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Chapter 2: Gender Development -
Concepts
Essentialism
 Sexual scripts
Margaret Mead
 Queer theory
Sex hormones/chromosomes
 Sexual Orientation
Sociobiology
 Teens & Sexual intercourse
Infant-father bonding
 Gender and mortality
Freud
 PMS/menopause
Intersexed & Sexual Dimorphism
 Freud
Transsexual & Transgender
 Double Standard
Gender Identity

Essentialism/Nature vs. Nurture
 Essentialism : is the belief that males and females are inherently different because of their biology and genes.
 Although research does not discount the role of biology in gender development, it clearly demonstrates that culture is greater barrier to equality than biology

Essentialism/Nature vs. Nurture
 Nature and Nurture: Margaret Mead
 1930’s
, Sex and temperament in Three Primitive
Societies , New Guinea—
 Arapesh—gentle, and peace loving
 Mundugumor—fierce and aggressive
 Tchumbuli—demonstrated (what would be considered) reverse gender role
 Concluded: Masculine and feminine are culturally, rather than biologically, determined.

>Mead’s work challenges the “it’s only natural” argument
>In fact, no existing theory, especially those grounded in essentialism, can explain the immense variety of meanings attached to being male and female.
>Therefore, we can identify biological differences and similarities between female and male, but to determine how these relate to what is considered “masculine” and
“feminine” the world over is difficult.

Sociobiology
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Evolution, Genetics, & Biology:
Genetics endow females and males with different capacities to allow adaptive advantages for species survival to unfold productively
Other biological differences, such as prenatal androgens, reinforce genetic patterns.

Sociobiology
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Sociobiology:
Rooted in the nature side of the debate, the field of sociobiology also addresses questions of sex differences in its examination of the biological roots of social behavior.
Originally developed out of research based on insects (Edward Wilson— social insects), sociobiologists argue that evolutionary theory can be used to draw conclusions about humans from studies of animals.

Sociobiology
Cognitive Biology:
>The biological basis for sex differences stems from research on prenatal hormones and brain development.
>Androgens help determine how our bodies, including our brains, becomes sexually differentiated.
>Higher levels of androgens predict more male-typical than femaletypical behavior.

Sociobiology
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Cognitive Biology:
Cognitive sex differences related to stronger spatial ability for males and stronger verbal ability for females, for examples, may have biological roots since these differences show up very early in life before strong environmental influences kick in.
These are stables differences that persist over times for individuals regardless of gender role change.
Hormones may accounts for some sex differences in gender identity and sexual orientation, for example, but cannot account for gender differences in other roles such as nurturing, love, and crime behavior.

Sociobiology
 Cognitive Biology:
 Is sexuality a choice?
 Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJtjqL
UHYoY

The Hormone Puzzle
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Females possess two X chromosomes
The extra X chromosome is associated with a superior immune system and lower female mortality at all states of the life cycle.
XX = Female
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Males possess one X and one Y chromosome
XY = Male
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Is it the lack or presence of the Y chromosome that determines if a baby will be male or female

The Hormone Puzzle
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We know that sex hormones have two key functions:
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1) They shape the development of the brain and sex organs
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2) They determine how these organs will be activated.
Ex: During fetal development, when certain tissues are highly sensitive to hormones, the secretion of testosterone both masculinized and effeminized key cellular structures throughout the brain and reproductive organs.
The fetus first starts to develop female organs but later masculinizes itself if it possesses a Y chromosome, under the influence of testosterone.

The Hormone Puzzle
 The Hormone Puzzle:
 Theory on the influencing factors of sexuality:
 Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKqKsXdokCM

Aggression
 The debate on the influence of hormones on gender behavior is further complicated when studying se differences and aggression.
 Aggression is linked to testosterone.
 Girls and boys are about equal in learned aggressiveness.
 Girls are more likely to suppress their anger and carry it out verbally. They also use ore relational aggression—purposely harming others, usually other girls, through manipulating peers, family members, and friends. Girls cause harm when a relationship suffers.
 Boys and young men are more likely to show aggression, but they carry it out in physical way—confronting adversaries, usually other males, with fistfights, bullying, and shouting matches coupled with pushing and shoving.

Motherhood
 Animal studies of primates focusing on hormones released during pregnancy that allegedly fuel mother-infant bonding have been used to suggest the existence of a maternal instinct in human females
 But, the notion of a maternal instinct is not supported by available research.
 Leta Hollingworth (1916) discounted the maternal instinct belief and suggested that
“social devices” are the impelling reasons for women to bear and rear children.
Socialization of females maximizes attachment to the young, whereas for males it is minimized.

Motherhood
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Motherhood

Motherhood
Examples that defy “maternal instinct”:
> Women that suffer from postpartum depression & may even reject their child
>Infanticide, voluntary abortion, and neglect by mothers
>Number of voluntarily childless women also continues to increase.

Motherhood
 There is little support for “maternal instinct” but much support that attachment to infants is socialized
 In fact, when new fathers take part in birthing, measures of infant-father bonding are as high as infant-mother bonding.
 Consider, once more, Mead’s study of the gentle Arapesh primitive society, where both sexes enjoyed child care.

Gendered Sexuality—Sigmund Freud:
Anatomy is Destiny
 Sigmund Freud:
 Developed the 5 Stages of Psychosexual
Development—oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital.
 The one that has received the most attention is the phallic stage (ages 3-5) as it relates to gender socialization—recognize anatomical differences between the sexes.
 It is also the phallic stage in which gratification focused on the genitals.

Gendered Sexuality—Sigmund Freud:
Anatomy is Destiny
 The fact that a boy possesses a penis and a girl does not is the dominant factor in Freud’s theory of psychosexual development.
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“Penis Envy”—Freud argued that girls come to believe that they penis, unlike the barely noticeable clitoris is a symbol of power denied to them. The result is “penis envy” which culminates in a girl's with that she could be a boy.
‘Castration Anxiety”—hen a boy discovers that a girl does not have a penis, he developed “castration anxiety”—the fear he will be deprived of the prized organ.

Ambiguous Sex, Ambiguous Gender
 Research on infants born with sexual anomalies helps to clarify the biological basis of sex differences
 Intersexed describes the approximates 1-3% of infants born with both males and female sex organs or who have ambiguous genitals (such as a clitoris that looks like a penis)
 They violate the principles of sexual dimorphism, the separation of the sexes into two distinct, nonoverlapping categories.

Ambiguous Sex, Ambiguous Gender
 Transsexuals & Transvestites:
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Unlike intersexed people, transsexuals are genetic males or females who psychologically believe they are members of the other sex.
They feel “trapped” in the wrong bodies and many undergo
SRS (sexual reassignment surgery) to “correct” the problem.
Only then can their gender identity and their biological sex be consistent.
 Transsexuals are not homosexuals. They are newly minted males or females who desire sexual intimacy with the other gender.
 Transvestites, mostly males who are sexually aroused when they dress in women's clothing, are not transsexual.

Does Nature Rule? A Sex
Reassignment Tragedy
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(1963) 7-month old identical twins.
 Routine circumcision
 Unfortunately, the physician burnt off the penis of one of the boys.
 22-months, his parents decided to have a sex-change operation.
 Renaming their child Brenda.

Does Nature Rule? A Sex
Reassignment Tragedy
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Initially, Brenda's parents noted that she was progressing as any normal girl.
 Then, Brenda began imitating her father and favoring
“boy” toys.
At 14, her father told her about the medical accident and subsequent sex change.
 After this, Brenda renamed herself David.
Testosterone shots & surgical reconstruction of a penis.
 Unfortunately, David committed suicide in 2004.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXJN_zXcspM

Sexual Scripts
 Sexual scripts:
 As we know, sociologists emphasize how sexuality is based on prescribed roles that are acted out like other socially bestowed roles—these come in the forms of sexual scripts
 Sexual scripts are shared beliefs concerning what society defined as acceptable sexual thoughts, feelings, and behaviors for each gender.
 Gender roles are connected with different sexual scripts—one considered more appropriate for males, and the other considered more appropriate for females.

Sexual Scripts: The Double Standard
 Sexual scripts continue to be based on beliefs that for men sex is for orgasm and physical pleasure, and for women sex is for love and the pleasure that comes from intimacy.
 Double standard—refers to the idea that men are allowed to express themselves sexually and women are not.
 The double standard isn’t necessarily reflective of sexual behavior but of sexual attitudes .

Sexual Scripts: Premarital/ Nonmarital Sex
 This is reflective in the attitudes toward premarital/ nonmarital sex. Today the differences between men and women in premarital sex have all but disappeared.
 Men have sex earlier than women, but by the time they graduate from college virtually all mea and women are sexually experienced .
 About half of all teenagers aged 15-19 have had sexual intercourse at least once.
 However, people are surprised to learn that sexual activity among teens has significantly declined Wait!!!!!.......

Gender and Health
 Various measurement techniques have been developed to determine the patterns of health and well-being related to sex and gender.
 Mortality rate —expressed as a percentage of the total number of deaths over the population size in a give time period, usually a year.
 Morbidity rate
—amount of disease or illness in a population. These are often based on treatment.

Gender and Health
 A clearer and consistent inverse pattern emerges in comparing gender differences in mortality and morbidity.
 Women have higher morbidity (sickness) rates but live longer than men
 Men have lower morbidity (sickness)/chronic conditions rates but do not live as long as women
 Ex: Table 2.1 (pg. 40): Heart disease (1.4), cancers (1.5), accidents (1.3), suicide (4.1), and homicide (3.8).
 Men also have higher mortality (death) rates at every stage of life.

Health and Work
 Men and Morbidity:
 Males are prone to certain physical and mental illnesses and injury categories in which women tend to be exempt.
 Men are more likely to suffer from personality disorders (antisocial behavior or narcissism) than women
 As a buffer against mental and physical illness for both men and women, it is better to be married.

Health and Work
 Men and Morbidity:
 For men, it is much better to be married.
Single men have the highest mortality and morbidity rates for both physical and mental disorders.
 Never married, divorced, and single men have higher rates of mental illness when compared to all marital categories or women.

Health and Work
 Women and Morbidity:
 Morbidity appears to gradually merge in females especially noticeable in preadolescence—reports of asthma, migraine headaches, and psychological and eating disorders than boys.
 Females of all ages report more daily and transient illnesses such as colds and headaches and a higher prevalence of nonfatal chronic conditions such as arthritis, anemia, and sinusitis.
 Employed women are healthier than the nonemployed
 Sedentary work has many negative health effects.

Health and Disease
 Menopause and Hormone Replacement Therapy:
 Misinformation and cultural stereotypes surround menopause , when menstruation permanently ceases.
 This causes women to have many disorders related to reproduction
 Robert Wilson (1966) referred to menopause as the
“disease of estrogen deficiency”
 Deemed treatable by hormone replacement therapy
(HRT).
 Discovered that HRT significantly increased the risks of invasive breast caner, stroke and blood clots. In fact, it showed that HRT raised (not lowered) coronary heart disease (CHD)risk in healthy postmenopausal women.

Health and Disease
 Eating Disorders:
 There are other serious health effects in the quest for youth and beauty.
 Such beliefs translate to eating disorders, especially anorexia nervosa— a disease of selfinduce severe weight loss, primarily in young women along with bulimia— which alternates binge eating and purging.
 The rate of these ”fear of fat” diseases have steadily increased since the 1950’s, affecting over 7 million women today.

Health and Disease
 Eating Disorders:
 Males are not immune to weight obsession with their concerns focusing on body shape and muscularity.
 The objectification of the male body in the media form is a key factor in the rapid increase of eating disorders and abuse of anabolic steroids and supplements for all age categories of males.
 Like women, men's psychological well-being is associated with body image norms related to masculinity.

Health and Disease
 Eating Disorders:
 Chronic dieting and excessive physical exercise are reinforced by other health messages publicizing the obesity epidemic in the United
States.
 Americans are obsesses with thinness at the same time as an obesity epidemic has emerged.
 Conflict theory perspective: This has resulted in a form of the medicalization of beauty —a process that legitimized medical control over parts of a person's life.

Health and Disease
 Eating Disorders:
 Combined with cosmetic surgery, unhealthy body weight norms the social pressure for thinness is supported by a billion-dollar advertising and medial industry.
 Ultimately, the industry perpetuates and sustains culturally accepted belief that women’s bodies—and increasingly men’s bodies—are unacceptable as the are.

Health and Disease: HIV/AIDS
 HIV/AIDS:
 A decade ago, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) focused on the high mortality rate of men with the disease.
 For all categories of men and women today, AIDS mortality has significantly decreased. In the U.S.& developed world, HIV infection rates have stabilized or are declining since 1990’s.
 AIDS mortality is re-focused to HIV morbidity. New cases of HIV are declining.

Health and Disease: HIV/AIDS
 HIV/AIDS:
 The sharpest declines are for white males.
 Over 2/3 of females living with HIV/AIDs are African American.
 Poor men and women lining in the South account for a significant proportion of new cases.
 Taking all these factors together, poor, heterosexual, minority women are at greatest risk for HIV/AIDs in the United States.