Are race and gender social constructs?

In this episode, we discuss the idea of social constructs, and deconstruct (ha) what that actually means when we talk about things like race and gender, and how the two topics are linked.

Articles discussed this month are:
"Biological reality’: What genetics has taught us about race"
"The Social Construction of Sex" 

If you have a question for us, then you can submit it through this form.

Music used is:
Who Do You Think I Think You Are? by Mini Vandals 

Transcript

H: Welcome back to another episode of D&I Digest. I'm Henry, I use he/they pronouns.

T: And I'm Teagan, and I use she/her pronouns.

H: We make up the diversity and inclusion team at Anchor, which is an organization that specializes in housing and care for over 55s. So today we're going to talk a little bit about social constructs.

T: Big topic.

H: Which is a big big topic!  And yeah, to kind of start us off a little bit. I thought it'd be helpful to kind of talk around social constructs as a bit of an abstract first.

T: Sure, yeah.

H: So, to define it, I guess, I mean, the articles do go into a bit more detail with this, but  it's essentially something that humans use to shape society, right? Like it's something that's not innate in itself. So things like money  is a social construct because it only works when you've put social value on it.

T: Yeah.

H: Time in the way that we think of it is a social construct because a minute means nothing to the universe.

T: It's true. So yeah, we're focusing today on  whether race is a social construct and whether gender is a social construct. So, do you have any thoughts on those things, first of all? I know we've talked many a time about this.

T: Yeah, I mean we've mentioned previously in this podcast, particularly when I go, you I don't like to use the word race because it's a social construct and  what I'm sure will explain more of what I mean throughout this podcast today. But the same goes for gender. And I do think that we, like you say, we place social value on things when actually, if we hadn't, what would change? What would be better? Would there be more equality? Would there be less injustice for people who are from those marginalized communities? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, yeah. So yeah, I think it's interesting to try and deconstruct, ha, some of this and really get to understand what it is we say when we talk about race and when we talk about gender and what it actually means really.

H: It's one of those things where when you pull at one thread you're like the whole thing unravels very quickly and then you're just left with like a big spool and you're like oh no. What have we done!

T: Exactly and then there's no pattern to try and put it back together again.

H: Yeah once you realise kind of how silly some of the things are and arbitrary some of the things are you're like oh why why is this in place? 

T: Yeah absolutely.

MUSIC

H: So our first article today is from the BBC in April 2025, so a very recent one, and it's written by Adam Rutherford, who is a geneticist who specialises in the history of race science.  And the article is called 'Biological Reality: What Genetics Have Taught Us About Race'. So it sets the article out in the context of Trump's opposition to the Smithsonian's exhibition called 'The Shape of Power Stories of Race and American Sculpture', which sounds like a really interesting exhibition. 

T: Oh, it does, yeah.

H: But basically this exhibition promotes the idea that race is not a biological reality but a social construct, stating that race is a human invention.

T: Yes.

H: So, obviously certain people have problems with this.

T: Yeah, I mean, I think there are only problems with that statement if you are someone that believes in a superiority complex around physical differences.

H: Exactly that. 

T: That's the only way I can say it, you know, like there's no other way that you would believe that another human being is inferior or superior to you based on different characteristics, physical characteristics. So, yeah, I mean it's no surprise to me that Trump does not like that. Yeah. So the article says that the Smithsonian's statement is absolutely correct, not controversial in either science or history, and goes on to give a very abridged history of genealogy, and it's still quite long, so if you are more interested in this, please go and read the full article because I have chopped a lot out. So to abridge this abridged history, in the 18th century, the botanist Karl Linnaeus gave us the classification system we use today with genus and species, but he also introduced another tier of classification for homo sapiens. So we've got like the broad humans and then he's added another tier in there. And he classified four types of human, designated primarily by pigmentation, but also by continental landmass, which is-  Yeah, that face- obviously it's not accurate. 

T: Already this is odd. Alarm bells are ringing.

H: Yes, and it did also provide the roots of race designations such as referring to people as Black and White. The other terms, were two others, are deemed racist by today's standards so I'm not going to repeat them. What is important to note though is that his  work, which was Systemae Naturae, Linnaeus added to these previous physical traits and so initially it was just based on pigmentation. He was then like, really great idea, I'm going to add portrayals of behaviours. 

T: Right.

H: Yeah so these became the basis of scientific racism, surprising nobody.  So over the next 200 years, we see people trying to redefine those categories with pseudoscientific interpretations of craniometry,

T: Ugh, yep.

H: Yeah, a little bit of phrenology, and other aspects of racial essentialism, which obviously all placed White Europeans as superior because it was written by a White European. 

T: Yeah, the article points out that obviously judging Linnaeus and his contemporaries by today's standards is something to be wary of, but as a foundational text of modern biology, it's undeniable that introducing a hierarchical classification system for humans is racist, and left an indelible mark on following centuries, which I thought was very... I don't know, I love the phrasing of it.

T: Poignant.

H: Yeah.

T: Yeah, I mean, that is odd. I'm really pleased that we can now undo a lot of that work. And actually, we know that we can actually just call this pseudoscience. There's no grounding in actual scientific fact whatsoever.

H: Yeah, completely.
T: And  as a bit of a side note, there is a fantastic documentary on the BBC at the moment called Human.  And it goes through the general evolution of how we are and look today and it's absolutely fantastic. I can't recommend it enough. It's really, really interesting. But it definitely dispels some of the myths that we've just talked about there in terms of what humans looked like or how they might look like in terms of different geography.

H: How they acted as well. Yeah, obviously, I feel like this is a really obvious thing to mention, but the 18th century, there was a really big thing that was happening. You know, it helped to have pseudoscientific backing

T: Yeah, it did.

H: To say that white Europeans are superior because it justifies a lot of stuff so 

T: Exactly yeah.
H: So Charles Darwin began to unpick these ideas in his 1871 book, 'The Descent of Man', where he argued that there was a lot of continuity in the traits of people who were supposedly of discrete races.  In the 20th century, molecular biology and genetics were able to dismantle that biological concept of race, and that the terms that had been in use for several centuries bore very little meaningful relation to genetics.  So now we know that genetic differences follow ancestral lines, they can differ by geographic location,  they can be traced through historic migration,  and we also know that there is more genetic diversity in the people of recent African descent than in the rest of the world put together.  So  that includes genes involved in pigmentation as well. So it really had no founding whatsoever. 

T: No, it's not really, it's not really a solid, a solid theory, is it?

H: Theory-bunked.

T: Yeah. 

H: So it is by consensus usage and history that we continue to use the term Black, making it a social construct. It's really not a useful term biologically, but it is really important socially and culturally, and it has biologically meaningful consequences. So for example, particularly in medical racism, which we've mentioned before, like the impact of COVID on Black, South Asian and American Hispanic people. This article was American. It was  disproportionately more severe because they are disproportionately represented in lower tiers of socioeconomic status.

T: That's right.

H: So I quite like the phrasing of while it's got no biological founding, it's got biologically meaningful consequences. It's a nice phrase, I think.

T: Yes. It's the environment isn't it? There's always two things that shape the person that you are. One of them is genetics, the other one is your environmental factors. The consequences of being someone who's from a global majority background in this world are massive because of things like this, because we have years of years of theories that outwardly support this idea of  inferior  people under the category of human. So yeah, I think that was a real life consequence. We see it all the time. We see it  in housing, we see it in education, and we see it in how people accumulate wealth as well. So it's really important that we keep having that conversation around terms like Black being a social construct and having what we view as fundamental differences between two people that don't share similar characteristics- very strange.

H: Yes.

T: But it is where we are in modern society and I don't think that will change massively for a very long time.

H: No, I was thinking, yeah, you'd have to erase cultural memory to do it and all of the structures that are in place like you said like education, medicine everything. Like you'd literally have to start with a blank slate.

T: Yeah.

H: Which is optimistic I think at best. It was really interesting because obviously this article was focusing on America.

T: Yeah. 

H: Obviously the genetics don't change depending on where you are in  the world, but I've just finished the book 'Brit(ish)' by Afua Hirsch-

T: Great book.

H: Oh, it's so good. But she talks a lot about what you said about kind of the financial implications and the fact that it is so ingrained and again those kind of social constructs have very real repercussions, and are sewn into society. You have to  pull apart the whole thing to be able to get them out. 

T: Exactly.
H: Very interesting stuff.

T: It's great book. She's fantastic author and speaker generally and all of her books I can highly recommend. There's not one that I've read that I thought, well, that was drivel. All of them were brilliant. In a similar vein to 'Brit(ish)', Natives by Akala is absolutely superb as well, especially uncovering this particular topic.

H: Yeah. I think it's interesting that they mention the idea of like the pseudoscience kind of that backs these things up as well because we've  recently got the whole age verification thing.  It's essentially phrenology. It's like looking at the shape of your face and decides how old you are and whether you're suitable to look at 18+ material online particularly it's facial recognition features which dressed up phrenology right? Like it's interesting because you do see a difference in the way that it picks up different facial structures and subsequently the content that they are able to access. So a lot of these ideas kind of resurface with different justifications behind them.

T: Yes. Yeah, they do.

H: And it's weird, odd. Odd behaviour.

T: It is. It's like you said though, it's been used  to justify the oppression of global majority people in so many ways, so many avenues, so many different time periods as well that this has been done. And I think that it's no different now with Trump turning around and saying that he doesn't like this exhibition because why would he? It holds up a mirror to a belief system that is not backed by science. It's really difficult to swallow if that's been your entire...

H: Campaign.

T: Yeah, campaign and upbringing, you know. If that's firmly what you've  believed for the biggest time, you're not going to be very comfortable with the scientific truth, are you?

H: Yeah, and if that's the thing that gives you your power as well, like, obviously you're going to be reluctant to acknowledge when that's challenged.

T: Yeah, absolutely.

MUSIC

H: Our second article is called The Social Construction of Sex by Alice Dreger, who is a historian, a bioethist and an author. It was written in 2014 and I deliberately picked an older article for this one because recently there's been a lot of stuff on this topic and it was quite hard to trawl through the drivel. I also kind of wanted something predating like, the trend, if you like? So yeah, deliberately an older article. I will say that because of that potentially, some of her language is a little bit clumsy.

T: Okay.

H: And actually that's something that I'll probably mention a bit later. So Dreger starts off by saying that she's got into some conversations with people who have argued that sex is a social construct and she doesn't believe that, but the way that we choose to categorize and delineate males, females and others is basically a social decision.

T: I would agree. I don't think sex is a social construct.

H: I agree.

T: I think gender is.

H: Exactly that.

T: And they are different.

H: So I think this is a really key point for the whole article actually because there were a few times where she uses sex and gender quite interchangeably. Because vastly, I understand and agree with what she is saying. I don't agree with the way that she is saying it.

T: Well, mean, fundamentally,  sex and gender are different and they are not interchangeable, so what she's saying probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

H: Yeah. And I'm wondering if this is a result of it being 2014 and the fact that it wasn't such common parlance to be like we are differentiating sex and gender. It was, but it was quite scientific I guess?

T: Sure.

H: Like it was a different conversation to be having whereas now it's quite in the everyday I guess, or more so than it used to be. But yeah, so she says that obviously most babies have recognisably gendered genitalia, but some babies have versions of these organs that are in between. Nature doesn't care about human categories, so therefore, like, it's the labels that we put on them that are socially constructed, because scientists, doctors, midwives, judges, they're the people who have decided what counts as male, female, or other based essentially on the size of someone's penis or the chromosomes that someone may or may not have. But again, Dreger says that such decisions are based on social need. People want their anatomical categories neat, but nature isn't. So yeah, she kind of summarizes that first chunk of saying sex is real because there is biological truth to the way that someone is. But the borders that humans draw on sex categories are completely invented, I'm so with her up to this point.

T: Yes, by its very nature, intersex people do not fit into a category where it is male or female. So how can we then neatly have these two binary categories? 

H: Yeah, exactly. And I don't understand why she's saying some people say sex is a social construct because-

T: Do they!?

H: I don't- I've never heard this!

T: I don't think they do.

H: So yeah, this is kind of where I'm like a bit on the fence about the article itself because I don't think that's a conversation that's ever been had.

T: No.

H: She then moves on to talk about gender and this is obviously where we kind of get a bit more into the conversation that we're trying to have. And she says that social scientists break down gender into two ideas, gender roles and gender identities. So gender roles are the parts that people are expected to play in social settings and are social constructions.

T: Yeah.

H: Yep. So she goes on to say that social gender roles may be manifestations of our individual development from conception onwards.

T: Okay.

H: And our evolution, essentially. So she claims that the expectations of gender roles may be evolutionary and genetic.

T: Uhhhhhh.

H: This is where she loses me quite significantly.

T: Uhhh, no. No.

H: Her evidence for this, I say evidence quite loosely, her evidence for this is that there is a lot of consistency in gender roles across cultures. For example, boys playing with toys representing weapons and girls playing with toys representing cooking and parenting.
T: No, that's because that's what we give little boys to play with and that's what we give little girls to play with. It's not cultural.

H: Well, yes-

T: It is a human thing. It's because we constructed gender around it.

H: Exactly. This is again where she loses me. It's like she doesn't  take it out of the context of the fact that we exist as humans. So like she's kind of like, well, obviously all children don't meet those expectations, but they're consistent. And it's like, yeah, but society is consistent in those aspects. She's talking about across cultures, but they are also places that at one point might have been in the empire.

T: Also, yeah, right, thank you. Also, which cultures is she looking at? Because I refuse to believe that she's looked at enough cultures to decide that she's seen a pattern where little girls play with cleaning and kitchen products, and little boys play with guns and knives. Like, I just do not think that she has seen enough variants of culture. 

H: And also through time as well.

T: Through time. Odd sentiment. Children like to play with toys.

H: Children like to play with the toys they are given.

T: Yeah, they like to be stimulated. It's great for their development. What toys we choose to give them...

H: Yes. And I think this is, is an interesting kind of conversation because you often, and she mentions it later actually, in the idea of, well, we've tried to raise our child in a more neutral setting but they still go- she still goes for the princess toys and it's like cool she doesn't 

T: Because she hasn't grown up in a sphere of your own making.

H: Does she have friends has she watched tv has she heard songs like unless this child -

T: I fear this is glaringly obvious

H: - Is growing up in a vacuum, which I really hope they're not because they won't be doing much growing up, they're going to be influenced by society and it feels very obvious to say that but it seems to be missing from this argument?

T: Well yeah, massively. I'm not trying to come across as completely flippant, but I do just think she's being incredibly short-sighted about the whole thing.

H: It feels like a creation of an argument that wasn't being had.

T: Yeah, very much so. 

H: She then comes to gender identity.

T: Okay, good.

H: And she says that she used to think we were taught to feel, act and behave like girls and boys  and that gender identity is a social construct, but she doesn't think that anymore. She thinks that we are taught some of these things, but biological origins teach us this as much as our gender educations.

T: Can I have an example?

H: You certainly can. So she has seen lots of people raised with strict gender roles who didn't relate to the gender assigned to them. So trans people, which I believe this is what she means by that. Or gender non-conforming people. But also she's seen that prenatal hormone levels correlate with gender type behaviours, gender identities and sexual orientation. And I find it very interesting that she's mentioned this as her quote unquote evidence. Essentially, she's using correlation to justify this. 

T: Right.

H: Which is something the previous article made a very big point of saying correlation does not equal cause.

T: Yeah.

H: That's the evidence.

T: Can you give me a sort of like real world example of what she's trying to say?

H: No. No I cannot.

T: Because it's nonsense.

H: Because it doesn't make sense.

T: Okay, so I am a woman, right, and I have been socialised as a little girl from a young age. What is she saying that my biology tells me as someone who is assigned female at birth and has grown up as a little girl then into a woman, what is she saying that my evolution, inverted commas, has done to shape my gender identity?

H: Great question, Teagan. So the example that she kind of gives, and I'm probably going to butcher this a little bit, is around... it's the correlation point, and that's where it all falls apart as well, because it's correlation, and that doesn't mean anything.

T: No.

H: Well, not in this case. But she's essentially saying like there have been instances where people's hormone levels have correlated or shown consistency with things like their sexual orientation. So there are moments where hormone levels, again, I don't know the ins and outs of this, but have been like, oh, okay, all of the people who identify as cis and gay have similar  hormone levels. 

T: Right, okay.

H: So it is purely correlation.

T: What on earth has that got to do with gender identity?

H: Very little.

T: Because they're still men.

H: Yeah, yeah.  And again, it just kind of errs a little bit too on the... Well clearly they're slightly feminised. And that's. She's lost me.

T: And that's just misogyny that.

H: Yeah, it is. 

T: That is just her own internal misogyny coming to the forefront. 

H: Yeah. This is where the article loses me. At the beginning I'm like, well yeah. Sex is  real. Gender identity is made up because people put labels on stuff and then she kind of digs deeper and in a very strange direction. I was like, I was with you in the first paragraph and then you start putting words in different contexts.

T: It's bizarre.

H: And as well like through all of this, the latter half of this conversation she's talking about males and females which already I don't like but she's saying males and gender identity in the same breath and it's like, those are different. So like her language is quite convoluted  and it feels a bit like a creation of an argument that was never being had, that she's trying to argue based on correlation.
T: It's odd. The whole thing is odd and I'm not sure she even knows what her point is.

H: I think that's... I would agree. And that's how it comes across. Whether that's because I'm reading this in 2025 and it was written in 2014, I do not know. I am willing to give it a benefit of the doubt. I am unsure though because I've not been able to find any of her future work to kind of agree or anything.

T: Which is kind of suspicious.

H: But, I will say as well, like, a lot of the articles I was looking through that were more recent read a lot similarly to this.

T: Really?

H: It was a lot of,  "Well I'm calling this gender identity stuff nonsense because... hormone levels?!"

T: of gay men apparently!

H: Yeah they all read very very similarly because I read this one was kind of like "Oh okay maybe it's because it's 2014 I'll have a look at some up-to-date ones" and either they were going well yeah gender is a social construct that's quite obvious in which case there wasn't much to talk about or they were arguing in a very similar convoluted way, and kind of proving themselves wrong in the process.

T: We're just talking about different things here. We are talking about fundamentally different things. Sex is different to gender identity. Gender identity is different to sexual orientation. Sexual orientation is different to being intersex. Intersex is different to being non-binary. Like these are all very separate categories and conversations.

H: And I think that is one of the big things why this is so popularised as an argument now is because we're all talking about very different things.

T: Very different.

H: And a lot of people don't know what they're talking about. Like, actually there are some facts here. And you do not have them. It's a very easy conversation to get very confused with very quickly because they have been used interchangeably for so long, like gender and sex in, kind of, everyday life. Like you see it on forms where they're like, "What is your sex?" You know, like, well, you're asking for my gender, but you don't know that. And so like, because it has been so clouded, I guess, and based on  assumption and, well, this is just obvious, we're talking about cis people,  because that's been the norm and it's been a pressurised norm, the conversation now is really confusing because it depends on unlearning the definitions people think they know. Which is why I think a lot of the conversations are phrased like this, of kind of going, but it's not a social construct because sex exists, and it's like, no, you're correct.

T: But also wrong.

H: Sex does exist. It's just very different to what we're talking about?

T: Yeah.  

H: Yeah, so that was one of the reasons why I picked this article because I think actually it does mirror the conversation we're having now quite accurately in terms of going, I'm going to argue. Full stop. So yeah I think this article concludes fairly confusingly if I'm completely honest. She concludes with a point that she hasn't mentioned throughout the article by saying that gender expression isn't always about oppression, it's about pleasure too. So raising a child completely gender-neutrally, what we saying earlier,  can deprive them of some of the joys that gender  brings about as well. So she says that people who think gender identities, gender roles and sexual orientations are all socially constructed are all naive biological determinists because that implies that we all start with blank slates for brains. Which doesn't agree with her arguments earlier on.

T: Okay... 

H: So... I feel like this is gonna be a very confusing episode to listen to because it's confusingly written. So I apologise for that!

T: So she thinks that as children, we are not born as a blank slate, specifically when it comes to gender identity.
H: I think so, yes. Yeah, she seems to be suggesting the fact and I'm hoping that I've not twisted her words more. Yeah, she seems to think that there is something innate about gender identity. I think that's her argument.

T: Okay. Um, well, I disagree.

H: I disagree too.

T: I do think that children are born with traits and qualities that have been passed down from generation to generation. We know that's how evolution works.

H: Yeah.

T: I mean, the most obvious example of that is when you look at things like sport. A lot of the time, people's sporting abilities usually get passed down from their parents, and health conditions as well. So we know that happens, I'm not contesting that. Children-

H: Socialisation doesn't.

T: No, this is all environmental.

H: Yeah, and I think that's where she misses it completely is because she's kind of neglecting to acknowledge that children are born into families.

T: Just to go back to the conversation we were having earlier about race, I can give you a real life example of why I think she's talking absolute rubbish.

H: Great.

T: When I was a small child, my first experience of racism was when I was four years old. And I was in nursery and the little girl that was being awful to me had said the reason that she didn't want to be around me and play with me and that I wasn't allowed to play with her was because I'm dirty and brown. That was my first experience as a child of someone telling me that I am different to them. I did not grow up in a world, until the age of four, thinking that I was fundamentally different to the people around me because I'm not.

H: Yeah, exactly. And also, that kid  had heard those words from somewhere.

T: Obviously, yes.

H: That idea of her superiority and cleanliness is also learned. Exactly.

T: So then to tie in the gender element of this, I also did not know until somebody felt like they needed to tell me that I shouldn't be climbing trees or I shouldn't be wrestling in the mud or whatever it was. 

H: Or playing with guns.

T: Playing with guns! I used  to love doing all that kind of really active stuff when I was a child and it wasn't until somebody told me, a boy in nursery, "You can't do that, this is for boys."

H: Yeah.

T: Again, I had no understanding of the fundamental differences of me compared to all those children that I was around, I had no idea that I shouldn't, inverted commas, be doing things that the boys are doing, because I didn't know  that I wasn't... It's difficult, isn't it? Like, you get told you're a girl, but when you're a little girl, you've got no idea what that means, really, fundamentally. You just get told you're a little girl, and that little girls do certain things, and these little boys do certain things.

H: Which are the gender roles that she mentioned earlier on, and says that they are social constructs.
T: Right.

H: So like, she's kind of arguing with herself. And losing.

T: And losing, badly. So, and this little four-year-old Teagan had no idea that she was fundamentally different to the White kids around her, apparently. A four-year-old has no understanding of any of these constructs that you've put in place until they are told otherwise.

H: Yeah.

T: They look at all the other children around them and think, yeah, I'll go and interact.

H: They're my friends.

T: And play with them, they're my friends and until they're told otherwise, that is what you will continue to believe up to your adult years.

H: Yeah. This is again, I disagree with what she was saying about like it's consistent across the world because there are cultures that have third genders. 

T: Absolutely.

H: So clearly the gender binary doesn't exist in the same way there as it does in White England like that has been forced on a lot of the world.

T: Yes, this is what was saying earlier when I questioned what cultures she'd been and spoken to because there are women-only tribes in places in West Africa, there are varying differences in Native American cultures. This is giving "I spoke to some people in France, Germany and England and I concluded that we all share similarities when it comes to gender identity." Well, obviously.

H: Yeah. It feels very short-sighted. And it feels like bad research.

T: It feels Eurocentric.

H: It does.

T: Is what it feels like.

H: Yeah, 100%.

T: If I can make that leap.

H: I think you can.

T: And that is definitely how it's coming across to me. Which then kind of beautifully illustrates my point around actually how the social constructs of gender and race intersect.

H: Oh, 100%, yeah.

T: I know we've spoken about this at length before. And how our ideas, generally speaking, that we've exported all over the world.

H: Yes, yes we have. Imposed.

T: Exactly- is that we have this very binary view of what women do and a very binary view of what men do and anything that falls out of that category  you are odd, you are weird, there's something mentally wrong with you.  All of these things that then surrounds that because it's easier to give people boxes to stay in, to give a set of parameters. 

H: Well, you can't tell them they're wrong if you don't have a box of right. 

T: There you go. One of my favourite questions that I always like to ask to people who probably don't share a similar view to me and you around gender identity is, "Well, what makes you a man? What makes you a woman?" 

H: Yeah. It's a really hard question to answer.

T: What defines that for you? Yeah. Because I know what defines it for me. It's the fact that that's how I identify. That's it.  There's nothing else that happens in my life, in my periphery,  that tells me that I am a woman. It tells me that I have to go and do things at the doctors in terms of sex, and I receive different treatment for that, perhaps. Worst treatment for that. That's a whole different conversation. A lot of the time people will give you instances relating to sex, rather than this idea of gender identity, I find.

H: Or another one that I've heard, which I find so interesting is they'll relate it to "because I'm married to a woman." Or-

T: That's odd.

H: Right? It is, isn't it? They'll  identify themselves based on their relationships with others and I think that's again a fundamental misunderstanding. For instance, when I came out as trans, a phrase that I heard was, "Can't you just be a lesbian?" I'm like, well, no, because?

T: That's not going to do anything!

H: I'm different. Like, there's a fundamental misunderstanding there.

T: How strange.

H: It's odd, isn't it? Because imagine defining yourself by other people. That's not you defining yourself.

T: No. It's just being told what you are, basically. Yeah, exactly.

H: And it's also a very weak understanding because if someone else changes their mind, your whole identity goes with that in that situation. 

T: Absolutely.

H: That's so fragile.

T: Exceptionally.

H: How do you go through life not knowing who you are?

T: That's really... I've never heard that before. 

H: So while I was looking for articles for the second one, another one that I did find which was lovely, and I'm actually going to include a link to it because it was a series of interviews with four or five non-binary people. It was them talking about what makes them non-binary. And obviously they were all kind of coming up with the idea of, well, gender is a social construct. I just don't feel like I identify with that any particular way. But one of the people said, "I really enjoy getting into conversations with people. I really enjoy answering people's questions about what makes me non-binary, how I feel about that, and all of these things." And what this person likes to do afterwards is go, "So what about you? How did you first realize that you were a woman or and have you encountered any challenges with that? Has it been hard? Have your family been alright?" And essentially just mirror the conversation back. And they were saying it's a really interesting one, not - I've put words in their mouth here, to watch them struggle. And go, "Oh, I've never had to interrogate that before and ask. What makes me, me."  And  it's something that I really like doing on the trans inclusion workshops that I run is, "Think for a moment about what makes you the gender you identify as." Because actually, even as a trans person, I struggle to go, this makes me a man. Because it feels innate.
T: Yeah, I agree with you, absolutely.

H: I can't rely on my biology. I can't say I was socialised this way. I can't say that I've never been interested in makeup and princesses and all of this. Because they're all stupid reasons. 

T: I think the thing that keeps me in a space where I'm truly comfortable defining myself as a woman, should I say, is the idea of womanhood.  But the idea of womanhood in my head  isn't something that is prescriptive and written down and  probably wouldn't feel the same for every woman on the planet, right?

H: Yeah, exactly, it's your version of it.

T: This is a very personal  feeling in my mind of what womanhood looks like, what sisterhood looks like, of  that type of relationship that I can have with women. And that, for me, is not something that I ever want to not be a part of. Yeah. So I choose to keep it that way. H: Yeah.
T: I think one of the things that's interesting about  the conversation around race as well  is that for the longest time we've been obsessed, I guess, with the idea of looping Black, Brown, and minority ethnic people together to this acronym of BAME.  And it's even the word minority that feels really loaded and charged, doesn't it? Because I'm actually not the minority?

H: No, global majority, isn't it? 

T: I am part of the global majority and actually I make up a large percentage of this world's population by being someone who isn't White. Because that's what we're talking about here, isn't it?

H: That's essentially what the BAME acronym is.

T: It was. It was to give a categorisation to people who are Black and Brown and say, you are different. You are fundamentally the different people that live in this country and we just want to make sure you know that. So we'll put you in this little box and we're not going to clearly define it or anything, we'll assume that all of you have the same sort of experiences and cultural differences and all the rest of it. And yeah, we'll just call it BAME and we'll see how that goes, especially for things like census. And then the tide has now shifted, and we're now trying to undo a lot of that damage, I think, by using terms like global majority. But I think it is important that we're now seeing some  different segmentation, I guess. And I do think there is a value in  trying to understand people's differences. I don't think there is any need to  try and swing the pendulum, so to speak, by being that person that thinks you're saying something nice, like, "I just don't see colour."  I get the sentiment behind it, but it's not helpful. And the reason it's not helpful is because you need to be able to understand the differences of how people have  been treated differently by society. People who look like me have gone through life being treated differently  in a variety of different ways. I've already said this when it comes to medicine, when it comes to health, when it comes to education, when it comes to housing,  there has been a fundamental difference between how I've been treated as compared to my white peers.  So therefore, being somebody in the category of "I don't see colour" is not that helpful because it doesn't do anything to help recognize the inequality.

H: Yeah, because it also says like I don't see the history behind this and it's the reasoning behind this as well. Yeah, like yeah all of the context of that situation. 

T: It is very context-based. You're right, we are not different. Fundamentally we are the same, we are all humans. Some of us have got a bit more melanin than others, if that's the conversation that we're having, but ultimately because our society has been shaped by racism,  this is where we are and we need to acknowledge it. So it's just not that helpful to  go to a place right now in society where we're like, "Oh, we're just gonna do away with the boxes. We're not gonna see any of these fundamental differences." 

H: It's the whole equality versus equity thing, isn't it?

T: Absolutely.

H: Actually clearing the slate for everyone doesn't mean a clear slate for everybody because you can't erase history.

T: That's right.  And that's where we are, unfortunately. So as much as I would like to live in a world where that feels like the reality, that feels like my reality. It isn't. So we have to live in the present, we have to recognise how history has shaped every bit of society and the conversations about race are a massive one.

H: In a parallel as well to talk about the gender side of things. I mean, I've heard comments of like, "I don't care like who you're attracted to, I don't care how you identify, you can identify as a frog if you like." And it's like, well again, it's the same thing. Like, well, no, I do identify, personally, specifically as a trans man. Like I'm quite attached to the trans part of it because it's shaped a lot of my life. To ignore that and to categorise me as the same as a cis man is wrong, is inaccurate. I have very little in common with that experience. Because like, outwardly, I look masculine. I've got facial hair, I've got short hair as well. To anybody else, if they had no reason to question me, would go, that's a cis man. But the way that I identify with that, and the way that I see myself and interact with them, isn't as a cis man.

T: Yeah, absolutely.

H: And so it feels weird to kind of be lumped into that category against my will because, yeah, identifying as a trans man specifically, especially now, is dangerous.

T: Yes.

H: But also I don't want to ignore that, and and I imagine it's kind of a similar thing of like well yes it's loaded socially, but also I get a lot of joy from it. Yes. If I wasn't a trans man, I wouldn't be here. Like...

T: That's so true.

H: I love being trans, actually.  I've discovered huge parts of myself that I would never have encountered before. I've let myself be me in a way that I would never have if I was still a cis woman. To ignore the gender identity of myself is also ignoring a lot of me as a person, it's ignoring a lot of my happiness as well though. Like, yes, there's always the whole like, "Oh, but the challenges!" But it's not just that.

T: No, I agree.

H: And I can imagine it's probably the same when you're talking about like ethnicity, it's like, it's not all, it's all focused on the challenges, but there's a lot of joy to be had as well. To say, "Oh, I don't see color," like you say, kind of ignores all of the really positive things that that brings as well.

T: Absolutely.
H: And that's never the assumption, though. The assumption is that's a bad thing, so we'll ignore it. 

T: Yeah. It's just all about the struggle, isn't it? It's like you're just defined by your struggle for some people who think that their version of being white, cisgender, straight is the best. And I think there are definitely more privileges and opportunities that come with that. But not everybody wants to be white, cis and straight, you know? It's not the goal, it's not the pinnacle of humankind, right?

H: And that's where it comes down to, actually, all of those things are social constructs because they're privileges. And so to have that benefit you it's got to be socially constructed.

T: Yes, exactly that. To recognise that some people go through a life experiencing inequality can't be the only part of the puzzle. You also have to acknowledge the joy that comes with that.

H: Yeah, exactly that. And I think again with the conversations around like race and gender particularly as like social constructs, it's always focused on the bad things.

T: It is.

H: And like, for good reason. Like there are bad things that do need to be acknowledged but if that's the only way or the only capacity that people are having that conversation,  of course you're not gonna want it to be a social construct  because that implies that we've socially constructed life to be hard and awful for a group of people.

T: And as a light-hearted way to start to wrap up this conversation, I'll give you a shining example of the joys of being, well, I look Black outwardly-facing to other people. I tell people that I'm a Black woman because that's what people see when they see me, but my mum is White, Irish White, and my dad is Black Jamaican. And one of the things that has always been a talking point in our house has been food. So my Mum will come and she'll be like, oh, you know, we're having stew for dinner. Me and my Dad will be like, oh, god. Right, okay. And then there's just not the same joy, but if Dad turns around or Grandad, because Grandad was the cook really, Grandad turns around and said, we're having jerk chicken, now let's get excited.  So I'm just telling you, there is joy in being different and coming from a multi-ethnic household, believe me. And one of those talking points was always food.

H: Love to hear it.

MUSIC 

H: Well thank you for joining us for this episode of D &I Digest. It felt like it started off a bit slowly but I think we hit the second half, so this is fine. It's been a really good conversation though, it's  interesting to have these things that, yeah, pull at threads. 

T: Yes, for sure.

H: And tear the world apart a little bit. Frantically try and pritstick it back together. Great fun, love it. So yeah, remember that you can follow us on our website and on social media and we hope that you'll come back to listen in next month. So it's bye from me.

T: And bye from me.

Both: Bye!