A whole spectrum.
Someone wrote…
I know there is debate over nature and nurture, but what would happen if you just let the babies choose what they wanted to be, instead of instilling in their heads that there were two accepted ways of expressing gender? We could’ve had a whole spectrum.
If you had been able to “choose” your gender as a child/infant, would you have chosen a binary gender? Or would you have “chose” another gender altogether, one that is neither a man, nor a woman, or perhaps not a “mixture” of even either of those? Is any of this a choice, regardless of when we “choose”?
Posted by julian on April 8th, 2009 at 08:00 am
Category: your voice One comment »
April 9th, 2009 at 9:25 am |
I don't know… without societal and parental influences, would I have noticed my gender much at all? We only really pay attention to things when they're waving in our faces, after all, especially in youth. I probably never would have questioned that the way I was was just the way things were for people if not for teasing, bullying and societal training.
I'm an atheist, and I was very interested to read an article about religiosity in Sweden, written by a foreigner – I think a Brit. The writer said that when ey asked people about whether and to what degree they believed in god(s), many said it had never really occurred to them to think about it. These people grew up in a culture that retained some of the customs and some of the views of Christianity – Christmas, for example – but was otherwise almost completely secular. They had never really thought to wonder about religion, or to ponder at length whether they believe in God. I think gender could be the same way.
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