Quote from: Butterfly on October 28, 2007, 02:59:57 AM
Gender is constructed socially and so are gender roles. The more you socialize with peeps of the same sex as you, the more you will be like them. This is not new and it doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out or comprehend. Little boys imitate their dads, little girls their mum. As we grow up, we learn to behave by imitating peeps that share our "sex". Our behaviour is learnt from the moment we are born.
I learned from girls, actually. Although my mom tried really hard to get me into more "male things" (as the doctor suggested, since I was a "boy" and if I could be put into male roles it would stick and I would be a boy through conditioning).
I still went out with my friends, played house and barbies (not telling my mom). She'd throw cars at me and all of that. I would play with them sometimes, and My GI Joe would be barbies. I played different than my brother. My brother grew up to be a man. I didn't. We had the same stuff thrown at us, but the way we played was very different.
So, then, the question is, if your sense of gender is in your brain (biological) would you gravitate towards the girl social world?
Even though I went through therapy to be more guy like (I did several times in my life, and the last time was when I was 20), it was very difficult to undo the girl habits I picked up. I picked the habits up from my girl friends, from my mom, from my mom's girl friends -- I had male role models, I had a dad. And after the divorce (when I was 11), I we had a hired male role model (an actual counceller to encourage me to be male). My mom was pretty worried. And yes, I would get beaten up for being to girly. I had a lot of negative reinforcement throughout my life that I should be male. People tried very, very hard to condition me as male. Professionals, family members, therapy, drugs, and etc. I felt pretty guilty and tried hard, but it still didn't work out.
One of my last girl friends, before I transitioned, always complained that I was too much of a girl. Being with me was like being with a girl. I tried being more guy like. I grew facial hair. But then people thought that I must be gay or something (that's what she thought for the longest time until I came out to her a year after we broke up).
Still, I think male habits are picked up. Sometimes I do things that are male-ish or actually, tomboy-ish. I live with three girls, so I'm in their social world now and learning constantly from that. So, even though when I was younger I was picking a lot of my habits from other girls, I've picked up more and learned more than I would just from my childhood, etc. I found it easy, refreshing, and liberating to be one of the girls. It feels natural to me.
So, I think socialization is a cultural thing, but I think that there is something with the brain as well. I think the story of David Reimer illustrates something. He had a botched circumcision, so he was born male, but through accident he was forced to be female. He had surgery done, he was raised as a woman, and given all of those early-on social learnings. Yet, in his teens, he still felt like a man. Eventually he found out about his condition and became a man.
That story is famous one, but their are a lot of examples of people born in one gender or another who just don't identify with that gender. So, there's a strong argument that the sense of gender is biological. And even though all of the social stuff is thrown at you, you're not comfortable with it. And you still seem to pick up and learn from females, even if you are perceived as male (or vice versa, of course).
I was alive when the theory of how you raise a child will determine their gender was very popular (still is, but not so much). I had therapy as a kid. I saw a doctor who was very sure that my early onset girly behavior could be counteracted and turned off.
When I transitioned it didn't surprise a lot of people (but it didn't necessarily make them happy either, since they put so much effort to prevent me from turning transsexual on them). My half sister wasn't surprised. My mom's best friend wasn't at all (I used to hang out with her daughter all the time and play girl stuff... I didn't want to hang out with the boys). Pretty much everyone who knew me as a kid, people who knew me in school, and people who knew me in the last 10 years, I didn't surprise them. I got a lot of, "Huh, well that makes sense!"
And then comes the question of people who don't identify with any gender. I'm a girl, that's who I am. But I know people who are androgynous, and that's who they are and they are happy with that. If gender is learned, then how do non-genders exist? What is the drive for for that? Social, or maybe it is biological. Just like who you are attracted to is biological -- you can try your hardest to condition a gay man to be straight, but it isn't going to work. We know that. We have lesbians, bisexual, asexual, pansexual... you name it. It's there, and that drive is in us, in our brains, somewhere. An environmental condition isn't going to make someone gay or straight, nor will therapy, or all of the social context you try; They are who they are, and I am who I am.
I know that I've been driven to be female. I wasn't socially trained to be a girl. I wasn't encouraged to be a girl. But I had the drive somewhere deep inside because what I was learning and being presented with didn't match who I was.
And the other thing, every girl in my house is different. I'm different. I'm learning from them and other girls, but I still am myself, no girl is like me, and no girl is like another girl. Two of my roommates are twins. They are different people, yet they grew up in the same environment. They have personality, and personality grows but isn't learned. Two people in the exact same situations, even if you could control everything, will turn out to be different people.
But, yes, I would have to say that I'm more feminine now than I was before, simply because I'm not stuck trying to be male for other people and trying to copy male behavior. We copy behavior to survive. I learned male behaviors cause in this world if you look like a guy, acting like a guy is how you survive. Now that I'm being who I am, I'm relieved and liberated. And of course, to survive in the girl world I need to learn girl socialization that I didn't get like my friends did. But, even though it's surviving, it doesn't feel like it because I'm being who I am and going with the flow I naturally am inclined to do, rather than going against what I'm naturally inclined to do.
In my case, there's a natural inclination for me to be a woman. Of course one can go against that natural feeling and learn to be someone they are not, but they will never feel that being someone they are not as natural.
So, anyway, sorry for the long post. I think that yes, you learn behaviors but there is something biological going on as well (with me anyway, maybe everyone is different). This is my opinion anyway; It could be brilliant, it could be BS.
--natalie
