Many of Foucault’s contemporary disciples, like Judith Butler, are drawn to the same style of argument. For example, in Gender Trouble, Butler spends an enormous amount of time trying to show that sex (not just gender) is a social construct. And yet her arguments, such as they are, amount to just variations on the constructivist parlour trick. She adduces no empirical facts or observations in support of her claim, she simply tries to derive it from general theses about language (derived, in turn, from the authority of Foucault).
