrogen will make the way we behave inherently different. For example, there are studies that show male babies and female babies behave differently given different stimulus. Male babies tend to stare longer at mechanic objects while female babies tend to stare longer at faces which may explain why women and men tend to find themselves in different career paths -men often gravitate toward science and engineering while women toward health care and education.
2. The reason some women and men identify as a gender opposite of their sex is because sometimes nature has hiccups. For example some female fetuses are exposed to large quantities of male hormones and develop Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia - a fancy term for a disease that may alter the sex organs of people. Also, there are members of the trans-community that believe gender is biological. Some transwomen have stated that while they were brought into this world as men, from the get go they felt biologically that they were women, and thus behaved as a woman. Their argument is that if gender was socially constructed, then as a boy who felt like a girl they would have been socially pressured into feeling like boys. However, despite being socially pressured into feeling like boys these transgender women have always felt like women despite their sex being male.
3. A boy named David Reimar whose circumcision went horribly wrong, was given sex reassignment surgery as a 22 month year old and was raised as a girl named Brenda. Brenda was given girl toys, but always seemed to gravitate toward more traditionally boy toys. Eventually as a teenager she expressed her suicidal thoughts to her parents, and her father told her what had happened. Despite the female hormones and socialized pressures to be a girl, Brenda identified as a male and changed her name back to David when she was 14. Years later David started treatment to reverse the reassignment given to him as a 22 month year old and married a woman. Unfortunately years later after battling with a failed marriage and depression, at 38 years old he killed himself. This shows that despite the social pressures of David’s parents and doctors to identify as a girl - he still felt like a boy.