The word ‘gender’ refers to social and biological differences between the sexes. Many people whom study in the field of gender will say that gender is constructed socially, which is basically what we are trying to determine in this essay. When we describe the differences in gender we often refer to the social side of it and not the biological.
Modern men are under pressure from society to change their ways, they are constantly reminded that they need to get in touch with their feminine, sensitive side. The traditional male is a dominant bully who feels the need to show his authority to women, he thinks that women are just an inferior copy of himself, the new man (the one in touch with his feminine side) has seen the error of his ways and strives to be more like women. A man is not born a ‘man’ as such but he is created by the culture he grows up in. The postmodernist view of gender differences is that all knowledge is constructed, so science is considered useless. Some people believe that in social sciences there is too often a presumption against things that are not socially constructed, it is then argued against this notion that there are sciences that do show real sex differences.
If gender is socially constructed and conditioned, then it must be possible to deconstruct it also, meaning gender roles are unlearned. In some ways this notion is possible, in that, for example, the traditional male can learn to see things from a womens point of view and vice versa. There is then the view that the sexes are essentially alike but the male cannot be fully deconstructed because he lacks the female experience, in this view the theorists see the world as a much better place if only men were more like women. Postmodernists confront even something that is certain with the question ‘How can you be so sure?’, and this is the problem with the postmodern perspective, they have no answers. 50 years ago a man was expected to play the dominant role, and this was accepted, he was expected to provide for his family. Today things are much different, most women have careers, and support the family just as much as the men do. The traditional dominant male considers himself to be the norm, wheras postmodernists deny any major differences between the genders. A new way of looking at it is that there is no set, distinctive male or female minds, it says we mustn’t generalise or stereotype people, as they are always misleading and untruthful. It is safest to assume that we are all distinctly different, and we are as nature intended us to be for the best of the human race. Science can help in the quest for answers, it gives a large amount of explanatory power, science offers much evidence that the sexes are different, science simply describes the differences between us, it does not tell us why.
In todays modern world, it is the general belief of the masses that men and women are ‘equal’, and whatever one sex can do, the other can do just as well. This new theory warns parents that they can give their daughters expectations to live up to in later life, stereotypes to conform to, by sex-typing them. This means that if you give your little girl a ‘real crying, urinating, realistic smelling’ doll of a baby, she will be doomed to a life of motherhood. Perhaps boys should be given girls toys and girls should be given boys toys in order to expand our horizons somewhat. Even language has been altered to conform to the new theory, firemen have suddenly become firefighters, chairman has become chair person, there are people that care so much for equality that they campaign to get these words changed. Despite all of this effort to persuade us that men and women are equal, girls still love playing with dolls and boys like playing with soldiers and toy guns. Fighting against this new orthodoxy are many research and science labs which are giving evidence which shows that men and women are largely influenced by biology. The postmodernists argue against this time and time again with a famous case of a boy whose penis was badly damaged at a young age in a botched circumcision attempt. The decision of the parents was to mould the damaged male genitals into their female form and to bring him up as a girl. Time magazine assured the world that ‘she’ grew up to live a happy female life without any problems thus proving that society can change a persons biological identity, the only drawback to this otherwise startling discovery is that it is not true. The truth was that the poor misguided ‘girls’ life was far from the happy tale told in Time magazine, ‘Joan’ (a false name) never adjusted to being a female, even from an early age it was clear that the sex cahnge was not going to work, dolls were shunned for guns, girly dresses were destroyed and ‘she’ insisted on vertical urination (a masculine characteristic if there ever was one). When Joan reached puberty she was given hormones to supress her masculinity and grew breasts as a result, she never once acted like a normal girl would act. Finally when Joan reached the age of 14 her parents became tired of denying their child the right to know who ‘she’ really was and told her the truth. He from then made his own decision to go back to being a male, he had surgery to remove his breasts and sculpt him a penis and today he is a happily married man with three adopted children. So when the truth behind this story finally came out it was clear to see that nature won, Joan behaved like a male even when he thought he was a girl and had been brought up all of his young life as one. Some people may argue that there is no such thing as sex typical behaviour and to suggest it is stereotyping. But the fact is that small children behave differently, boys like competitive, noisy games, wheras girls prefer quiet, co-operative games. A lady called Eleanor Maccoby has been researching the field of sex differences for over 30 years, and a large amount of her research has gone into how young children interact with each other. Her results came out the same time and time again, girls are sociable and boys are competitive, it was discovered that girls have much longer attention spans at this age, girls are also more obedient, they will do what a teacher tells them to do more often than the boys would. Girls relationships with each other are often close and in small groups of two or three, boys tend to gather in larger groups of friends. The theorists that say that gender is culturally formed will agree that behaviour in these young children is sex typical, but it is a product of the way their parents have brought them up. The postmodernists say that parents will bring up their children to encourage sex typical behaviour.
The different genders are very different when it comes to attitudes towards sex. Men are proven to have 4 times as many sexual fantasies as women have, men are far more easily sexually aroused than women. Biologically the sexes are very different in this genre. Sex drive is fuelled by testoterone, which men have 10 times more than women have. Men like novelty, and therefore many men enjoy pin ups, peep shows and pornography. Women want men to be more like them and men don’t want women to be like them. Another scientific fact is that men have less oxytocin, which is a substance which encourages affection.
Science has showed us several other things in its quest. It shows many differences between the neurological make up of men and women:
- Mens brains are overworked more easily, women have more communicative brains.
- Mens brains are suited to action, hers to talking
- Their emotions are different, men become angry and aggressive more easily.
- Men find it difficult to do more than one thing at a time, where as women can deal with a multitude of tasks at once.
It also shows us how we biologically come to be a man or a woman, at conception the 23 chromosomes in the mothers egg fuse with the 23 chromosomes in the fathers sperm to give all humans 23 pairs of chromosomes, one of these pairs determine what sex the child will be. The male pair is called XY and the female pair is called XX. The egg has a single X chromosome and the sperm which reaches the egg has either an X or a Y. If the egg is fertilised by a Y sperm the child is normally male and if it is fertilised by an X sperm the child is usually female. The Y chromosome gives what we call masculinity, it effects all the other pairs of chromosomes if it is present, females don’t have this Y chromosome so they become females.
In conclusion I think that a large amount of biology is responsible for our gender roles (you only have to look at the case study of John/Joan) but the parenting, cultural backround and upbringing will certainly be a factor in shaping behaviour in men and women alike. Only time will tell what the different genders behaviour will be like in 100 years time, will men be more like women, will women be more like men? It is very difficult to predict. Science has shed a lot of light on the debate with hard facts proving different theories, one of the facts is that young boys and young girls are behaving the same way as they have for man many years regardless of the changes in society.
REFERENCES:
- D SYMONS – THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN SEXUALITY
- KATHA POLLITT – REASONABLE CREATURES
- LECTURE NOTES
- GROLIER ENCYCLOPEDIA
- ENCARTA ENCYCLOPEDIA
- THE REAL SCIENCE OF GENDER STUDIES – BILL MOIR