Essentialism - Essentialism and Society and Politics

Essentialism and Society and Politics

The essentialist view on gender, sexuality, race, ethncity, or other group characteristics is that they are fixed traits, discounting variation among group members as secondary.

Contemporary proponents of identity politics, including feminism, gay rights, and/or racial equality activists, generally take constructionist viewpoints,. For example, they agree with Simone de Beauvoir that "one is not born, but becomes a woman". As 'essence' may imply permanence, some argue that essentialist thinking tends towards political conservatism and therefore opposes social change. Essentialist claims have provided useful rallying-points for radical politics, including feminist, anti-racist, and anti-colonial struggles. In a culture saturated with essentialist modes of thinking, an ironic or strategic essentialism can sometimes be politically expedient.

In social thought, metaphysical essentialism is often conflated with biological reductionism. Most sociologists, for example, employ a distinction between biological sex and gender role. Similar distinctions across disciplines generally fall under the division of "nature versus nurture". However, this has been contested by Monique Wittig, who argued that even biological sex is not an essence, and that the body's physiology is "caught up" in processes of social construction.