http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbUYsQR3Mes

I agree with you that it is, at best, a first step. At worst, though, it can substitute for social action.

As a matter of biological fact, the cognitive capacity of human beings is limited. This is not a matter of our social conditioning, conventional structures, or some other Foucauldian will-o-the-wisp. It is a matter of how brains are neorologically wired. Given the inherent biological limits on human cognition, one ought not to structure one’s laws around a model of perfect, classical, economic rationality, since such a model makes cognitive demands in terms of informational processing that are unrealistic given the natural capacity of human brains.

Ergo, we ought to adopt paternalistic consumer protection legislation.

The premises are different, but the structure of this argument seems remarkably similar to claims about the naturalness of certain gender roles, their roles in human flourishing, and the need for the law to accomodate this fact. One can disagree with such an argument without getting into the whole pomo metanarrative by simply arguing that particular premises are mistaken.

FWIW, I am actually skeptical of many arguments about human nature, as I do think that most human arrangments are a matter of convention. However, I can imagine an argument that says something like this:

Granting the premise that human beings are naturally more likely to flourish under conditions X, the law ought to be organized so as to facilitate conditions X and discourage not-X.

One can, of course, have lots of arguments about what constitutes condition X, and one can even question the existence of a nature that dictates the relative advantage of conditions X. However, given the structure of the argument, there is nothing about saying we ought to legislate with conditions X in mind that in and of itself undermines the idea that conditions X are defined by some law of nature.

There is also a problem in that the pomo insight is frequently quite benal. The fact that we know something is conventional really tells us nothing one way or another about how the conventions ought to be structured other than that appeals to nature or immutable essences are out. I suspect that actual believers in nature and immutable essences are less common than the pomo critics assume.

When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail…

But I wonder whether the census is analogous to college football. What, exactly, would be at stake in altering our census-taking practices?

While it’s true that our social order does reflect a common respect for gravity, mass, etc., we don’t distribute social status along those lines. It’s the insistence on a natural *social* order that makes traditionalists so interesting (or, as you put it, amusing).

Maybe you’ll agree with this: Part of the fun of watching postmodern theorists tackle serious social problems is in their belief that simply pointing out that something is socially constructed will liberate people from the construct.

-Don

I would appreciate the use of less reductionist language. Thank you.

Sex and gender are fantastically intricate subjects. Any finite list of labels is inherently reductive and (in an ideal legal and social system) shouldn’t matter at all anyway. Where would you put Prince? He’s certainly engaged in a fair amount of play with the boundaries of gender norms. What about Shirley Mason, who affected two male “personalities” among her 16?

A simple dichotomy for sex — maybe supplemented with a heterosexual-homosexual spectrum for partner preference — may suffice for the majority of the population, but there will always be boundary cases or things just simply not on the radar. You’re never going to handle everyone, so it’s best to just put “nothing”, or some sort of catchall “other” in whatever classification you use.

In fairness, I would point out that if in fact certain classifications are “natural” then one might object to laws attempting reclassification not on the grounds that such a reclassification will spell the end of the natural order, but rather on the grounds that laws at war with nature are likely to produce greater unhappiness. I thought that this was the point of many natural law arguments. One can, of course, reject claims about what is or is not natural, but the discourse itself strikes me as being rather more substantive than your reduction to an amusing contradiction suggests.