Would we conclude that hormones have no impact on behavior ?
CB
>>> "Eric Nilsson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 05/16/00 12:52PM >>>
RE
>Twenty-five of the children were sex reassigned, meaning doctors
castrated them at birth and their parents raised them as girls.
>But over the years, all of the children, currently aged 5-16,
exhibited the rough-and-tumble play of boys. Fourteen declared themselves to
be boys...
Genderization is a subtle process. The weakness of the study cited a few
days ago is that is was not a "double-blind" study. That is, the parents
knew their children were sex reassigned and so did the doctors. Knowing
this, the parents possibly treated these "ex-boys" as if they were boys in
very subtle-and not so subtle-ways. The study was just as much a test that
parents have beliefs about gender being built into the genes (and treat boys
- sex reassigned or not - as boys) then it was about what was really in the
genes.
I was astounded that when my daughter was born about two years ago, that
within minutes after she was born a genderization process was being applied
to her. The attending nurse almost instantly noted that we should have great
fun dressing Emily up in nice clothes and noted how dainty she was.
Afterwards, when I persisted in dressing Emily in gender neutral-clothes,
strangers who interacted with Emily became very uncomfortable until they
found out what sex she was. I was, meanly perhaps, very vague in my
response, saying something like, "I love taking my baby out." These
strangers often refused to interact further with Emily until they found out
her sex. Once learning her sex, they then returned to interacting with her -
"she's so beautiful," etc because they then knew what script (for boy or for
girl) to use in interacting with her.
My two cents.
