Essentialist claims of human nature are often reductive, pathologizing, and/or oppressive. For example, biological determinism can reductively cast one’s complex identity into an unchanging subservience.
However, social constructionism can be harmful. Jack Turban’s, The Disturbing History of Research into Transgender Identity, isn’t about social constructionism versus essentialism; however, the article gives a variety of examples of how gender identity, when conceived as socially determined, can lead to research that perpetuates harmful stereotypes, reductively flattens the complexity of gender identity formation, and can justify conversion therapy, which is ineffective and associated with increased suicidality.1
Footnotes
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Jack Turban, “The Disturbing History of Research into Transgender Identity,” Scientific American, January 1, 2021, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-disturbing-history-of-research-into-transgender-identity/. ↩