NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/soc/women/20185

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-23 | 3.2 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Bronis Vidugiris)
Subject: Re: Self Appreciation (was: Re: Elle MacPherson causes rape?)
Organization: Motorola, CCR&D, CORP, Schaumburg, IL
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Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 17:49:49 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Peter Nelson) writes:

)   Is there some essential psychological nature to being a
)   male or a female?  To assert that one "feels like a female"
)   implies that there is some unique way that females feel
)   by virtue of "femaleness" and not merely due to the social
)   experience of being female and being treated like one in
)   this world (since transexuals wouldn't have had this exper-
)   ience).   If females are psychologically different for reasons
)   that transcend social factors then this has interesting
)   implications for feminist theory.
)
) Are there any feminist scholars who have taken a position on
) the philosophical implications of transexualism?

Here's my $.02 on the issue.

It is not unknown for babies born male to be surgically made 'female'
due to surgical and other accidents.

A fair number of them were able to adjust to their gender, regardless of
the fact that they may have been 'born male'.  I don't recall the
statistics offhand - there was some info in the Encylopedia Britanica,
however.  I think the majority 'adjusted', though (I'd have to double
check this.  Of course, one can rightly ask - what is 'adjustment' and
how is it measured?.)

So I think that it is not *automatic* for a person to have an image of
themselves as being male/female based on their biology.  I wouldn't be
surprised if it were more common (I lack the data) for people with the
'wrong' physiology to be unhappy with their gender.

There is also some data that show that pre-natal horomone environments can
have a strong influence on a person's personality - there was some data
on women exposed to testosterone / androgens while they were developing
in the womb having a tendency to develop various 'tomboy' traits, also in the
Britanica.  (Sorry that this is so vague, I don't recall the details, anyone
interested in more details can use this as a place to start looking, though.)

All in all, I believe that biology does have a strong influence on how people
develop, but cultural and environmental  factors are also very important,
most likely just as important.

I think the tendency, on the whole, is to underestimate the natural
variance between different people, for whatever reason (biology, prenatal
enviornment, culture, home life, ....) - and to tend to try to put
people into the 'culturally approved' roles/stereotypes.  The fundemental
reality I see is that people are different - and I am for the lessening
of culturally pre-defined roles for people as much as possible myself.