Gender Identity: A step forward?

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Right down to how they are held (boy babies tend to be held facing outwards, girl babies facing inwards, i think i have that the right way around :P) and there is a good amount of evidence to suggest that it is this difference in how babies experience the world from the start that leads to gender distinct brain development in some areas.

I mostly held my boy facing out, and my girl facing in. Because you see, the boy squirmed like mad when he was facing inward. He wanted to see what was going on. Meanwhile, the girl wouldn't let me hold her facing outward. She wanted the close contact and comfort. Some people do treat babies differently, no question. But some babies really do just meet stereotypical expectations.

The truth is, despite the evidence I spoke of for the elasticity of 'brain gender' at the start of life, and the likely impact of culturally agreed gender norms on brain development, we don't fully know. This sort of thing can only be experimental. We have no way to kmnow for sure that we haven;t been barking up the wrong tree for the past 30 years of neuro-science when it comes to gender. For the very simple reason that it is all but impossible to test.

There was at least one real-world test in the sixties. I forget the name of the psychologist, but he was trying his hardest to prove that gender was completely and totally a societal construct. There was a case of twin boys at that time (maybe this is the same one UT was referring to) where by accident one of the boys was horribly maimed during the circumcision. He convinced these parents to complete the removal of what was left, and raise the child as a girl. This was not a child who was intersexed or otherwise hormonally ambivalent, he just didn't have his physical genitalia anymore.

The psychologist continued to have regular contact with both children over the next 20 years, so there's quite a lot of documentation about the boy's feelings during this time, and how miserable and confused he was, and how angry he was after he finally found out as an adult what his parents had done.

Society doesn't tell us whether we are a boy or a girl or anything in between. It just sets the ground rules over whether we'll be miserable with how we're treated. Accepting a kid for whoever they innately are is different than pretending it's all a big choice that they're free to make.

[BrianR]

Clodfobble, you are referring to Dr. John Money.

He tried to prove his theory that gender identity was socially conditioned on one David Reimer. He made an ideal "test case" because he came with a built-in control: a twin brother.

To his dying day (in 2006), Dr. Money insisted that his case study was valid and proved his point even as other doctors and researchers, not to mention the Reimer family, proved otherwise.

I consider the man a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein. He should have been prosecuted for child abuse, improper conduct, possession of child pornography and a host of other charges.

[DanaC]

I think part of the problem is that gender is partly biological and partly a social construct. We haven't always understood gender the way we currently do. We have at various historical junctures held notions of gender that to the modern western mind seem absurd. To suggest that our age is the one that has the purest expression of gender untainted by cultural factors, is equally absurd. Some of what we understand as gender is biologically driven, some of it is chemically driven, some of it is culturally acquired. To what extent biological and chemical differences are themselves driven by cultural expectations during early childhood is almost impossible to know. What we do know is that there are greater levels of difference between individual brains of either sex than there is between 'male' and 'female' brains.

To me it seems likely that there is a relationship between cultural and biological. What that relationship is, I dunno :p

[footfootfoot]

I think gender is fluid and the binary construct of xx and xy are just a convenience for the sake of conversation.

The spectrum has to run from dyed in the wool/bred in the bone xx or xy to every permutation expression manifestation imaginable. I personally don't believe nurture has much of a role in determining our gender identity.

Dan savage had a great challenge last week (or this?) where he challenged some Canadian politician to prove homosexuality was a choice by choosing to become gay and then sucking Savage's dick.

Makes sense to me.

I think trying to "cultivate" someone's gender is like trying to train someone to not be left handed, or right handed for that matter. The big difference being that "handedness" is not as strong an urge as sexual identity.

[DanaC]

I don't think nurture forms our gender identity, so much as it informs how we experience and express gender.

[Aliantha]

Nature nurture. We'll never know until our society devalues life enough to allow us to experiment with our children for scientific purposes.

It'll happen eventually. Life is pretty cheap already.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

Nature nurture. We'll never know until our society devalues life enough to allow us to experiment with our children for scientific purposes.

It will never be nature or nurture. It will be a combination of both.

I agree with Dana. Nature determines which chemicals will be released in our bodies and nurture teaches our society's expression of gender and the norms that are associated with them.

[Aliantha]

Well there are quite a number of examples where kids have had nurturing through means other than normal human interactions and the results have surprised sociologists, anthropologists and other professionals in the field.

I'm thinking specifically of an boy in France discovered to have lived in the wild with wolves, and a girl in the US (I think) who was the victim of gross emotional abuse and basically had no human interaction her whole life until she was found at the age of 11 or so.

Both are amazing case studies, but the conclusions drawn can never be proven because people would never agree to allow children to be treated that way on purpose by scientists.

[piercehawkeye45]

I agree with you that there are a lot of studies that would be sociological and psychological gold but will not occur due to ethical standards. The human mind is extremely complex and I'm guessing the combination of nature and nurture can lead to an almost endless amount of possibilities where each combinations is too sensitive to ever exactly replicate.

It's just that the idea of an absolute "nature or nurture" answer or trying to say that one is completely dominate over another just bugs me. For what I've seen, there is more than enough proof to show that both absolute sides are wrong and the political and social implications behind saying one or the other is absolute is extremely large.

[SamIam]

It has been postulated that their are instances where genetics can impact the sexuality and even the behavior of an individual. An example of this is the XYY or "super male syndrome."

ARTICLE from the Encyclopædia Britannica:

XYY-trisomy, relatively common human sex chromosome anomaly in which a male has two Y chromosomes rather than one. It occurs in 1 in 500–1,000 live male births, and individuals with the anomaly are often characterized by tallness and severe acne and sometimes by skeletal malformations and mental deficiency. It has been suggested that the presence of an extra Y chromosome in an individual may cause him to be more aggressive and prone to criminal behaviour, a condition called the “supermale” syndrome. Studies of prison populations have tended to confirm this hypothesis.

On the other hand, the idea that genetics may somehow be a causative factor for homosexuality has been pretty much debunked.

The couple in the OP are probably doing more harm than good. The children are being steered into a non-gender experience (supposedly) which puts them at odds with the experience of other children in the society around them. This is bound to leave a mark of some sort on the children who have become lab rats in a highly questionable parental experiment.

Whatever happened to the concept of raising girls who are encouraged to be self sufficient and do well at math , and boys who are encouraged to help with cooking and housework and do well at expressing their emotions?

It seems to me that the Toronto couple are actually giving more credibility to the sexual stereotyping that they oppose. A girl can be feminine, yet excel in engineering. A boy can be a "manly man," yet still express his emotions. In fact, it takes a strong man to go ahead and cry. An individual does have to be neutered to experience what it is to be human, whether male or female.

As for people who have an affiliation for their own sex, so what? Surely, we are finally beginning to leave those tired and erroneous stereotypes about gays behind us. We need to work on how we think of and judge others as they REALLY are instead of attempting to hide it.

[lookout123]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

But I knew I was not a lesbian, and for a long time I felt guilty that I wasn't living up to her expectations.

Are you sure? Maybe you just didn't put enough effort into it.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by SamIam

On the other hand, the idea that genetics may somehow be a causative factor for homosexuality has been pretty much debunked.

My understanding of the current science says the exact opposite. There are all sorts of physical manifestations that are more common in gay men; for example, in women, the index finger is generally longer than the ring finger, while in men it is the other way around. Gay men, however, usually have a finger-length ratio that matches women. Gay men are also more likely to have a counter-clockwise hair whorl on the back of their head, while the vast majority of straight men have a clockwise whorl. In addition, gay men are more likely to have multiple older brothers, the theory being that the mother has built up a resistance to the source of extra testosterone in her body with each successive male fetus.

Originally Posted by lookout123

Are you sure? Maybe you just didn't put enough effort into it.

I wish. It would be so much easier to live with another woman. Except not one of those butch lesbians, you know, I want a real woman who will cook and clean for me.

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

I want a real woman who will cook and clean for me.

mail order brides.
It's a win-win deal.
US citizenship and a ticket out of her godforsaken hell hole of a country and a serf for you.

Sex is optional.

[Aliantha]

My index finger is shorter than my ring finger. Does that mean I should be a man? Or gay or something?

[lookout123]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

My index finger is shorter than my ring finger. Does that mean I should be a man? Or gay or something?

That depends. How long is it in relation to your penis?