More Thinking About Gender... from 19 Feb.

Well, let's have your thoughts on my 2/19/2006 entitled "Thinking About Gender":

"Interesting sight.........here's a thought on your gender posting.........what is it about men and women, aside from the obvious physical things. That makes someone want to change from one gender to another? Are we really that different of creatures? I'm not attempting to answer this; just raising more questions. Are we really that different? Or is it a learned trait that we are different? Is somebody in our lives teaching us to act differently and talk differently and think differently? Couldn't most of this be psychological or sociological influences teaching us that were different (again besides the obvious physical) and there fore making us want to be somebody else? To change genders?

Just a thought................."

And those thoughts are what make doing this so worthwhile. I want other people to throw in their two-cents worth and argue the points with me!

So let's take a look at this not so anonymous poster - we'll call him Master of All He Surveys. Is it as easy as one day I was a perfectly normal 5-year-old boy who had no issues in life and then, suddenly, I knew I wanted to play with Barbie and hang out baking mud pies with the girls and I wanted to be a delicate little wallflower and somewhere between childhood and the onset of menarche, I realised I wanted a menstrual cycle and horomones that would raise the pitch and timbre of my voice; no body hair, please -and hey, wait, what's this thing hanging out?! AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Take it a step further. As a little girl, your parents dressed you in frillies and frocks and the most impractical terrible stuff for being outside clothes. My grandmother was a stupendously guilty person when it came to this. I was the tom-girl that wore dirt and mud and was perfectly content to play by myself. She was just aghast that I was happy this way. (Of course, this is the same woman that gave me all the Judy Bloom books I had - you know I did! - clearly she had no clue what she was handing me to read!) Still, my parents never worried that I was anything other than a female and that when the time was right, I'd get to a point where I just might own something other than dungarees and t-shirts. As it turns out, I did and so it was the healthy attitudes of my parents that also helped!

The influences of society certainly does impact the child a lot. What is cool, what is not, what is something only boys do and the things only girls do. Maybe if the schools taught that this is normal to sometimes feel confused or conflicted about gender, and here are some personality indicatior tests that might help with that issue.

As for men and women in general there are some surprisingly under-the-surface differences that would surprise anyone. Mathematical ability (always a more masculine function, it seems), the amazing ability to back up an enormous ambulance into a tiny little space! Or how men look at problems and how to solve them! There are key differences in the way women and men cogitate and approach solutions, and how we see different facets of it. I certainly hope those glorious differences won't go away!

Anything else you would like to add, O Master of all You Survey?

I don't have a definite answer to the questions posed. Maybe as time goes on, I will.