Distinction: Social Constructs and Arbitrariness

A distinction that SJWs often fail to make (in fact, I don't think I've ever seen it made by such people) is between the fact of something being a social construct and the degree to which the signifier for that construct is an arbitrary relation. (You'll learn something to this effect in any introductory semiology course, which is rooted in modern philosophy, regarding the relation between the signifier and signified in Saussure's--mistaken--conception of the sign, but I've never seen the connection applied in this conversation.)

For example, English uses the generic word "dog" to refer to a number of animals of a certain genus and species. The particular use of the letters "d-o-g" is an arbitrary historical accident; hence the same concept may be expressed by different letters, a different word, in a different language, e.g. "perro."

The concept of a dog is derived from a combination of accrued sense perceptions by multiple individuals over time and an implicit, public agreement to use a common word to express the concept constructed by these sense perceptions of different dogs. Hence the concept of a dog is literally a social construct, AND the word used to label dogs as dogs is also a social construct.

The difference lies in the degree of arbitrariness. The concept of dog is not an arbitrary concept even though it is a social construct that has evolved over time. In fact, it is not arbitrary at all but based on common perceptions of a class of objects, in this case, the domesticated canine. These perceptions are not random, arbitrary, or fruitless, but of the sort that can be further refined by scientific (ideoscopic in John Deely's language) investigation.

The very fact of a certain thing's being a social construct says nothing about whether it has an arbitrary relation to the "reality" that it expresses, such as the relation between the letters d-o-g, the concept of a dog, and the actual, individual dogs going about their daily business, so to speak.

Hence, even if one were to grant that gender is merely a social construct, it would require FAR much more work to establish further that gender is an arbitrary construct, that it has no relation whatsoever to biological sex ontology and functioning (or put in other words, that they vary totally independently).

Most social constructs are not arbitrary constructs but exist for very good reasons. In fact, one could argue that society is held up by a deep, historic foundation of social constructs, and society itself is just such a construct necessary to preserve its unity and continuity.