Since I answered the original question, I will try also to answer this one. We need to reconsider the phrase "social construction and nothing more", or at least to what you take to be the implications of such a description, that somehow what is socially constructed isn't real. One would need a lot of argument to establish that conclusion. Prima facie, socially constituted facts are no less real than biological or anatomical facts; they are just different. Consider, e.g., facts about political and legal authority. Surely these are socially constituted, but I would not suggest you tell a military tribunal that you can't be guilty of disobeying an order from a superior because social facts are unreal. That should answer question (1), I hope. Similarly, socially constituted facts matter to people every bit as much (and in some cases more) than biological facts. As I pointed out in response to the previous question, the mere fact that gender is a social (not merely anatomical) matter does not imply...

While I agree with Oliver's judgements, I also think many people are genuinely puzzled about how someone could feel as if they had the wrong sort of body, so let me try to say a few things that might help to clarify it. I should say, however, that I am no expert on these issues, and so I'm sure to get some of the established terminology wrong. Let's start with a different sort of example. I am of Irish descent. But I do not think of myself as Irish-American. From my point of view, the fact that many of my ancestors lived in Ireland is just that: a fact about my family's past. For other people, however, being of Irish descent is very important to their sense of who they are. They value Irish traditions and customs, participate in Irish celebrations, and so forth. It is, as we say, part of their identity to be Irish-American. And so, if someone tells a rude joke about "the Irish", I wouldn't really take it personally; I'd just dismiss that person as a jerk. Someone who identifies as Irish-American would,...

Certainly nowadays the law would require the woman to pay alimony in this situation, and I am sure there have been many such cases. I find it hard to see how anyone who wasn't just flatly sexist might think it should be otherwise. Perhaps vestiges of sexist thinking with which we have all been saddled by our society would make our gut reaction a little different, but fortunately we have brains and do not have to be ruled by our guts.

This is the effect of a successful political movement, one that sought to replace the use of "he" and "his", as "gender-neutral" pronouns, with the use of something else. The reason was that people thought that the use of "he" and "his", at least in certain contexts, made readers liable to assume that the pronoun referred to a person of the male persuasion, when it need not. One option is to use something that is truly gender-neutral, such as "he or she", but that is rather verbose. Some people therefore use "s/he", but that is ugly. I've taken to using "s'he", but I'm lonely. And there is a case to be made for "she" and "her", unaltered, as well, namely that it makes one conscious of something of which one might not otherwise have been conscious.

Whether your empirical speculation is correct, it is of course not for philosophers to say. So let's focus on the question. Let's suppose it turns out that women are intrinsically more intelligent than men. Should women then be accorded special treatment as regards education? To suppose it would be just to accord women special treatment in this situation, one must suppose that it would be just to treat me a certain way simply on the ground that I was a member of a group that, as a whole, had certain characteristics I may or may not myself share. For note that it is consistent with the supposition that women, as a group, are intrinsically more intelligent that men, as a group, that I am the most brilliant person in the world. Why I should suffer some educational disadvantage in this case is very unclear. In short: Unless the differences between the groups are so large as to be essentially exclusive, then differential treatment is unjust, because it results in differential treatment of ...

There is very good evidence now that "sexual orientation" has alarge genetic component. Whether it is genetically determined (orbetter, to what extent) is not clear, but most "gay" people reporthaving known of their "orientation" at a fairly young age. So even ifthere are also strong environmental components, that certainly does notimply that one's "sexual orientation" is chosen nor, for that matter,that it could be changed. There is also very good evidence that "sexualorientation" lies on a continuum, and that "gay" and "straight" arejust the two ends of that continuum, with most people falling somewherealong it. I therefore doubt very much that people who lie at the "gay"end choose their "orientation" any more than do the people at the"straight" end. And honestly: Do those of us who are "straight" haveany sense at all that we chose so to be? If not, why should "gay" folkbe any different? As you'll gather from the scare-quotes, I have a problem with the terminology I've been using. Let me explain...