Rod posted:
>Saturday May 13 1:02 AM ET
>Study Questions 'Sex Reassignment'
>By SETH HETTENA, Associated Press Writer
>BALTIMORE (AP) - The practice of surgically ``reassigning'' boys born
>without penises is
>being called into question by a new study that suggests gender identity
>is determined in the
>womb.
>Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Hospital on Friday said the study
>found that such boys,
>raised as girls, had masculine behavior and most declared themselves to
>be boys.
actually, this is falsified by other studies. Many studies prove that
there is no necessary relationship between your biological identity and
gender identity. If you are born with a penis, you may develop a different
identity through time, so you don't need to be born without a penis to
see how you develop a masculine identity. In so far as the above study is
concerned,I would still look at the social environment of male
participants. boys may be raised as girls, but do the researchers look at
the non-familial enviromental factors such as schooling, friends,
media,etc.? The boys may have learnt masculine behaviour from other
external sources, which could have become dominant through time, as to
contradict family socialization. this has nothing to do with their
hormones, but something to do with the contradictions between two forms of
socialization (family versus outside family)..we should not underestimate
the external factors. Many children, grown with, let's say, egalitarian
values at home and see parents sharing household responsibilities equally,
may become patriarchal later due to their socialization into external
forms of masculinist social practices..
It is also true the reverse case. Many women are grown up with
social values that contradict the conventional female wisdom. Some
parents, but still few, choose not to give their daughters dolls or son
gun toys, or even not vice versa (which . Another big example is
mothering. Vulgar biological determinists relate mothering to women's
biological and emotional predisposition. It has been found out that men
can mother as adequately as women since mothering is a social function,
not a biological one. There are many men around who raise children. There
are also many women around who don't prefer mothering... Acting "like a
man or a woman" is a socially learnt behavior designed to fit the
ideological constructions of gender.
Mine
