Gordon Hodson writes that socially constructed categories such as race are both “real” and “arbitrary.” That is, they affect our lives in tangible ways, although the categories themselves might have been different than they are.
For example, marriage is a social construction that has changed dramatically in the United States. In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled that all states must issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Had the Supreme Court been composed of different people, same-sex marriage in the United States might have remained prohibited. In Hodson’s sense, the definition of marriage is “arbitrary.” It could easily have been different than it is.
Apply Hodson’s point to interpret either Kimmel and Batuman or Kaplan and Davis. Each pair requires a different approach, but your answer should analyze the tension between the “real” effects of a social construction and its “arbitrary” nature.
Write a three to four page grammatically correct essay. Please follow MLA format and the structural guidelines required for formal papers. Your essay should support one main idea, a thesis.
