Nature vs Nurture in Gender Identity - Essay Example

? ‘Nature’ or ‘nurture’ in gender identity Gender can be described from a psychological perspective, as the way a person perceives and responds to his or her biological sex 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 genetic influences or whether they believe that socialization is the key factor. The nurture argument maintains that the environment is the number one influence on gender identity. Others view gender identity as the product of nature that is genetically programmed, conditioned by hormones that affect the development of the brain. The last few decades have brought considerable opinion swings within the area of gender identity in the scientific field, ranging from the influence of nature to nature. Although at present, the scientific community has tipped the scale towards ‘nature’, an ongoing debate argues that environment is the main factor influencing gender identities of people. This conclusion is drawn from the work of Michael Kimmel, a sociologist who teaches at the University of New York at Stony Brook. Apart from having written on gender in general and men in particular, in “‘Bros before Hos’: The Guy Code”, Kimmel deals specifically with issues of masculinity. He believes that young men are socialized into their groups and gain ideas of masculinity from the surroundings around them. Studies which have been conducted by James O’Neill, developmental psychologist at the University of Connecticut and social psychologist, Joseph Pleck have shown how little the socializing influences on boys have changed over the years. Kimmel points out how men conform to masculizing influences and perceived masculine behavior because they are anxious to secure the approval of other men. In the words of playwright David Mamet, women are perceived have such a “low place on the social ladder of this country that its useless to define yourself in terms of a woman”. Boys tend to identify with their fathers and older male peers and adopt behavioral patterns considered to be “masculine” in order to win the approval of other men. Freud has put forward the view that an essential part of the process of defining male gender identify is the separation of a boy from his mother and close identification with his father instead. Masculinity is thus achieved through “repudiation, disassociation and then identification.” To support this argument, psychologists such as Michael Thompson, James Gabarrino and Dan Kindlon also reiterate that a culture of cruelty is created wherein young boys are actively discouraged from crying or showing their emotions. Applying Pollack’s views, a young boy would be pushed through the influences from other males in his surrounding environment to actively develop the “mask of masculinity, which is essentially a stoic, unemotional front wherein denying their own emotional needs forms an essential part of framing of gender identity of the boys. In contrast with Kimmel, Hanna Rosin is less certain about the impact of socializing influences and the environment on the development of gender identity. In the “A Boy’ Life”, Rosin points to the fact that the difficulties 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. The writer also maps the recent preoccupation with biology in the area of human identity and the theories of gender as a social construct. Both Rosin and Kimmel offer a disturbing view of the motivation of peers, parents, communities and professionals. These people involved in the negotiation of gender identities, in which a mix of fear of rejection, a need for normalcy and peer approval, and professional ambition leads to a single-minded consideration. Parents, driven by fear of their children’s rejection by society and constant social affirmation selectively, look to nature and nurture to justify themselves. In Rosin’s article, there is a boy known as Brandon, who started exhibiting signs of being a girl when he was still a toddler. He would find something belonged to girls from his childhood and this weird behavior is perceived by his mother. Tina and Bill, parents of the boy Brandon, 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”.(548) Fear of having their children’s gender ambiguity identified as morbid drives parents to go to extraordinary length to guarantee normalcy in the long run. They allow their son Brandon to openly act as a girl at the age of 9. This decision 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, Brandon would be more acceptable in suburban normalcy. Thus, in Rosin’ essay, fear of rejection plays a powerful part in the way parents to believe that nature can be the determinant to their children’s identities. Their child, constructed by the effects of medicines, gets his respectability by his surroundings in this way. Rosin has highlighted the views of several members of the scientific community on the impact of nature in shaping gender identity. The predominant argument of the “nature” supporters is that the brain conditions gender identity. He points out that according to a study in Nature that was published in 1995 which examined the brains of transsexuals, some areas of the brain in transgender individuals were found to be closer to women than men. This echoes the findings of Simon LeVay, wherein the size of the hypothalamus that governs sexual behavior in gay man is much closer to women than men. The notable expert on gender identity disorder, Dr. Kenneth Zucker, offers the view that most gender disorders and distortions in perception of one’s gender identity arise out of “family noise” wherein a child of one sex may tend to identify more with the parent of the opposite sex and a domineering mother may produce tendencies in a boy towards feminine behavior. Psychologist Tuerk is a strong advocate of nature as the causative factor for gender disorders. The structure of the brain conditions whether a child will tend to adopt male or female behavioral patterns and therefore, to some extent, patterns are set through the brain which cannot be changed through influences in the environment. This is the basis upon which the parents of the boy described in Rosin’s article, i.e, Brandon, go to extreme lengths to actively encourage the boy to feel comfortable in his female identity, even to the extent of giving him the requisite hormone therapy to arrest his physical masculine development. Rosin thus appears to support the view that parents may need to recognize that their sons may be genetically predisposed to feminine tendencies and therefore, they should not be coerced into socially acceptable patterns of masculinity, but rather allowed to develop and flourish in their feminine identities. In Kimmel’s essay, parents believe that their instruction can eliminate such feminist tendencies and cultivate masculinity in their sons. Kimmel’s colleague, whose wife has taught her son how to counter bullying, is not happy at the non-conflict approach that his wife had advocated. Instead of congratulating both his wife and son on the sensible and safe solution, he fears his son will turn into a sissy. He complains to his colleague: “How can I get my wife to stop treating James like a baby?”(616). Since the boy is only seven years old, such a response from the father, in expecting an aggressive stance from his young boy, is not just irrational but also lacking common sense. He appears to be of the view that if the boy did indeed possess innate masculinity, he would be keen to respond to the bully in kind, rather than adopting a pacifist stance. Yet he has clearly no desire to do that. Thus, in the face of clear evidence, the father chooses to believe that the masculinity of his son cannot develop of its own accord and must be encouraged to come out. His belief is under threat from the boy’s mother. He shouts at his wife to stop treating his son in this way. This case is a typical example that illustrates how parents believe that the gender identities of their children are dependent upon the manner in which they condition them and teach them to respond to the external environment. The cases cited in Kimmel and Rosin’s essays respectively lead to two different conclusions. Kimmel’s essay supports the position that nurture may play a significant role in shaping gender identities, while Rosin’s essay suggests that nature may play the predominant role. The outcomes in the cases of both boys, suggests that parents have responded differently in each instance; in one case by actively discouraging and beating out feminist tendencies and on the other by going to extreme means to ensure that the boy is comfortable with his feminine identity. Thus, in both cases, the parents have played a significant role which has influenced the outcomes in the case of both boys. Children, under the effects of parents, scientists, and peers, attribute their gender identities in the preferences of their surroundings. The attitudes on being a man are instilled by male figures in a male person’s life by fathers, brothers, and male friends in home, school and social places. They continuously serve as a function by telling what men should do and what they should not do. If someone does not act like the group he belongs in, he will be seen as an outsider and treated unfairly. The following is an example from Kimmel’s article. When a college student wants to play something that does not agreed with his surroundings, he will receive the sayings from his peers that “they wanted him to engage in male activities like wrestling and not Xbox which he was used to” (611). In this case, in order to engage with his group, a person should select the preferences of others to prove that he is a true man. Even though Xbox is always considered as a boy’s belonging, since it does not fit into group preference, the college student should change his hobby to wrestling. While Kimmel’s essay provides us a mild example of how surroundings influence gender behaviors of people, Rosin’s essay gives us another explanation of how the consequences brought by decisions made by parents. The transgender operation seems to be carried out to bring benefits of their children, but is likely to be a disaster to their lives. Rosin points out that “with the blockers, he would face a lifetime of hormone injections and possibly major surgery” (552). “He” in Rosin’s essay means Brandon and this description is also appropriate to children who suffer such operations. They may experience innumerable therapy sessions, years of anxiety about how future developments will take place and will ultimately need to arrive at a negotiated solution to the gender issue between parents and child. To conform to traditional gender identities requires some firmness in the handling of the child, but perhaps most parents in the Rosin article were not prepared to entertain and embrace the traditional disciplinary patterns to control the gender identity of their children. Experiences of children in these two articles are strongly influenced by their surroundings and they have no individual control over outcomes. It is clear from the foregoing that the theories of nature and nurture have been put to varied and interesting use. From the discussion of masculinity, it is obvious that nurture is used to serve as a social construction to one’s gender identity. Similarly, nature in the form of sex-change operations was once used to justify the theories proposed by scientists in Rosin’s essay. The motivations of attribution of gender identity to the opposite sex are complex. Fear of exclusion, of rejection and of not being normal, condition gender perception and identity. Fear for the future of their child and excessive parental indulgence was also found to be a motivator. Subjection of the child to years of misery and relatively unknown medical procedures to achieve what might be ‘happiness’ in some long off future proves the irrationality of parents. 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 motivations of people are greatly various. In fact, no one can change human nature as by trying to do this, is going against the rules of nature. Everyone has one gender and that is either male or female. People’s first gender is given by genes and masculinity and femininity are acquired as a result of the interactions one has with parents, siblings and everyone around them. People who are transgender should be allowed to live how they want to because they were created that way. It is important not to put too much pressure on influencing people’s gender. The two works by Kimmel and Rosin have put forward a plethora of differing views about gender identity and its perception and have also shown how parents respond differently to gender disorders in their boys. The major reasons why parents are so anxious to ensure that their children conform to the socially acceptable gender identities appears to be the fear of rejection of their children by society, their peers, friends and neighbors. Some parents have gone to the extreme lengths of gender blocking hormones because they are conditioned by the fierce desire to ensure the future happiness of their children. In the case of the boys themselves however, the issues are much more complex. As these two essays have shown, there could be various factors in the environment which cause children to adopt the opposite sex behavior and it may be dangerous to enforce an identity upon the child at too early an age, because in the long run, many of the childhood disorders may tend to even out in the long run and the child may become comfortable in the identity of the physical gender into which s/he was born. Factors in the environment such as a domineering mother may lead to the adoption of female behavior, while the child’s observations about the weakness of women may condition her response in adopting male behavioral patterns. While the scientific view tends to favor nature as being the causal factor in such gender aberrations due to brain anomalies, there appears to be greater evidence to suggest that environmental factors may play a greater role in shaping gender perceptions and the development of gender identity. Read More