Gender Identity Crisis
Melanie Wilds
Professor Latour
Classical Argument
04/04/2011
Gender Identity Crisis Are you a boy who played with girls dolls as a child? Or vice versa, are you a girl who preferred to climb trees, get dirty and never take baths growing up? Usually, it has been shown one would have been called a sissy or a tomboy. What happens if these individuals never grow out of their gender crisis? They live their lives either as a cross dresser, or a transvestite. If they are homosexual some will go as far as to alter their genital appearance. There are those who disagree and say we are wired the way we are whether we want to be boys or girls. It all breaks down to how society sees the different sexes of people. The idea of gender specifications are a learned behavior. Gender crossing nowadays is a complex issue to speak of. On the one hand you have young men wearing Scottish kilts and laughing about wearing womens garb, to athletes like Oscar De La Hoya who enjoy wearing full on womens lingering and stockings and claiming to save his career and reputation that the picture was photo shopped. Men and women alike, who wear the opposites sex clothes regularly, claim to, have grown up in the wrong bodies. Most of them are heterosexual and maintain healthy relationships with the opposite sex. Aaron Devor states in his article ‘Becoming Members of Society’, that “Many cultures have more than two gender categories and accept the idea that, under certain circumstances, gender may be changed without changes being made to biological sex characteristics” (384). Therefore, someone may want to wear female clothes and lead a completely male lifestyle concerning work and relationships, especially of the sexual nature. There are those out there who claim that one’s gender is chosen even before they are born. They say that we are all wired to know what gender we are at birth. Others pull religion into the mixture and say that God chooses what gender we are weather we have the
Professor Latour
Classical Argument
04/04/2011
Gender Identity Crisis Are you a boy who played with girls dolls as a child? Or vice versa, are you a girl who preferred to climb trees, get dirty and never take baths growing up? Usually, it has been shown one would have been called a sissy or a tomboy. What happens if these individuals never grow out of their gender crisis? They live their lives either as a cross dresser, or a transvestite. If they are homosexual some will go as far as to alter their genital appearance. There are those who disagree and say we are wired the way we are whether we want to be boys or girls. It all breaks down to how society sees the different sexes of people. The idea of gender specifications are a learned behavior. Gender crossing nowadays is a complex issue to speak of. On the one hand you have young men wearing Scottish kilts and laughing about wearing womens garb, to athletes like Oscar De La Hoya who enjoy wearing full on womens lingering and stockings and claiming to save his career and reputation that the picture was photo shopped. Men and women alike, who wear the opposites sex clothes regularly, claim to, have grown up in the wrong bodies. Most of them are heterosexual and maintain healthy relationships with the opposite sex. Aaron Devor states in his article ‘Becoming Members of Society’, that “Many cultures have more than two gender categories and accept the idea that, under certain circumstances, gender may be changed without changes being made to biological sex characteristics” (384). Therefore, someone may want to wear female clothes and lead a completely male lifestyle concerning work and relationships, especially of the sexual nature. There are those out there who claim that one’s gender is chosen even before they are born. They say that we are all wired to know what gender we are at birth. Others pull religion into the mixture and say that God chooses what gender we are weather we have the