[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.

[justF]

Interesting topic, so even though its my first post (I did introduce my self in the introductions forum a while back) can I add my two cents? Coincidentally, we are covering gender issues in my biopsychology course this week, and after reading a stack of textbook chapters, I can weigh in on the biology/gender questions.

First of all, mammalian brains of males and females are different, in more than one way. Researchers have not yet determined what the purpose of these differences are, but it has been suggested that behavioral differences between males and females may be attributed to the brain differences. Also, of course the amount of specific hormones in males and females are different, with males having more androgen and females having more estrogen. It has been proven that hormones do affect behaviours.

Differences in behaviours have been seen between males and females since birth (even prenatal), but the question is, how many of these behaviours are really the effect of the biological differences? People start applying sexual stereotypes on babies as soon as they are born, and children grow up modeling the behaviours of those around them. Short of raising a child in a completely gender neutral environment, I am not sure if the nature/nurture question will ever really be answered when it comes to gender.

In my own family, I try not to impose any gender stereotypes on my children, but i have definitely noticed a difference in the behaviour of my daughter vs my son. She plays with toys differently, likes to model the behaviours of others more, and she loves shoes.

My children are growing up thinking that anything is ok when it comes to gender (I hope). Today my six year old son had an absolute ball playing with the pink princess castle that my daughter just got for her birthday.

Thanks for letting me join in....