You're putting far too much thought into what other people mean by the phrase, particularly in the context of a joke.
Most people are not referring to several different anthropological, sociological, and feminist theories/philosophies.

When you disagree with "gender is a social construct" in a casual setting, intentionally or not, you're conveying the statement "gender is innately tied to biological sex, there are precisely two, and trans people are invalid".

It's better to take the phrase as meaning "having a vagina doesn't mean you're a hot pink wearing pretty princess, nor does a penis imply you aren't. Gender is more complicated than a binary, and we're better off raising children as little people who tell us who they are than spending too much time being concerned that they only play with plastic figurines compatible with their genitals and playacting the right chores".

It's a joke about tricking people into attending an event usually focused on baby genitals, and then instead giving them cake that isn't coded to the babies genitals with a lecture about how they don't tell you as much about who this little person will be as people think.

[–] Bacano 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

When you disagree with “gender is a social construct” in a casual setting, intentionally or not, you’re conveying the statement “gender is innately tied to biological sex, there are precisely two, and trans people are invalid”.

Wild to see such a binary view on this given the context. How can this be taken to be any less constraining (to someonen who views gender as a spectrum) than the view that "there are only two biological genders"?

Dandelion is giving examples on how it is not necessarily a social construct and providing examples and sources. That portions of gender have a propensity to be tied to biological sex.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think there's a conflation of terms here. There's Big G Gender, and little g individual-gender-identity.

Genders are social constructs. "Girls like pink and ponies" is not tied to anything except culture.
Your gender identity however, is absolutely not a social construct. Otherwise people wouldn't be raised as one gender, live that way for decades and then figure out that the reason things have felt "wrong" is because they've been living a gender that doesn't fit.

The given examples were about gender identity, how that's correlated with biology, and how it's more than just how you present yourself to the world.

Conflating Gender and gender identity can lead to a lot of confusion.

[–] Bacano 2 points 1 week ago

My comment was more toward the first influencing an individuals relationship with the second if that makes sense.

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