Determining Gender: A Social Construct
Did You Learn That or Did You Know That
The debate over nature versus nurture has been around for years. In the crucial debate arises a subcategory, which is if gender is an inborn trait or a social construct. First we must understand the difference between gender identity and sex. Sex has been determined since before birth, depending if you have male (xx) or female (xy) chromosomes. On the other hand, gender identity is the way a person perceives their gender regardless of their sex. Some believe our genes have given us a predisposition to our gender while others believe the social influences around us determines our gender. Do you think you were born with a gender? In our birth certificates we are labeled male or female. Nevertheless, just
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George F. Winter, the author of, Determining Gender: A Social Construct, tells us “The authors investigated almost 200 children aged between seven months and five years who were offered eight pairs of objects and asked to choose one. There was always a pink object in every pair” (Winter). The pink object had been placed into every pair because as a society it is seen as a feminine color. The study goes on to conclude that girls “had a significant preference for the color pink over the other colors. In contrast, boys increasingly avoided pink” (Winter). This highly suggest that society has a big impact on gender identity since society associates pink with females. Little girls and boys are being indoctrinated by society to believe they have to abide by social guidelines, which may have an impact on which gender they choose to identify with. Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell, who are linguistic professors, Eckert at Stanford and McConnell at Cornell, wrote in their book, Language and Gender, that “At birth, many hospitals nurseries provide pink caps for girls and blue caps for boys”( Eckert and McConnell 737). This is more evidence that since birth we are given a standard based on our sex , on what color we should identify with, but that is just the beginning of the indoctrination. Eckert and McConnell also tell us,” Parents of small children have …show more content…
Some argue that society has nothing to do with our gender and it comes pre packaged in our traits. While others argue that our traits have nothing to do with gender and gender identity is a social construct. I beg a digger because we have seen how children are so quick to behave how society has deemed for them too, but also we see the example of Halle who went against everything society has said and decided to be a boy because she was born believing she
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