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Sensual 2005z Flyga Sex and Gender: Same or Different? Sensual 2005z Flyga

Sensual 2005z Flyga

As a designation of male or female, sex, with the child's increasing s Nasty ophistication and learning becomes understood as a descriptive set of terms_and meanings that encompass the most common biologically accepted attributes --phys fcal differences-- of Sensual males and females; the terms kmly cer Sensual ain gonads, internal andl externalenitalia, sex chromosomes and genes, sex hormones and so on. The- student learns that a male is an individual that has penis and scrotum, testes, and access Sensual oryglands (prostate, seminal vesicles, bulbo-urethral glands); a female is a person with ovaries, a uterus, ovarian tubes, a vagina and clitoris. An intersexed individual is understood to have a mixture of these attributes. And these basic understandings hold for the term sex as they did for the terms Dad and Mom; wide variations and departures from the basic generalities can be known without nullifying the common wisdom.

The term gender first became familiar to most of us in language class when, for those of us with English as a common tongue, we learned that nouns such as table and chair could be either masculine, feminine or neuter. Of what use are such distinctions still remains lost on linguists. Why languages as different as French and German need these artifices while English and most Australoasian languages, for instance, can get along quite well without them is subject for thought. Many languages do not even have sex identifying pronouns. But understanding of gender or sex-typical behaviors (the older expression for gender specific traits) serves quite practical use. And no known language is without gender identifying nouns.

General usage of the term gender began in the late 1960s and 1970s, increasingly appearing in the professional literature of the social sciences. The term came to serve a useful purpose in distinguishing those aspects of life that were more easily attributed or understood to be of social rather than biological origin (see e.g., Unger & Crawford, 1992).

Males and females, as biological entities, were accepted as essentially similar cross-culturally but men and women, by virtue of the multitude of different roles they played in diversified societies, were not so easily catalogued. These anthropological life-style differences came to be accepted as social and cultural constructs. Indeed, the terms sex and gender came, for most investigators, to signify and reify these different areas of consideration; sex would refer to biological traits while gender would refer to social/cultural ones. At least this was generally so among those investigators more sensitive to biological studies. Among those more aligned with sociological and anthropological thinking these differences did not appear so clear cut. For this latter group the terms sex and gender were often used interchangeably.¹

In 1978 Kessler and McKenna (Kessler & McKenna, 1978), in their now classic work, challenged how the relationship between sex and gender might be considered. They even challenged if the two concepts were different or interchangeable. In "just-so" story fashion the fact that males and female are sexually --biologically-- different is what leads to the gender differences seen and manifest by men and women in their behavior patterns and roles. It is certainly understood that way by the majority of the lay public as well as many scientists. But, questioned Kessler and McKenna, if this were so clear cut, why do transsexuals in their pursuit of the life-style of the "opposite" sex work so hard in trying to prove to the outside world what they feel they are on the inside? In doing so, Kessler and McKenna point out that transsexuals seek to reconstruct their sex to coincide with their psychological gender. Doesn't this imply that it is their gender which is primary and their sex secondary? Analysis of the thinking of transsexuals is simultaneously used as a foil to bolster the Kessler & McKenna argument that the study of gender benefits from insightful and detailed analysis of the thinking of individuals as they make significant gender related decisions. This is part of the ethnomethodological approach they espouse.

In demonstrating their point, Kessler and McKenna take the rhetorically clever position of accepting that transsexuals are what they say they are (they interviewed fifteen transsexual individuals). A male transsexual has the body of an anatomic male but the conviction (mind-set) of actually being a woman and a female transsexual has the body of an anatomical female but the conviction (mind-set) of actually being a man (Benjamin, 1966). Then, to rectify the dichotomy, the transsexual is seen as not wanting to change gender but change genitals and body. It thus appears that sex is variable and gender invariant; a reversal from the way the two had come to be considered. But the transsexual, according to our authors, then sets about learning or perfecting how to be the man or woman of mind's desire. In so doing, the transsexual proves to Kessler and McKenna that gender is a construction that doesn't necessarily follow from anatomy.²

For its time this was a novel way of approaching the subject and it remains so today. To me the value of the theory and the book is in its heuristic strength. It forces not only investigators of sex and gender to consider a broader range of possibilities in the study of human development or the forces involved in behavioral execution, but so too scientists of other stripes as well. And the book challenges all researchers to be more critical of how they approach their analysis. These are legitimate questions and considerations that were appropriate for their time. They remain worthy of contemporary deliberation.

The thrust of the Kessler and McKenna thesis, that gender and sex were actually both variable and not immutable became popular particularly among sociologists, women's studies scholars and some psychologists. It also enhanced the widely held nurturist belief that all or at least most of the gender differences were culturally induced and widely malleable. For most biologically oriented scholars and others that studied behavior, however, the questions or thesis posed had little resonance. This can be gauged by recognizing that, for the years 1978 to 1995 only two references to the Kessler and McKenna book, both in psychological journals, could be found in the Science Citation Index (Deaux, 1985; Deaux & Major, 1987). In the Social Science Citation Index, however, references and reviews to the work abound. They were in wide ranging publications associated with sociology, psychology, homosexuality, philosophy and other disciplines (e.g., Bixler, 1979; Morris, 1979; Vaughter, 1979; Wylie, 1986). For these groups involved with interpreting and reinterpreting society's structures, social scientists identified as feminists in particular, the topic of gender has become particularly relevant and new ways of approaching the topic are seen as valuable.³

This presentation, however, also posed problems for them. Most sociologists, many psychologists and others at the time had thought that gender was a function of upbringing and social forces, e.g., Bandura & Walters, 1963 and Mischel, 1966, or cultural conditions, e.g., D'Andrade, 1966. Others had thought an individual's gender developed from and along with cognitive maturity e.g., Kohlberg, 1966, and some even attributed it to a sort of imprinting phenomenon (Baill & Money, 1980) or socio-cultural expectations leading to self-fulfilling prophecy (Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid, 1977) and of course there was the classical Freudian model of gender development (Freud, 1925; 1953). Since transsexuals are brought up in accordance with their genitals, chromosomes and other aspects of their biology, and socially rewarded and encouraged appropriately to match their social milieu and culture and presumably with "Freudian parents" like everyone else, the questions naturally follow of: "Where does this atypical gender desire come from? Why have transsexuals not succumbed to the same influences of social and cultural attribution that have others?" They obviously haven't. Kessler and McKenna didn't follow up that apparent question and challenge to their thesis. Instead, they turned their attention to another fascinating question : "Why was the gender stronger than the sex?"⁴

If the book were written today, Kessler and McKenna probably would tackle the transgender phenomenon to make their argument even stronger. Unlike the majority of transsexuals that "feel they were born that way" many of those identifying themselves as transgendered or gender-bending or gender-blending persons are attracted to the concept of a constructed gender and see themselves and their lives as evidence of it (see e.g., Bullough & Bullough, 1993; Denny, 1998; Devor, 1989). Eschewing any strict male-female dichotomy, transgendered persons instead reach for a wide range of admixtures of male and female restructured anatomies and manifest masculine and feminine life-styles.⁵ jSensual 2005z Flyga Sex and Gender: Same or Different? Sensual 2005z Flygam i Sensual g Sensual Sensual dSensual 2005z Flyga Sex and Gender: Same or Different? Sensual 2005z Flygax Nasty