What Are Social Norms Affect Sex Research?

Both Deborah Blum’s The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over? and Aaron Devor’s “Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes” challenges the concept of how gender behavior is socially constructed. Blum resides on the idea that gender behavior is developed mainly through adolescence and societal expectations of a gender. Based on reference from personal experiences to back her argument up, Blum explains that each individual develops their expected traits as they grow up, while she also claims that genes and testosterones also play a role into establishing the differentiation of gender behavior. Whereas, Devor focuses mainly on the idea that gender behavior is portrayed mainly among two different categories: masculinity and

Planning on a future in the medical field, I found the discussion and study of the one-sex and two sex model history incredibly fascinating. Humans looked at our bodies, along with other things, very differently in past centuries and sexuality was included amongst these other things. What sexuality is, what it means to society, and what it means to be a man or woman has actually changed over the years. History class has taught us that living in a different time period can produce a different experience of what it means to be human and how we live and experience life. Through recorded history, we have an evolving view of sex and what different types of sex are. Popular opinion of sex moved from a one sex model to a two sex model as alternative views and developments in medical science and technology in conjunction with change in the thinking of people regarding the genders including pre–revolution enlightenment, post-revolution feminism, separation of labor and the rise of medical professions all contributed to a change from the one-sex model to the two sex model as a means of supporting and protecting male dominance both in private and public.

Gender is actually a set of rules, customs and traditions assigned to people of a particular sex. Gender is not biological but sex is. Rather, according to Lorber, it is influenced by our society and our culture. By proving this claim, Judith Lorber has put forth the example of the man and this example is efficient in distinguishing “gender” as a practice than as an innate attribute.

Although men and women have significant biological differences, the question whether gender-specific labels stems from these biological differences or are gender constructed remains a polarised nature versus nurture debate. Whether it is through the process of socialisation or genetic make-up, “gender identity” is given from a person’s birth, determining how a person culturally interacts and the expectations society places on them. Along with a “gender identity” comes a whole set of “norms”, “values” and so-called “gender characteristics”, which are supposed to define the differences between a male and a female. According to the World Health Organisation (n.d.), the term “sex” is often used to define the biological and physiological

Judith Lorber is able to convey many of her ideals about our contemporary conceptions of gender in her essay, ?The Social Construction of Gender.? Not only does she clearly express her opinions on the roles of physiological differences of the male and female bodies, but she also elaborates on the roles of the mass media and professional sports among other things. It rapidly becomes clear that there are many legitimate arguments that support this movement for near or complete equality in genders and the roles that they perform.

It is clear to see how social values have influenced research on sexuality in the past. Not only did society dictate what was right and proper for a scientist to study, but it condemned those who sought answers for the “improper” areas of study to career damnation. Even more discouraging is the way in which modern day society still puts limits on the research done in sexual physiology. In an era so tolerant and open-minded, one would assume that any researcher in honest quest for truth would be welcomed (and funded) with open arms. Unfortunately, this is not the case. In an article titled Long After Kinsey, Only the Brave Study Sex, Benedict Carey describes such limits on a study attempted in 2003, “In July 2003, for instance, Congress threatened to shut down several highly-regarded sex studies, including one of emotion and arousal, and another of massage parlor workers. And last summer health officials refused to finance a widely anticipated

Resistance to sex research has caused large misunderstanding about our human sexuality. This resistance has been shaped by our society’s moral views. Our society’s perceptions have greatly influence the type of sexual research conducted and the funding that has gone towards sexual research. This has overall influenced the outcome of sexual research has had.

Among the biological and genetic factors listed in Figure 1.1 are genes, prenatal sex hormones and brain organization, ongoing genetic and hormonal effects across the life span, hormonal and physical changes of puberty, and the biological processes of childbirth and parenthood. Family influences include parental socialization, sibling influences, and gender roles and stereotypes transmitted by families (Wallien, 2008). Peer influences include the effects of classmates, friends, and coworkers. Broader social and cultural factors include teacher attitudes and influences, mass media effects, the structure of educational and work settings, and the influences of government, political, and social organizations. All these myriad influences come together to mold the behavior of individual males and females, to produce the phenomenon we term gender. The complexity of gender has implications both for theories of gender and for public policies that relate to gender. This final chapter will explore the future of gender research, and it will examine how the nature-nurture debate relates to

The way society is taught to be socialized is salient and goes unnoticed, therefore it is valid to claim that gender is socially constructed through our everyday practices, whether we are aware of the construction or not. With socialization beginning the instant a child is born, the process is continuous through out adolescence and varies dramatically across the two genders. With guidance from institutions and arenas such as education, sports, music and the mass media gender seems to be coerced, as it comes with a scripted set of behaviors and attitudes. This essay argues that gender is socially constructed on an everyday basis. To further explain this thesis the essay will draw on early childhood socialization of masculinity and femininity,

Who determines the truths we deem relevant? Is it the licensed medical professionals that deliver babies in hospital rooms? Is it our parents who gave us life and nurtured us? Is it our teachers who imbue us with knowledge of the world around us? This line of questioning appears throughout sociologist Steven Seidman 's 'Theoretical Perspectives '. This piece provides a critical insight into how the scientific and medical community has colluded to frame sex and gender in the most heteronormative way possible. Heteronormativity is the belief that people can fall into only two distinct genders, man and woman. It asserts that heterosexuality

Every characteristic of an individual’s life is determined by their genitals. “Why is gender attribution so meaningful to social order and why does the inability to classify someone sex’s cause such a major disruption?” (Preves, 2004:13). Gender classification starts from birth, when a baby is identified as a boy or girl. The reveal of the child’s gender designates their future. Their social interactions, gender roles,

For many years we have been living in a society where depending on our sexuality, we are judged and expected to behave and act certain way to fulfill the society’s gender stereotypes. How is so? Since the day we are born we are categorized as a boy or girl bases on our sex. Frequently, we heard the nurses in the Maternity facility saying things like, “Oh is a strong boy or is beautiful fragile princess.” Yet, not only in hospitals we heard this types of comments but we also see it on the media, where they are referring to guys as tough and girls as delicate and weak ones. The truth is that in our society gender role is more important than sexuality. But does sexuality and gender really matter? What if someone breaks these stereotypes? Does our sexuality really reveal what type of things as individuals are capable of accomplishing? To start with we have to see know what these terms: gender and sex mean and what the famous gender role’s guidelines are. Therefore, we have to analyze and most important understand what is gender and how is seen in our society.

When a child is born, the most common question asked is what is the baby’s sex? This question is asked because, sex is biologically determined, from the second we come out of the womb, by our chromosomes, genitalia, reproductive organs, and hormones. People often group sex and gender together as if they are the same thing, but really they are two separate categories. Gender is a category that splits bodies into a binary system of women and men. Ultimately the two terms intertwine because, one’s biologically determined sex is assigned a gender role to play. The main difference between the two is that gender excludes biology. Sex represents the body’s anatomy and physiological workings and gender represents social forces that mold behavior.

As it stands today, gender in our current society is rather ambiguous; however, different factors pertaining to different research discoveries, involving neuroscience studies, evolutionary psychology, social learning theory, and other biological factors have attributed to the notion that gender development is in fact closely related to biological factors (Kirkpatrick, 2003). This development is also closely associated with heterosexuals, but also provides a plausible relation to gender roles with homosexuals due to containing a strong link to not only their sexual preference, but also their biological gender roles.

From the moment we are born until we die people continually tell us what we should and shouldn’t do based on our sex. Even though our sex doesn’t equate to a specific gender, people assume that a person’s gender, referring to the social and cultural traits that are associated with either males or females is the same as their sex, the biological differences in anatomy between males and females (Lindsey, 4). Through the influence of my family, peers and religion, I have learned what it means to be a girl with many intersecting identities in the world today.