Gender and sex have long been recognized as being two distinct characteristics. Sex refers to the sex organs with which a person is born, as well as their chromosomes (XX=female, XY=male).
Gender refers to characteristics that distinguish masculinity and femininity, and an individual's gender identity may or may not match the sex organs he or she possesses. That is, males may exhibit characteristics commonly associated with females, and vice versa.
So the question is, does a person exhibit male or female characteristics because they have a certain biological makeup, or does a person exhibit male or female characteristics because he or she is conforming to the expectations of their culture?
It is largely agreed that while sex is biological, gender is a function of culture and/or society.
Arguments for gender being a function of culture:
-Men and women adhere to different norms in different cultures. If gender were entirely biological, the same behaviors would be observed in men and women throughout every modern and ancient culture.
-Within any culture, there are individuals who do not conform to the typical characteristics ascribed to their sex.
-Some individuals are intersex (meaning they posses both male and female sex characteristics) and yet still have a gender identity.
-Some cultures acknowledge more than two genders. If gender were biologically determined, the gender distinctions would be the same in all human societies.
In summary, gender construction is determined by the cultural expectations for each biological sex. This is why there are two separate definitions for each concept, even though for the majority of individuals, their sex and gender and the same.
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
Is gender construction culturally or biologically based?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Summarize the major research findings of "Toward an experimental ecology of human development."
Based on findings of prior research, the author, Bronfenbrenner proposes that methods for natural observation research have been applied in ...
-
Based on findings of prior research, the author, Bronfenbrenner proposes that methods for natural observation research have been applied in ...
-
Show that $\displaystyle a(t) = v(t) \frac{dV}{ds}$ of a particle that moves along a straight line with displacement $s(t)$, velocity $v(t)$...
-
Does the quote "a plague on both your houses" have any significance in the play of Romeo and Juliet?Mercutio utters this line -- "A plague o' both your houses!" -- after he has been killed by Tybalt. Tybalt came looking for R...
-
The narrator of "Sonny's Blues" describes the neighborhood as "filled with a hidden menace which was its very breath of l...
-
Determine $\displaystyle \frac{dy}{dx}$ of $y^5 + x^2y^3 = 1 + x^4 y$ by Implicit Differentiation. $\displaystyle \frac{d}{dx}(y^5) + ...
-
Find the indefinite integral $\displaystyle \int \sec^4 \left( \frac{x}{2} \right) dx$. Illustrate by graphing both the integrand and its an...
-
From a table of power series, recall that we have: arctan(x) = sum_(n=0)^oo (-1)^n x^(2n+1)/(2n+1) To apply this on the given problem, we r...
No comments:
Post a Comment