Gender Rant
I'm just reading 'As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl' - has anyone read this? If you're not familiar with the case: in the 1960s two identical twin boys were born. After a painful accident, one of them lost his penis. He was reassigned as a girl at two years of age, and his parents brought him up as a girl. It was reported at the time as a success, but over the last ten years or so there have been a lot of articles about the absolute failure of it.
Anyway, this book is fascinating me - not so much about the actual gender reassignment - I already knew the details more or less, but how obsessive people are over wanting to further their agenda on such subjects. Money, the psychologist in the case, being an obvious point in case, but the author here is showing a sort of willful blindness to the fact that actually the twins' case doesn't 100% support the nature argument. He's certainly harmless about it, in a way that Money wasn't - but, nevertheless his points that gender is completely innate, are seriously weakened by the fact that he keeps saying that the non-assigned twin is the weaker and more gentle of the two. Identical twins - obviously if it's all about nature, they'd both have been alike in personality. Apparently from a few days after they were both home from the hospital, the boy, who was later raised as a girl, was more vigorous, and this persisted throughout their childhood - but became stronger after he was reassigned. Which is interesting in terms of how much of his reaction was due to something innate, and how much was his slowly developing personality asserting itself.
The little boy who was re-assigned seems to have been very aware of what was happening (remarkably so for a small child) and fighting the battle against being made to change - at any rate he seems to have protested from the start (and given Macoby's and many other studies that there is a minuscule difference gender-wise between boys and girls that age that is probably less due to his gender and more to protesting the change).
Given just how steeped in gender stereotypes the parents are, it's actually not surprising - because it is so so blatant the way they did it. Also they must have brought him up very boyishly to start with, judging by their attitude to gender. Making a seachange on that must have been obvious to even a two year old. I reckon at that age, I'd have fought too, if my parents had suddenly curtailed my movements, forced me into uncomfortable clothes and forbidden me to play with my own toys. Especially if I'd had a twin brother who was still allowed to do all this stuff. It's amazing that he kept on fighting - and that is unquestionably an argument for nature influencing personality - he was probably innately stubborn.
Money however - was not harmless - the surgery, the getting the kids to roleplay sex in front of him, all the invasive surgery and experiments. How could anyone who calls himself human do that? How could the kid be normal? There've been other cases historically where boys have been raised as boys and vice versa (with mixed results - iirc I read a case study that collated all the cases and in some of the cases the girls raised as boys definitely identified as girls and some as boys and vice versa, but it was slightly heavier on the side of identifying as the sex they were raised - and I can't remember who did the study, unfortunately), but in these they didn't have someone torturing them throughout the process. Of all the lengths to go to to prove your case, that has to be one of the worst. Regardless of whether people are feminist or conservative or whatever - they all seem to have one thing in common - they want to make a big deal of gender.
The thing is, that everyone in this field seems to want to prove their own little theory. The people who want to prove it's all about nature are obviously going to play this and various other studies up. The people for whom it's all about nurture have probably equal evidence pointing that way - including various tests that show the gender gap narrowing as the years go on. And frankly - it's probably a bit of both - I've definitely seen little boys playing with dolls, and horrified fathers stopping them. I've also seen my own cousin, who was the most boyish baby you'd ever see, for all he was often put in little dresses (when he was under one - they thought he was going to be a girl). I'm on the other side of the argument - I was brought up fairly gender free, and personality-wise I'm pretty much on the masculine side of the divide.
Does this mean squat? IMO, no. I'm sick to death of the gender thing. It annoys me to see little girls dressed up like dog's dinners, while boys are in shorts and tee-shirts. But it would be equally silly to have it the other way round. Why can't everyone forget about gender and bring kids up to be people? All the studies I've seen show that even where there's a gender difference there's a large overlap. If you were teaching maths to two classes, and one class had an average of 73% and a maximum of 92% and the other had an average of 69% and a maximum of 90% would you decide that clearly all students in class A were good at maths, and all students in class B were bad at maths? No? Nor would I. But we've got these stereotypes, and as far as I can see, the best thing to do with them is to ignore them. I honestly don't care what causes gender differences, all I want is for people to stop making such a big deal about them. Let us be ourselves - we wouldn't need gender reassignment if we weren't all constrained into female or male units - that is heterosexual male and female units, which would make a whole other rant.
Ya know, I'd never have bothered saying this five/ten years ago, because I thought then that we were all over this. But I've been looking around - it's not just the clothes (btw, who the fuck dresses their five-year-old girl in high heels and a mini-skirt? I've seen that and if you do that, you make me sick). Or the toy adverts, which are so painfully pink wherever there's a girl pictured. I've seen and heard people still saying things about their kids, being 'such a typical little girl/boy.' Or the backlash in the media where people seem to keep talking about 'unrealistic portrayals of tough females,' like Superman's so realistic.
I seem to have lost my point somewhere - but I think it was that wouldn't we all be a lot happier if the expectations of us were just of how we react as a person, rather than of how a mythical male or female reacts, regardless of the origins of our behaviour?
Anyway, this book is fascinating me - not so much about the actual gender reassignment - I already knew the details more or less, but how obsessive people are over wanting to further their agenda on such subjects. Money, the psychologist in the case, being an obvious point in case, but the author here is showing a sort of willful blindness to the fact that actually the twins' case doesn't 100% support the nature argument. He's certainly harmless about it, in a way that Money wasn't - but, nevertheless his points that gender is completely innate, are seriously weakened by the fact that he keeps saying that the non-assigned twin is the weaker and more gentle of the two. Identical twins - obviously if it's all about nature, they'd both have been alike in personality. Apparently from a few days after they were both home from the hospital, the boy, who was later raised as a girl, was more vigorous, and this persisted throughout their childhood - but became stronger after he was reassigned. Which is interesting in terms of how much of his reaction was due to something innate, and how much was his slowly developing personality asserting itself.
The little boy who was re-assigned seems to have been very aware of what was happening (remarkably so for a small child) and fighting the battle against being made to change - at any rate he seems to have protested from the start (and given Macoby's and many other studies that there is a minuscule difference gender-wise between boys and girls that age that is probably less due to his gender and more to protesting the change).
Given just how steeped in gender stereotypes the parents are, it's actually not surprising - because it is so so blatant the way they did it. Also they must have brought him up very boyishly to start with, judging by their attitude to gender. Making a seachange on that must have been obvious to even a two year old. I reckon at that age, I'd have fought too, if my parents had suddenly curtailed my movements, forced me into uncomfortable clothes and forbidden me to play with my own toys. Especially if I'd had a twin brother who was still allowed to do all this stuff. It's amazing that he kept on fighting - and that is unquestionably an argument for nature influencing personality - he was probably innately stubborn.
Money however - was not harmless - the surgery, the getting the kids to roleplay sex in front of him, all the invasive surgery and experiments. How could anyone who calls himself human do that? How could the kid be normal? There've been other cases historically where boys have been raised as boys and vice versa (with mixed results - iirc I read a case study that collated all the cases and in some of the cases the girls raised as boys definitely identified as girls and some as boys and vice versa, but it was slightly heavier on the side of identifying as the sex they were raised - and I can't remember who did the study, unfortunately), but in these they didn't have someone torturing them throughout the process. Of all the lengths to go to to prove your case, that has to be one of the worst. Regardless of whether people are feminist or conservative or whatever - they all seem to have one thing in common - they want to make a big deal of gender.
The thing is, that everyone in this field seems to want to prove their own little theory. The people who want to prove it's all about nature are obviously going to play this and various other studies up. The people for whom it's all about nurture have probably equal evidence pointing that way - including various tests that show the gender gap narrowing as the years go on. And frankly - it's probably a bit of both - I've definitely seen little boys playing with dolls, and horrified fathers stopping them. I've also seen my own cousin, who was the most boyish baby you'd ever see, for all he was often put in little dresses (when he was under one - they thought he was going to be a girl). I'm on the other side of the argument - I was brought up fairly gender free, and personality-wise I'm pretty much on the masculine side of the divide.
Does this mean squat? IMO, no. I'm sick to death of the gender thing. It annoys me to see little girls dressed up like dog's dinners, while boys are in shorts and tee-shirts. But it would be equally silly to have it the other way round. Why can't everyone forget about gender and bring kids up to be people? All the studies I've seen show that even where there's a gender difference there's a large overlap. If you were teaching maths to two classes, and one class had an average of 73% and a maximum of 92% and the other had an average of 69% and a maximum of 90% would you decide that clearly all students in class A were good at maths, and all students in class B were bad at maths? No? Nor would I. But we've got these stereotypes, and as far as I can see, the best thing to do with them is to ignore them. I honestly don't care what causes gender differences, all I want is for people to stop making such a big deal about them. Let us be ourselves - we wouldn't need gender reassignment if we weren't all constrained into female or male units - that is heterosexual male and female units, which would make a whole other rant.
Ya know, I'd never have bothered saying this five/ten years ago, because I thought then that we were all over this. But I've been looking around - it's not just the clothes (btw, who the fuck dresses their five-year-old girl in high heels and a mini-skirt? I've seen that and if you do that, you make me sick). Or the toy adverts, which are so painfully pink wherever there's a girl pictured. I've seen and heard people still saying things about their kids, being 'such a typical little girl/boy.' Or the backlash in the media where people seem to keep talking about 'unrealistic portrayals of tough females,' like Superman's so realistic.
I seem to have lost my point somewhere - but I think it was that wouldn't we all be a lot happier if the expectations of us were just of how we react as a person, rather than of how a mythical male or female reacts, regardless of the origins of our behaviour?