FEMINISTS: How do you explain the impossibility of raising a BOY as a GIRL?

Question

This has actually been tried and it never works. Some people are born with TWO genitalia and the parents have to pick one. HOWEVER the BRAIN is already programed to be a particular GENDER. Some people have sex changes because their brain is the wrong gender later in life. You can research this if you want.

Your BRAIN is programed at birth to be a certain gender. Its not society that makes you act like a man or a woman. Its BIOLOGY. BIOLOGY.

Women and men are different and feminism down-plays this. We are not different like blacks and whites are different (thats purely cultural).. we are different because of our brains.

Why can't feminists accept this?

Answer 1

You're trying to discuss what? Nature vs. nurture? Why can't feminists accept this? Is this your question? A baby's brain has been programmed to a certain extent, then society takes over. The really innate desires cannot be truly cancelled out, but they can be adjusted.

For example: let's say you're born a woman. Deep down inside your brain you've been programmed to be a man. Your parents raise you as a woman, society treates you as such, but you're true feelings and desires are trying to tell you "No, I'm a man."

Society and how you're raised will keep you from being super-macho because you've been raised to like musicals, sew, look like Ashley Judd and cook like Emeril. So you act as feminine as Ashley Judd but you like women.

If you hadn't been raised like this can you say with all sincerity that you could have acted more like Arnold Schwarzenneger than Ashley Judd? No. No one can.

Psychologists have argued nature vs. nurture since before the dawn of time. How can you make a blanket statement with no quantifying proof and tell feminists to accept this???

Doesn't make sense.

Answer 2

You're one very confused person. If you knew as much as you think you do about this issue, you'd know that there's a big difference between "Gender" and "Gender Identity." You see, even Male-to-Female transsexuals can be butch. Some transsexuals crossdress. Their masculinity or femininity varies. In transgender studies, "Gender Expression" refers to what the larger social sciences call Gender. That a transsexual's brain has a particular sex means they have the "Gender Identity" of that sex. This has nothing at all to do with masculinity or femininity - Gender. "Gender Identity" is your biological brain telling you what your body's sexual characteristics should be, both genitals and secondary sex characteristics. No one is saying that you can raise a boy to have a female gender (femininity) and expect them to be a girl becuase of it. What the social/cultural construction of gender is about is that the qualities which we say men or women have /because they are that sex/ changes over time, between cultures, etc. People choose among the different gender expressions all the time (the problem comes when strictly-gendered cultures oppose people choosing too many of the other gender's behaviors). This is the performative theory of gender (read Judith Butler). None of these theories say that men and women are exactly the same and only culture makes them different. It says that masculinity and femininity are just things that enough people in any given society agree about at any given time (remember that masculinity and femininity mean the traits which we think women have because they are women or men have because they are men).

So, to review: The brain is programmed /before/ birth (by hormone washes to be a certain /Gender Identity/ which is essentially an internal sex. The brain then tells the person what to expect to see on the surface of their body. As far as gender goes, that gets into the nature vs. nurture debate.

Now then, feminists can't accept that masculinity and femininity, aka social/cultural gender, are biologically based because cross-cultural and social history research shows that they vary wildly - far more wildly than biological changes in humans have. In short, feminists persist becuase they got this one right.

Answer 3

Usually I don't bother answering your questions because your facts are usually full of sh*t and correcting you is a big waste of time. Lets do it anyhow.

RECENT research was done with babies (before they were told "act like a __"). A group of them where put in a room where the same cloths. All types of toys where in this room including gender specific toys. After being in there for awhile adults where suppose to guess what child was what gender. Some people guessed a child was a boy because he/she was aggressive. Some people guessed a child was a girl because she was mainly playing with dolls. Both sides turned out to be 50/50. The aggressive children where both male and female. The kids playing with dolls where both males and females.... that's how the entire study was done and results of it all.

There are people born with both parts and the parent picks wrong, but more often that not the person looks into this info before the sex change and that doesn't come up.

This information is from a video from the psychology class I took this time last year. We had to do a report on it using supportive research from the library.

Sorry, but your guess don't have any support. Try again.

Answer 4

Does anyone remember the "What are little girls made of nursery rhyme"? We were taught from a young age what that girls should be sweet and only boys get dirty. Why? I played in the mud and dug up worms.

Society may not influence which gender you are (programmed to be), but it does assign specific traits to each gender. Girls wear pink dresses and play with dolls. Why? Who arbitrarily decided girls wear pink? Why are yellow and green considered gender neutral? Girls play with dolls and pretend kitchens. Why can't boys pretend to cook, too? Because society assigned that role to girls. Boys grow up to be men and men go to work. They don't cook.

It's not just our brains or genetics. Why can't you accept that just because I'm a female doesn't mean that I can't do what males do? Can I do everything? No. Do I want to do everything? No. But I don't want someone telling me I can't do something because society says that's not what girls/women do?

By your reasoning, men shouldn't want stay at home and take care of the kids. You'd better tell all those SAHDs that they are wrong. Biologically, they should be out supporting their family and their wives should be in the kitchen.

Answer 5

It's not a feminist issue, it's an issue with ANYONE who refuses to listen to science. It's not always the case that the person was born with both sex organs either, there are people who were born with the sexual organs of one gender, yet have the brain of the opposite gender...and whatever gender the brain thinks the body is...that's how the person will grow up feeling that way.

Answer 6

I get what you are saying. Feminists try to say that gender - our sense of what it is to be male or female - is merely something we have inflicted on us by patriarchy. I think there is a case for social influence on gender identity, but the weight of evidence really is on the side of biology i.e. chromosomes and sex hormones.

I don't think these findings need threaten anyone's right to choose their gendered behaviour, and I personally think people should be free to make pretty much whatever choices they want to. However the evidence suggests that our nature has a pretty strong influence on what we choose.

Edit
Note that the cases in my sources are of people growing up from infancy to adulthood after sex-reassignment surgery, yet tending psychologically and emotionally towards the gender identity of the sex they were born with. Most people would agree that this is much stronger evidence (having greater real-world validity) than any studies taking 30 minutes in a laboratory.

Edit
Its easy for some people to overrate the usefulness of social constructionism in explaining social constructions.

Answer 7

How do you explain people who know from an early age they were born the wrong sex and later on get a sex change operation so they can live their lives as the sex they feel they truly are?

Answer 8

Boys are boys and girls are girls. There was actually a real incident where a boy was born but had his penis cut off during circumcision so the parents decided to raise him as a girl. They told him he was a girl and made him wear dresses, gave him hormone pills, ect. The child grew up in confusion because he always felt like a boy and eventually he was told the truth and when it looked like he was about to over come his tramatic experience he commited suicide.
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/may/04051010.html

Answer 9

Gender identity is a VERY complicated subject and they are still learning about it. I don't know any feminists who proclaim that gender is entirely chalked up to nurture and not biology. This must be you inventing issues to get indignant about again.

Answer 10

I have heard of this, but I don't know that much about it. I do not think it is entirely biology.

It's the old nature vs nurture argument and so far as I knew, they had never proven it conclusively either way.