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Gerardo Pimentel
Professor Allie Turner
English 114A
5 November 2016
Gender is based on Biology
In this meme it show a women that looks like your stereotype hippie. She is use to
personify the people who believe that thinks gender is a social construct with no basis in
biology and thinks conservation are science deniers. The creator use humor to make fun of
the people who believe that gender is a social construct and thinks the right wing are the one who
science deniers but it is the ones who believe that gender is a social construct are the real science
deniers. They are the real science deniers because gender is not a social construct it has basis in
biology. The kind of humor style that is use in this is aggressive humor to mock the people that
believe the idea that gender is a social construct. The supporters of the idea that gender is a social
construct say that gender is taught to us by society and we are socialize into gender roles which
means a certain set of behaviors for boys and girls. The idea that gender is a social construct is a
myth by taking a look at gender socialization theory because boys and girls have a nature
inclination when it comes to behaviors.
The gender socialization theory states that there is a process of learning attitude and
social expectation of the sex they are born into also known as gender roles. The three supporter
of the theory I found are from Norway. Two of the three work at University of Olso and the other
one is a columnist in Dagbladen. Joergen Lorenzten is a gender researcher working at the Center
of Interdisciplinary Gender Research was ask to help Harald Eia to answer the question why the
Norwegian Gender Paradox exist. Harald first ask him So the difference is just the genitalia?
Joergen reply with Breast, hair, height and a few other things. But everything outside of that is

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the same. Then he was asked feeling, interests? in which he reply with yes Herald continue
to ask Intelligence, capacity? Joergen responded with Thats basically identical. Herald
goes to ask another gender researcher named Cathrine Egeland. She first said that we still
expect different things for girls and boys. And according treat them different. Then she was
asked If girls and boys were treated equal from the start do you think they would develop
similar interest? and answer with Yes thats the implication of what Im saying. Joergen also
said Children absorb the expectations for boys and girls. We treat girls and boys differently
from the very start Martine Aurdal the columnist Harald talked to. She said A baby is there
with a pink blanket. Grown-up come and say what a beautiful princess! What a nice baby. If the
baby has blue blanket, they say what a tough little guy. Youre going to be a strapping lad this is
how the socialization begins as soon as possible. There been one time where a child was raise as
the opposite sex. As an experiment to see gender was nurture rather than nature and the results
are surprising.
There is a story where a child was born and raise as a girl. The story begin in Canada
1965 twins were born their names were Bruce and Brian Reiner. They were normal and healthy
babies until the age of six months they were having problems urinating. The doctors told the
parents it can be fix by circumcising both of them but for Bruce the operation when wrong
leading to him having damage genitals. When his parents were told what happen at the operating
table they did not know what to do until they met a psychologist named Dr. Money who suggest
that they should raise him as a girl. Bruces parents did decide to raise as a girl and to participant
in Dr. Money experiment. The only rule to his experiment was to never tell him that he was born
a male and the results from the annual visits was that she had many tomboy traits. Bruce became
Brenda at the age of two look like a little girl but she rejected her new identity from the start.

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She tried to rip off the first dress that her mother sewed for her. When she saw her father
shaving, she wanted a razor, too. She favored toy guns and trucks over sewing machines and
Barbies. When she was a teen she was given estrogen in order to develop breast so she can
become a women. At the age of fourteen she become miserable so her parents decide to tell her
that she was born a male. Dr. Money experiment was to see if gender was learn not inborn but
the experiment was a failure; Bruce refuse to adopt his new gender.
First in order for the observation that we socialize into gender roles to be true the human
brain need to be a blank slate but in reality there are differences in the male and female brains.
Men are better in math than women because men a larger inferior-parietal lobule than women
which the area in the brain where math is done. While females are better at language task than
male because the language areas in the brain are larger in females than and language is process in
both hemispheres of the brain in females but in males it is process in one hemisphere. Since
female brains are better in language that means that they are less to develop disorders like
dyslexic while male are more likely have dyslexic because their brains are not wire for language.
Females are more likely to get mood disorder than males because females are great at expressing
their feelings and are more in touch with their emotion. Some other differences are that women
have better social cognition and verbal memory. While men are better that spatial skills and
motor skills. Male brains have more white matter the part of nerves that connect one area of the
brain to another one. While female brains have more grey matter the body of the nerve cell.
There are clear differences in the male and female brain but the difference between the two
genders brain starts much earlier.
The difference in male and female brain starts as early as the age of nine months old. A
Norwegian doctor named Professor Trond Diseth working at Norways National Hospital studies

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early gender difference. He does this when he assigning a gender to a baby that are born with
deform genitals. The job is done by having a baby that has normal genitals putting them on the
floor with ten toys to choose from: four of them masculine, four of them feminine and two are
gender neutral. He would observe which toys the baby went for so base on the behavior of the
heathy baby he can assign a gender to the babies with the deform genitals. From his observation
on the babies with the normal genitals the boys went for the masculine toys and girls went for the
feminine toys. In a recent study conduct by the City University London and UCL they repeat the
experiment that Professor Trond Diseth did and they are finding the same results that boys go for
masculine toys and girls go for feminine toys. These findings suggest that the behavior is from
biology, but is there a difference in between the gender even where they are born.
In a study to see if the sex differences in male and female were biological or of social
treatment to a specific gender. How the researchers were going to determine that it was from
biology or from society is by having baby as young as one day old to stare at a face or a
mechanical object. The researchers were not aware what gender the infant was to avoid
confirmation bias during the experiment. They chose to observe the newborns because if the
babies shown no differences in behavior regardless of gender then the sex difference between
male and female is of social reasons. If the babies shown differences in behavior because of their
gender then it is of biology. The results were that the male babies stared at the mechanical object
longer than the female babies did while the female babies stared at the face longer than the male
babies. This suggest that biology influences the interest of males and females which mean that
male will be more incline to go into object base jobs and females will be more incline to go into
people object. There is also biological influences seen in animals that do not socialize their
young into certain behavior base on their sex.

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There was a study done in 2008 to see if toy preference was because of social pressure or
of biology so they had monkey play with toys that have wheels or being plush. The wheeled toys
represented the boy toy preference and the plush ones represented the girl toy preference. They
wanted to know if the monkeys toy preferences would be like the preference of children. The
results of the experiment was that the male monkeys went for the wheeled toys and the female
monkeys went for the plush toys. The male monkeys had a high preference for the wheeled and
the female monkeys had a slight preference for the plush toys; the preferences the monkeys had
reflect the preference children have. They have observe that the monkeys never encourage their
infants or discourage them to play with the toys. The researcher found that the monkey toy
preferences was not base on socialization but base on biology. Since the monkeys toy preference
and children toy preference were very similar so children toy preference is also biological. The
reason why girls shown a slight preference towards feminine toys because there are girls that are
born with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) which cause girls to produce more androgen
that led them to have a masculine toy preferences. Also there been observable behavioral
differences. The prediction of the gender socialization theory is that the more gender equal a
country becomes the more likely to see close to fifty-fifty in all jobs and the interests of the
gender would be the same.
In 2008 Norway the country with the most gender equality but there was not fifty-fifty in
all job. A report states that almost 90% of all nurses in Norway are female but only 10% of all
engineers are. Its been this way since the 80s and The government has for years tried to recruit
male nurses and female engineers. Kristin Mile was the Equal Opportunities Commissioner. She
says these measure didnt change things. You get one or two-year effect. And then its falls again
These quotes are from the documentary called The Gender Equality Paradox. Those two quotes

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show how there is a gap in jobs like engineering and nursing but this pattern shows up in other
counties that has a lot gender equality and countries that less gender equality the smaller the gap
got. This information came from a survey done in fifty-three countries around the world and the
data was collect by a psychologist named Richard Lippa. He also found a pattern that men go for
the thing oriented jobs and women go for the people oriented jobs. This is also true for the
children that are in the less gender equal countries according to the ROSE project. It is a series of
questions in order to find out what are the attitude of children across many countries towards
science, how it taught in schools, their interest in science, thought on the environment, preferred
work environment and their interested in getting a job in science or technology. They found that
children in developing countries both genders were very interested how computers work and
while there was a gap between boys and girls interest in how computers work in the developed
countries. Boys were more interested how computers work than the girls in the developed
countries and the girls in the developing countries were more interested in how computers work
than the girls in the rich countries. They found that Girls priority: Working with, and helping
people. Boys priority: Working with their hands, with things, machines and tools. Boys, more
than the girls favors: Earning lots of money, becoming the boss at the job, becoming famous
The girls in developing countries more interested in getting jobs in technology than the girls in
developed countries. Base on this information you can come to the conclusion that the more free
people are to choose their job they go into the jobs that they are naturally incline to.
In conclusion these inborn differences between the sexes lead to an inequality though the
lens of equality of outcome in the developed part of the world because in a free country people
will go to jobs that they are naturally interested in. That just how it will be in those countries and
there is nothing anyone can do about it. The fact is you cannot raise a boy as a girls because

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social engineering is hard. Boys and girls from the start are just interested in difference things
because their brains are wired differently which results in them going separate fields of
employment. For example general boys brains are thing orientate and girls brains are people
orientate which lead to men going to thing orientate jobs and women going to people orientate
jobs. The differences in behaviors in sex is also seen in monkey which turn out to parallel to the
behavior in children.

Work Cite

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Connellan, Jennifer, Simon Baron-Cohen, Sally Wheelwright, Anna Batki, and Jag Ahluwalia.
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Hassett, Janice M. Siebert, Erin R. and Wallen Kim "Sex Differences in Rhesus Monkey Toy
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"Infants Prefer Toys Typed to Their Gender, Says Study." ScienceDaily. TrendMD, 15 July
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differently.html. 26 Oct. 2016

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Reporter, Daily Mail. "The Tragic Twin Boy Who Was Brought up as a Girl after Horrific
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1332396/Bruce-Reimer-Tragic-twin-boy
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Sjoberg, Svein, and Camilla Schreiner. "The ROSE Project An and Key

Findings."

http://roseproject.no/network/countries/norway/eng/nor-Sjoberg-Schreiner overview-2010.pdf. 4
Nov 2016
The Gender Equality Paradox. Youtube. N.p., 9 Dec. 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
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