Gender.
A seemingly innocent notion ascribed to the sexes. It's often confused as a biological plumbing issue with male gendered penises and female gendered vaginas. We have societal ideas about what kinds of behaviors are appropriate for those with the corresponding pipes and outlets and think of those who don't fit these rules as "gender benders."
There is so much incredible research going on right now that explores all different aspects of the human condition from the notion of self-awareness to free will to sexual identity and the basis for behavior. Those paying attention know that questions of nature vs nurture are outdated, as the two forces with the potential to shape us are not exclusive nor competitve.
But the really stunning stuff deals with molecular biology, especially neurology. We are learning more and more about how the body works on a molecular level, which means we can identify cellular processes that manifest in all sorts of ways, from heart disease to the relationships between twins. What's particularly amazing is that once you delve this deep, things begin to look simply mechanical. The homunculus disappears.
We are getting a deeper understanding of how the brain works. We've got good models for understanding the physical and psychological evolution of humanity. It's exciting stuff.
But back to gender. People tend to think of gender as a kind of identity built on the foundation of the physical structure of our reproductive organs. It's really not that simple. Much of the behavior that we associate with males and females varies between sexes with regard to variables with different distributions between the sexes. For example, female infants are more likely to gaze at human faces longer than male infants, but if you look within each sex, we find that female infants with higher levels of intrauterine testosterone gaze at human faces for a shorter time than females who weren't exposed to as much testosterone as a fetus. So it isn't just a reproductive organ thing happening here. Neat, eh?
What's even more cool, in my opinion, is that although we can trace a lot of behavior and development to particular hormones and whatnot, we also find that particular behavioral traits arise in opposite patterns when opposite patterns of say, child care, occur in a species. The example here is male seahorses. Male seahorses gestate fertilized eggs and give birth, and researchers have found that, especially with regard to reproductive patterns, male seahorses behave like females in most other species and vice versa. What this means is that it isn't a male/female issue as much as it is a reproductive role related issue.
There isn't any rule book that says males must act a particular way or that lays down a particular code for female behavior. Rather, over generations of evolution, species have settled into ways of interacting that provide them with the best opportunities for perpetuation of their genetic lot. There may be infinite strategies within this field of opportunities, but there are only a finite number of successful ones. And those develop without regard to penises and vaginas.
Posted by Nutrimentia at June 28, 2003 10:42 PM | TrackBack