Sexuality, Nurture or Nature?

Many people like to argue that our sexuality is a product of the environment we are raised in, or that it is simply a choice people make for one reason or another. Many people also believe it’s something that is decided for us, we’re either born with it or we’re not and that it’s something that predetermined by our genetic make-up. Something that is generally well accepted across the board is that human sexuality is something incredibly complicated, brain meltingly complicated really, and that we may or may not ever even find the reason behind it. For a lot of people, it’s nice to imagine that humans are simple and you can know a person’s sex and then you’ll know all sorts of things about them deeply and clearly- except that’s not how it is most of the time. There are some people who fit into that nice little box but the vast majority does not. There are many variables and contributing factors to human sexuality, such as your biological sex, gender, sexual orientation, romantic orientation, and sexual behavior. To argue whether or not your sexuality is a product of nature as opposed to nurture as well as the opposite argument there has to be first a firm understanding of each of these. A person’s biological sex, as defined by Planned Parenthood, is “… is how we are defined as female, male, or intersex. It describes our internal and external bodies — including our sexual and reproductive anatomy, our genetic makeup, and our hormones.” Biological sex is what your body is and it’s not necessarily the same thing as your gender. Biological males bear both X and Y chromosomes and usually have male genitalia, biological females have two X chromosomes and usually have female genitalia. There are all sorts of variations of this as well, in the case of intersex individuals they may have a combination of the two and in some cases there have been individuals born with two sets of male or female genitalia. When DNA and chromosomes a person’s sex is generally a set

Cited: Cornuelle, Kimberly. "BU Today." BU Today. BU Today, 16 Nov. 2011. Web. 07 Nov. 2012. "Female, Male & Intersex." Biological Sex. Planned Parenthood, n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2012. "Gender & Gender Identity." Gender Identity. Planned Parenthood, n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2012.