When boys want to be boys and girls want to be ... er, boys
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090520/OPINION/705199880/1080Tala al Ramahi
5/19/09
Much has been written on "the other", whether it is literary texts on orientalism, imperialism and such, yet there seems to be a peculiar species living among us that we still barely understand: the other ... sex.
Abdul Salam Darwish, head of Family Reconciliation at Dubai Courts, recalls a social experiment conducted recently on fifth graders at a school in Jordan. The pupils were told: imagine you woke up tomorrow and you had been magically transformed into the opposite sex. The results were unintentionally humorous, and telling to say the least. The 10-year-old boys who imagined they had woken up as girls provided responses such as: "I would kill myself", "I would go to the hospital and ask them to switch me back" and "I would never leave the house". The girls' reponses to their hypothetical sex change were more positive: "I would be the happiest person in the world", and "I would have a big party and invite all the other boys".
