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Sex And Gender Is Not Only A Popular Topic Discussed In

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Sex and gender is not only a popular topic discussed in class, but also a popular topic discussed in the real world. With all of the politics going on surrounding things such as transgender bathrooms, women’s marches, and the LGBT movement as a whole it’s no surprise why this is such a hot topic at the moment. Despite this being a current topic, it has been discussed and mentioned earlier than most of us realized. The TV show House first aired on November 16, 2004 and went all the way to May 21, 2012. Throughout this series there were a few episodes touching on some of these topics. However, the episode of interest for this essay is the 13th episode of the 2nd season and is called “Skin Deep” (Spoiler warning for this essay). In order to …show more content…

Someone born female can choose to identify their gender as a woman or as a man. Or they can identify as neither, or as a mix. Whatever they consider themselves to be. Gender is just how one chooses to present themselves. Gender can be influenced by a number of factors. If someone is born a female and raised as a female they may just assume they’re a female and live life as a woman with no questions asked. Others may just know that they are female and choose to live as a woman. Some may think they are male despite being raised otherwise. All that matters is that sex is biological and gender is expression. Now back to House. This all relates to House in the obvious ways with the main characters identifying as their gender, House as a male, Cuddy as a female, etc. Also most of the nurses being female reinforces gender stereotypes. However, the real interesting link between sex and gender and this episode is with the patient.
In this episode, the patient is a 15 year old model who identifies as a girl. She goes through the whole episode as a girl with this illness and House’s team can’t figure it out. It turns out she’s on heroin and it is deduced that she may have PTSD from sexual abuse. However, after digging and much moral and internal debate, they discover that the father and the daughter have had sex but it wasn’t abuse in the girls mind. She admits to having sex with many older men in order to advance her career. Eventually, they diagnose her with cancer.

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