Biological and Medical Boundaries - Essay Example

? In an age where biological, medical and social boundaries have become increasingly fluid, the construction of gender by groups and individuals often depends on whether they understand sexuality in terms of genetic influences or whether they believe that socialization is the key factor. The last few decades have brought considerable opinion swings within the arena of experts, from nature to nature and back again, in each instance supported by evidence that was considered by many to be authoritative at the time. Although at present, the scientific community has tipped the scale towards ‘nature’, an ongoing debate is providing experts and layman alike with opportunities to draw ample support for justifying gendered power relationships and intrusive mental and physical procedures, alterations or punishments. This at least seem possible conclusions that may be drawn from the work of Michael Kimmel, a sociologist, teaching at the University of New York at Stony Brook. Apart from having written on gender in general and men in particular, he has also produced numerous books and journal articles that deal specifically with the issues of masculinity, particularly that of teenage boys and young men under the age of 30. In a recent book (2008), Kimmel discusses the ‘code of masculinity’ these young men are socialized into, usually from an age earlier than even puberty, and the fear that is created by enforcement tactics used by others around them to ensure that the socialization process is successful. It is not only Kimmel but also others like Kindlon and Thompson (qtd. In Kimmel 2008) who point out that young men are not comfortable with the denial of personal needs and with living in emotional isolation. The cruel treatment they suffer at the hands of their peers leaves them bereft and is the reason for many teenage suicides. The fact that so many young boys and men appear to be extremely ill at ease with ‘wearing the mask of masculinity’ (Pollack qtd. in Kimmel 2008) is seen by Kimmel as a clear indication that masculinity is neither genetically pre-determined nor due to chemical ‘overload’. Hanna Rosin, an American journalist and editor, who has to her credit numerous articles on religion and gender, is less certain. While she acknowledges the recent pre-occupation with biology in the area of human identity, and the apparent demise of theories of gender as a social construct, she also points to the fact that the difficulties so-called ‘transgender’ children experience, appear to have been exacerbated by parental indulgence. These children take on role-playing at a very early age – usually the role of the opposite sex – and persist with it, without a sign of change in sight. In A Boy’s Life (November 2008) Rosin maps the options that are open to these children and how their parents agonize over choices they are ill equipped to make. Both Rosin and Kimmel offer a disturbing view of the motivation of peers, parents, communities and professionals, those involved in the negotiation of gender and identity, and how a mix of fear of rejection, a need for normalcy and peer approval, parental weakness and professional ambition can lead to a single-minded homing in on only those solutions that serve these purposes. As Kimmel points out, it is not surprising that a system that is held together by fear and constant peer affirmation should selectively look to nature and nurture to justify itself. Like many other ambiguous intellectual constructs, it uses contradictory justifications. Thus, masculinity is described to be the result of evolutionary and chemical processes – biologically determined, unalterable and unassailable (614). It would appear that men come into the world, fully ‘wired’ for masculinity. This is indeed biology at work. Yet, curiously, it is vulnerable. It must be re-enforced by toughening up or it is in danger of lapsing. As Kimmel points out, if it is indeed hard-wired, nothing whatsoever would need to be done to preserve it. But that is clearly not the case, otherwise men would not attempt to constantly re-enforce masculine concepts for even very small boys. Furthermore, masculinity can be damaged by influences that soften or weaken it, usually from ‘nurturing’ elements, pointing to mothers and other corrupting female influences. Since women are far less inclined to want to ‘toughen’ up their sons, and since they are likely to resist strenuously if their partners attempt to do so, they have been effectively neutralized by neat Freudian theories of male ‘emasculation by the feminine’. By the time students reach high school, most students (male and female) have at least acquired some familiarity with the fact that a boy must separate from his mother to develop a male identity. It is perhaps ironic that a theory of ‘nurture’ should be constructed to erase ‘nurture’, or at least repudiate it (609). How this plays out in the arena of masculinity becomes clear in the example of the three-year-old boy at the barber, where the child is subjected to heat and pain, which he is clearly expected to endure without comment. When he cries, this is identified as the corrupting influence of his mother, urgently to be remedied, lest it might jeopardize the boy’s future masculinity (615). This is also the fear of Kimmel’s colleague, whose wife has taught her son how to counter-act bullying. Yet the boy’s father is unhappy. Instead of congratulating both his wife and son on the sensible and ‘safe’ solution, he fears his son will turn into a wimp. Since the boy is seven, this not just irrational but also lacking common sense. If the boy did indeed possess this ‘innate’ masculinity, he would be keen to respond to the bully in kind. Yet he has clearly no desire to do that. Thus, in the face of clear evidence, the father chooses to believe that this innate masculinity exists, just need to be encouraged to come out and that it is under threat from the boy’s mother. Fear would also seem to be at the root of the willingness of parents to attach medical labels to their children, in the Rosin article. Fear of having their children’s gender ambiguity identified as ‘voluntary’ or even ‘pathological’ drives parents to go to extraordinary length to guarantee ‘normalcy’ in the long run. A whole sub-group of medical meta-language has been constructed around the behavior of these children, in order to mystify peer groups, schools and the community at large into endowing the children’s ‘condition’ with respectability. For those present at the conference for transgender children, wanting to be a girl when you were a boy was far easier to rationalize if brought about by underlying medical problems. Any behavioral explanation was far more likely to carry a connotation of personal responsibility or psychological disorder (too close to madness) with it and was therefore less acceptable, especially since an association with anything medical, more so if it was as yet poorly understood, would produce a kind of ‘deference’. All this was particular relevant for Tina and Bill, parents of the boy Brandon - the subject of Rosin’s article, who live in a very small town, where gender identity is definitely not negotiable and where “a girl is a girl, and a boy is a boy” (according to Bill). Their acquiescence in allowing their son Brandon to openly act as a girl at the age of 9 may be due to the fact that ‘girl’ as a gender is far more unambiguous than ‘transgender’ and that, after some ‘blockers’, hormones and operations, ‘suburban’ normalcy might be possible – elsewhere, if not in their own area. Thus, fear of rejection and fear of stigma play a powerful part in the way individuals and groups shore up their concerns. But there are other reasons. Rosin repeatedly refers to overindulgence by parents as a critical factor in cases of trans-gender children. There is first of all the question of an appropriate age at which to take children to see a therapist to discuss gender ambiguities. Raising alarm bells at such an early age would also seem to have caught on in the media, if it is possible that the story of a 6-year old boy can make the Barbara Walters show. By accepting that children in this age bracket are not only capable of determining their own needs but may also already display distinctive signs of gender differentiation, parents are attaching definitive qualities to the capabilities of these very young children. It would seem to have been a relatively small step from there to the decision to subject children to puberty blockers and sex-change operations, not just for Bill and Tina but also for others. And yet, why is there such urgency? The sufferings these children are subjected to are as yet manageable - at least that seems to have been the account Tina and Bill gave – and there are behavioral alternatives as far as treatment is concerned. The answer lies in the fact that practitioners working with ‘gender disorders’, can exert pressure on decision-making through the on-set of puberty, as the first step in the treatment must prevent hormonal changes in the body. Yet, all this is done without the support of long-term research. It is curious that under such circumstances parents would consent to massive interference with the physiognomy of their children. Rosin calls it parental overindulgence but it is also possible that it is simply a means for parents of taking the easy way out. Alternatives mean going against the wishes of a much-loved child and most likely causing emotional distress, which may be harder to handle for parents. It may also mean endless therapy sessions, years of anxious speculation on further development and ultimately a negotiated solution to the gender issue between parents and child. All this requires some firmness in the handling of the child, something that perhaps most parents in the Rosin article were not prepared to entertain, embracing instead pseudo-medical solutions offered by theories of biology. Theories, however, come and go and, according to Rosin, it was not so long ago that similarly intrusive medical procedures were carried out in the name of behavioral research. During the 1960’s, Dr. John Money persuaded the parents of a young boy, David Reimer, to participate in a sex change experiment, after David had suffered an accident that very nearly destroyed his penis. Money had developed a theory during the 1950’s that stated that “Sexual behavior and orientation as male and female does not have an innate, instinctive basis, We learn whether we are male or female in the course of the various experiences of growing up” (in Rosin 2008). The child David Reimer provided Money with an opportunity to test his theory, however, it would appear that the experiment did not in fact support his work to any great extent, since the progress towards girlhood, reported for the now ‘girl’ Reimer, did in fact not take place. It would seem that Money developed a blind spot towards evidence that did not support his theory. After a short and unhappy life, during which he reverted to being a man and even married, the end was tragic for Reimer, but it also a warning in general that the ambition to prove a theory may be so strong that it leads to the privileging of evidence for the theory – no matter how small - and to the dismissal of evidence to the contrary. In a cruel twist, sex change operations performed on ‘transgender’ children, puberty blockers and hormone changes have now taken the place within the biological theories that Reimer once held for ‘social construction’ theory. According to Melissa Hines, as in the case for the biological theories of masculinity, transgender theory claims immutability and innateness (qtd. In Rosin 2008). It is clear from the foregoing that the theories of nature and nurture have been put to varied and interesting use. Particularly from the discussion of masculinity, it transpires that both nature and nurture have been used to shore up what is to all intents and purposes a social construct. It seems that first ‘nature’ establishes immutability, then ‘nurture’ provides reasons for interference – to shore up the position of masculinity - and finally ‘nurture’ is also attempting to destroy it and is neutralized. Similarly, ‘nature’ in the form of sex-change operations was once used to justify ‘social construction theory’ in the field of gender. Now, the same procedure is used to testify to nature. The motivations for so indiscriminate a use of theories are complex and include first and foremost fear; fear of exclusion, of rejection and of stigma and also a fear of not being normal, particularly in the case of boys and young men, during their identity-forming years. But there is also fear among the parents of trans-gender children; mainly of the rejection they and the children may face (or are facing already) in conservative communities. And fear for the future of their child, if nothing is done now. Excessive parental indulgence was also found to be a motivator, when parents are unable or unwilling to deny beloved children immediate gratification, opting instead for subjection of the child to years of misery and relatively unknown medical procedures to achieve what might be ‘happiness’ in some long off future. In addition, medical experts and theorists have been found to privilege some information and dismiss other parts in order to support research theories. Although the extent to which nature and nurture have been put to different uses is considerable, the foregoing does not claim to do justice to the great variety of human motives to lend respectability to ideas and social constructs, that might otherwise not receive the same consideration. References: Kimmel, Michael. 2008. “Bros Before Hos”: The Guy Code. Rutgers Computing Services for Students, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey. Web. 15 April 2011 Rosin, Hanna. “A Boy’s Life.” Atlantic Magazine. November 2008. Web. 14 April 21 2011 Read More

 

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