Jan Morris’s stand is that gender is defined by society, which begins from birth. This definition is caused by firstly parents, who tend to treat boys and girls in 2 distinct ways, and societal cultural influences, where society stereotype and divides the views and treatments on different gender groups. This definition arises from our everyday actions, and Jan Morris feels that no aspect of our lives is not gendered.
Leonard Sax’s stand is that there are innate factors within us which defines our gender and that it is not entirely socially constructed, and that there are still clear gender variations which cannot be defined by society. He feels that the influence of social factors on gender traits is overestimated and the innate gender variations are neglected.
We agree more with Jan Morris’s view that our gender is indeed defined by societal views. Our bodies are all constructed uniquely from young, and we feel that since there are cases, like gays and homosexuality, which exists and actually overstep the gender boundaries supposedly demarcated by our body construction and innate traits, that gender is indeed not clearly demarcated by our innate variations, and thus, societal influence plays the largest role in defining gender. Our main argument will be the aspect of hormonal growth and attraction to the opposite sex.
One example would be the fact that men can be hormonally attracted to parties of the similar “gender” shows that gender is in fact not as inherently defined by our bodies, as if it is defined inherently, then men could not possibly be attracted to men, as hormonally, these are supposed to be attracted to people of the opposite sex, thus, gays and homosexuals should technically not exist if gender is defined by innate factors, thus, refuting Sax’s argument that gender are defined by innate factors, and supporting our agreement with Morris’s stand that gender is largely defined by society.
Done by: Xue Qian, Abigail, Ewen, Jonathan, Ying Ying
09S07A
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