[culturehandy]

I pitched this in the Community Forum and it was well recieved.

This thread is all about the politics and cross cultural and societal views on gender.

I started thinking increasingly about gender when the media frenzy about Caster Semenya emerged. It is my opinion that the only reason people questioned Ms. Semenya's gender is because she appeared to be "masculine". That is, she looked masculine according to the ideas of society at large. Had she had softer, more "feminine" features, questions of her gender would not have come up.

So, what is gender? We know that there is sex, your biological sex, but gender is a social construct.

[culturehandy]

I thought about the masculine vs feminine, especially with regards to foraging societies. Even in terms of evolution, does the issue of sexual dimorphism have anything to do with gender.

If you look at many other members of the animal kingdom, female animals raise their young and often do the child rearing, I know this isn't the case in all, but a majority of the time. It's similar with humans. Child rearing and raising, even to this day, are something that is falls primarily on the shoulders of women (again, not all the time, but using generalizations). In the animal kingdom, more often than not, males are the most aggressive of creatures, (mind you, we've all seen the consequences of a pissed off female bear protecting her cubs), what I'm getting at is how much does biology contribute to the idea of "gender". hence, the nature vs nurture.