Reddit reviews Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions

> Feminism, at least on here, seems to completely ignore those factors and jump straight for 'social construct' with no evidence, no reasoning, and no discussion.

This is a false assertion on your part. There is a lot of very powerful evidence that gender is in fact the product of social forces and has very little to do with biology. This evidence emerges from decades of intensive research by sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and even biologists - who will often point out that while humans are a sexually dimorphic species, the extent of that dimorphism is fairly small.

One of the reasons you might not be seeing this evidence in discussions of gender online is because, frankly, having to stop a discussion to provide links to this exhaustive mountain of evidence every time someone with little knowledge of the material demands to see it is frustrating and tiresome. There are hundreds - thousands - of introductory textbooks from sociology, anthropology, gender studies, and psychology that talk about the social construction of gender; if you want to see the evidence, then look there. Most feminists accept the academic consensus that gender is primarily the product of culture, and because that consensus is grounded in the best possible empirical research, you should accept it too.

Or don't. I'm not your boss. But if you don't accept it, then you should accept that in rejecting the social construction of gender, you're also rejecting the preponderance of evidence, which might not be the best place to plant your flag.

>I think saying it's 100% socially constructed is probably wrong too...

Good thing that's not what most people are saying. Bodies exist. They are the things onto which we inscribe our cultural values. But they are also incredibly malleable and so they are shaped and reshaped by the dictates of culture.

Why do children raised in poverty have poorer health outcomes than those raised in middle class or rich environments? Because poverty correlates with poorer diets, fewer calories consumed per day, and a lack of regular access to gyms or after-school fitness programs. Poor bodies are shaped in different ways than rich bodies because of culture. I mean, hell, the foundation of epidemiology is the recognition that cultural forces have enormous impact on bodies.

Why are men bigger and stronger than women? Biology? Perhaps, but we also cannot overlook the fact that in our society - and in many others - men are expected to consume an average of 300-400 additional calories per day than women. Is this because men are "naturally" bigger and stronger than women, or are men bigger and stronger than women because they've historically had access to higher calorie diets (which we know result in bigger, stronger people)? Do men have more muscle mass because testosterone, or do they have more muscle mass because they are incentivized to be more muscled than women - who are treated worse if their own muscle mass begins to impact their perceived femininity? Men are supposed to be big and strong; women are supposed to be petite and "trim" or "fit but not overly muscled". Men know this and women know this, and our recognition of these normative standards will pressure us to sculpt our bodies in different ways.

What I'm saying is that the cliches of "men are strong because biology, men like blue because culture" is reductionist to the point of being useless. The reality is far, far more complicated than this, but in the end, in light of decades of research into the question of nature v. nurture, the broad consensus is "a little bit of biology, and a whole boatload of culture".

Also: opening up space and providing methodological instruments to allow for the academic study of men and masculinities - something that wasn't even on the horizon until early 3rd wavers rolled onto the scene.

If you're a dude looking for what the 3rd wave has done for men, I'd say that's a pretty big check mark right there.

Here are some resources for you to look at, if you're interested:

1. Masculinities, by R.W. Connell
   
2. The Men and the Boys, by R.W. Connell
   
3. Men's Lives, edited by Michael Kimmel and Michael Messner
   
4. Men and Masculinities, a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted entirely to the examination of men and men's lives.
   
5. Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions, by Lisa Wade and Myra Marx Ferree. Features a whole lot of discussion about men and masculinities
   
   This is just the tip of the iceberg of academic research on men and men's lives, and the overwhelming majority of it is a direct result of the revolutions in feminist thought brought forth by what we now think of as 3rd wave feminists.
   
   Now bear in mind that this is all academic stuff, but think about what that means for a moment: each semester, tens of thousands of students from all over the world, are asked to think critically and sociologically (or anthropologically or psychologically, whatever your preferred brand happens to be) about men, men's lives, and the issues facing men and boys today. The textbook I'm currently working on has a whole chapter that focuses on the challenges young men and boys face in North American schools, and the textbook I'm using to teach a sociology of gender course this year devotes about half of its space to examinations of men of all shapes, sizes, orientations, and expressions. That's huge. That's really huge. It's huge because action - and activism - need to be grounded in knowledge, and that's what 3rd wave feminists have helped to provide; knowledge of the unique and often serious challenges facing men and boys today.
   
   So that's what 3rd wave feminism has done for men and boys in academia. I'm sure there are resources around online that can help expand on this.

Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions is a college textbook but it's chapters on men and masculinity are very informative and easy to understand.