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from Medical Issues
Gender Differences Are Real
By Frank York
It's time to root out the imposition of gendered
behavior stereotypes from all aspects of our
lives. Ending gender oppression means encouraging
our children to experiment with alternative
gender expressions...
- Nancy Nangeroni, a transsexual
activist quoted in Transgender Warriors
It is fundamental that individuals have the
right to define, and to redefine as their lives
unfold, their own gender identity, without
regard to chromosomal sex, genitalia, assigned
birth sex, or initial gender role.
- From The International Bill of Gender
Rights, approved by the International
Conference on Transgender Law and
Employment Policy, 1993
Are men and women different? They're different anatomically,
of course, but are they different in any other ways?
Do their hormonal differences influence their behaviors
and attitudes? Do they process information differently?
Feminists and gay theorists often say "no" to these questions.
They maintain that the differences between men and
women are mostly the result of socialization in male-dominated
societies, and that it is patriarchal oppression that
has relegated women to feminine gender roles. Biology is
said to have little to do with abilities or sex roles in our society.
Some feminist writers actually believe that the idea of "two
sexes" (male and female) is a myth. Dr. Anne Fausto-
Sterling, writing in "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female
Are Not Enough," says that western culture is defying
nature by maintaining a "two-party sexual system," for
"biologically speaking, there are many gradations running
from female to male; and depending on how one calls the
shots, one can argue that along the spectrum lie at least five
sexes--and perhaps even more." (1)
Not content with denying the reality of two sexes, a subgroup
within the gay rights movement--the "transgendered"
--is attempting to normalize crossdressing and
transsexualism (where the person has a sex change from
male to female, or female to male). Some of these transsexuals
actually prefer to live as "she-males" - having the
physical characteristics of both men and women.
The effort to erase gender distinctions and redefine deviant
behavior as "normal" is evident in the efforts of transgender
activists to remove "Transvestic Fetishism and Gender
Identity Disorder" from the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual, Fourth Edition, (DSM-IV). If transvestites are successful
in removing this disorder from the diagnostic manual,
they may well prevail in arguing that because their
behaviors are psychiatrically "normal," their condition
should be affirmed and protected by society.
Efforts to that effect are already well underway. In 1996, for
example, Katherine Wilson with the Gender Identity
Center of Colorado, presented a paper, "Myth, Stereotype,
and Cross-Gender Identity in the DSM-IV," to the
Association for Woman in Psychology, a feminist psychologist
group. According to Wilson:
"The pathologicalization of transgendered
people in the DSM-IV raises substantive
questions of consistency, validity, and fairness
and serves to enforce notions of
essential gender role that denigrates all too
many human beings." (2)
In effect, Wilson is saying that cross-dressing and tranvestism
are simply another normal sexual-identity variant.
Sexual Mythology Versus Scientific Facts
Professor Steven Goldberg, Chairman of the Department of
Sociology at City College of New York, has written a book
with the provocative title, Why Men Rule--A Theory of Male
Dominance. In the book, he debunks much of the feminist
mythology surrounding the issue of differences between
males and females.
Goldberg maintains that although males and females are
different in their genetic and hormonally-driven behavior,
this does not mean that one sex is superior or inferior to
another. Each gender has different strengths and weaknesses.
However, he believes the neuro-endocrinological
evidence is clear: The high level of testosterone in males
drives them toward dominance in the world, while the lack
of high levels of this hormone in women creates a natural,
biological push in the direction of less dominant and more
nurturing roles in society.
Goldberg writes:
"There is not, nor has there ever been, any
society that even remotely failed to associate authority
and leadership in suprafamilial
areas with the male. There are no borderline
cases." (3)
Feminist theorists maintain that socialization is a primary
reason why males have dominated the world's cultures,
but Goldberg counters:
"...if socialization alone explains why societies
are patriarchal, there should be any
number of societies in which leadership
and authority are associated with women,
and one should not have to invoke examples
of non-patriarchal societies that exist
only in myth and literature." (4)
Biological Differences
To say that men and women are the "same" is to deny physical
reality. Child psychologist Dr. James Dobson relates a
humorous story about men and women in his best-seller,
Straight Talk to Men and Their Wives. Several years ago a
drug company conducted an experiment with all of the
women in a small fishing village in South America. The
women were all given an experimental birth control pill.
They were given the same pill on the same date, and the
prescription was terminated after three weeks to permit
menstruation.
"That meant, of course," he says, "that every adult female
in the community was experiencing premenstrual tension
at the same time. The men couldn't take it. They all headed
for their boats each month and remained at sea until the
crisis had passed at home. They knew, even if some people
didn't, that females are different from males . . . especially
every twenty-eight days." (5)
Science makes plain that males and females are different
from the moment of conception. As Amram Scheinfeld
notes in Your Heredity and Environment, these differences
between men and women are evident in the chromosomes
which carry inherited traits from the father and mother.
Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes within each cell;
twenty-two of these are alike in both males and females.
But, says Scheinfeld, "...when we come to the twenty-third
pair, the sexes are not the same. . . every woman has in her
cells two of what we call the X chromosome. But a man has
just one X---its mate being the much smaller Y."
It is the presence of this influential Y chromosome, says
Scheinfeld, "that sets the machinery of sex development in
motion and results in all the genetic differences that there
are between a man and a woman." (6) Right down to the
cellular level, males and females are different.
Sex differentiation takes place immediately as the male or
female begins to develop within the womb. The sex hormones
--primarily estrogen and testosterone--have a significant
impact on the behavior of males and females. Why
do boys typically like to play with trucks and girls like to
play with dolls? Feminists usually claim this is the result of
socialization, but there is growing scientific evidence that
boys and girls are greatly influenced by their respective
hormones.
Hormones Trigger Aggression or Nurture
In an ABC special, "Boys and Girls are Different," television
host John Stossel described several studies conducted by
universities on what appear to be innate differences
between males and females. He explained the following:
At the University of Wisconsin, researchers injected testosterone
into unborn female monkeys. Monkeys engage in
very sex-stereotyped behavior, according to Stossel; the
males are aggressive and fight, while the female monkeys
typically groom and nurture the young. When the testosterone-
injected females were born, they didn't groom or
nurture their children. They fought and behaved like males.
In one out of 100,000 pregnancies, a genetic defect causes
human female babies to be exposed to a bath of the male
hormone androgen. These are CAH girls--short for a condition
called congenital adrenal hyperplasia. These children
are born female, but they behave like "tomboys." The
male androgen influences their behaviors and desires.
These girls typically play with "boy" toys more than their
female counterparts.
Child psychologist Michael Lewis conducted an experiment
with one-year-old boys and girls to see how they
would react to being separated from their mother by a barrier.
The boys tried to knock the barrier down while the
girls stood passively, crying for help. (7)
Brain Differences
Males and females are not only markedly different in the
hormones that drive them, but they are also different in the
way they think. The brains of men and women are actually
wired differently.
George Mason University professor Robert Nadeau, the
author of S/he Brain: Science, Sexual Politics, and the Feminist
Movement, describes significant differences between male
and female brains. In an essay on this subject in The World
& I, (November 1, 1997), Nadeau observes:
"The human brain, like the human body, is
sexed, and differences in the sex-specific
human brain condition a wide range of
behaviors that we typically associate with
maleness or femaleness." (8)
Nadeau says that the sex-specific differences in the brain
are located both in the primitive regions, and in the neocortex--the
higher brain regions. The neocortex contains 70
percent of the neurons in the central nervous system, and it
is divided into two hemispheres joined by a 200-million
fiber network called the corpus callosum.
The left hemisphere controls language analysis and expression
and body movements while the right hemisphere is
responsible for spatial relationships, facial expressions,
emotional stimuli, and vocal intonations.
Men and women process information differently because of
differences in a portion of the brain called the splenium,
which is much larger in women than in men, and has more
brain-wave activity. (9) Studies have shown that problemsolving
tasks in female brains are handled by both hemispheres,
while the male brain only uses one hemisphere.
Differences in the ways men and women communicate is
also a function of sex-specific areas of the brain. Women
seem to have an enhanced awareness of "emotionally relevant
details, visual cues, verbal nuances, and hidden meanings,"
writes Nadeau. Similarly, while male infants are
more interested in objects than in people, female infants
respond more readily to the human voice than do male
infants.
Different Brains: Different Abilities
The difference between the male and female brain is not
evidence of superiority or inferiority, but of specialization.
Michael Levin, writing in Feminism and Freedom, notes that,
in general, males have better spatial and math skills than
females. While feminists often claim that these differences
are due to social expectations--and if girls were encouraged
to be mathematicians, they would have the same ability
as boys--there is evidence that these differences are
inherited and appear in childhood, actually increasing during
puberty. On the other hand, girls tend to be more vocal
than boys, are better at hearing higher frequencies, and do
better than boys in reading and vocabulary tests.
Males have a vastly superior ability to visualize a threedimensional
object than do women. This gives the male his
often-observed superior abilities in math and geometrical
reasoning. In addition, males are better skilled in gross
motor movements than are girls. (10)
Strength and Endurance
Not only are men and women fundamentally different in
the way their brains are wired, they are also vastly different
in physical strength and endurance. The differences are
rooted within both the genes and the hormones of males
and females. Michael Levin notes that women only have 55-
58 percent of the upper body strength of men and on average,
are only 80 percent as strong as a man of identical
weight. Sex differences also appear by the age of three in
the ability of males and females to throw a ball far and accurately. (11)
Feminist leaders naively believe that physical differences
between males and females should not be taken into consideration
when hiring women to become policemen, firemen,
or combat soldiers. Yet as Levin points out, females
simply do not have the strength or endurance necessary to
be effective combat soldiers. Yet in order to accommodate
women who desire to be combat soldiers, the military has
designed less stressful physical exercises and standards
which would allow them to participate in roles for which
they have sought inclusion.
Facing Reality
Contrary to the wishful thinking of feminists, bisexuals,
and transsexuals, there are profound differences between
males and females--and those differences are programmed
within the DNA from the moment of conception. The brains
of females and males are clearly "sexed," and testosterone
and estrogen are the juices that augment maleness and
femaleness.
To be sure, gender-distorting prenatal abnormalities do
affect some individuals, and may increase the likelihood
that such an afflicted person will later self-identify as transgendered
or transsexual (and in some cases, homosexual).
But barring such unfortunate developmental errors---
which we should not normalize as if they were not disruptions
in normal growth and development--the simple truth
remains: maleness and femaleness are innate and integral parts
of our human design.
Endnotes
1. Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Warriors, Beacon Press: Boston,
Massachusetts, 1996, p. 103.
2. Katherine Wilson, "Myth, Stereotype, and Cross-Gender
Identity in the DSM-IV," 1996, 21st Annual Feminist
Psychology Conference, Portland, Oregon, 1996, Internet posting.
3. Steven Goldberg, The Inevitability of Patriarchy, Open Court,
Peru, Illinois, 1993, p. 15.
4. Ibid., p. 23.
5. James Dobson, Straight Talk to Men and Their Wives, Word
Publishing, Dallas, Texas, 1991, p. 181.
6. Amram Scheinfeld, Your Heredity and Environment, J. B.
Lippincott, New York, 1965, p. 43.
7. John Stossel, "Boys & Girls Are Different: Men, Women, and
the Sex Difference," ABC News Special, January 17, 1998, tran
script from the Internet, The Electric Library.
8. Robert Nadeau, "Brain Sex and the Language of Love," The
World & I, Nov. 1, 1997, p. 330.
9. Ibid.
10. Michael Levin, Feminism and Freedom, Transaction Publishers,
New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1988, pp. 82, 88.
11. Ibid., p. 210.
Updated: 8 February 2008
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