{"id":690,"date":"2021-06-25T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-25T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anyonecanscience.com\/?p=690"},"modified":"2021-06-25T12:10:32","modified_gmt":"2021-06-25T16:10:32","slug":"the-broken-binary-gender-and-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anyonecanscience.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/25\/the-broken-binary-gender-and-society\/","title":{"rendered":"The Broken Binary: Gender and Society"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Our post last week covered the biological basis for gender<\/a>, but as we know, biology is only one small part of human identity. The psychological and social factors that mold your internal sense of gender most likely have a much greater impact on how you construct your life. And all of these biopsychosocial factors are deeply intertwined. Your biology informs how society perceives you from the moment you\u2019re born and the doctors slap you with a gendered label (or even before as many parents opt to learn the gender before birth). The subtle (or not so subtle in some cases) gender socialization that follows informs the development of your psychological sense of gender\u2014how you personally come to identify yourself. From a young age, you have a strong instinct to fit into the social groups around you. And in order to fit in, you need to conform to the labels you\u2019re assigned. As a result, the clash of psychological gender with social and biological gender can create deep feelings of distress and ostracism. And the more emphasis the social groups around you place on gender, the more difficult it can be to deviate from the norm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of the confusion surrounding gender stems from the idea that gender equates to biological sex. Part of the problem is semantic. We do often conflate the two. No doctor can tell you the \u201cgender\u201d of your baby. Babies don\u2019t have identities\u2014they are mindless screaming machines who haven\u2019t had the time or mental capacity to develop a sense of self. And yet we throw \u201cgender\u201d reveal parties when what we really mean is \u201cbiological sex\u201d reveal parties (which certainly has less of a ring to it). But more than just an issue of semantics, many people just aren\u2019t used to the idea that gender is an identity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Identity<\/a> is our essential sense of self that stems from biological, psychological, and social factors (sound familiar?). For example, race is determined by the genetics you get from your parents, but racial identity<\/em> is informed by those genetic factors combined with your internal and social experiences with race. Personality is also a component of identity, but unlike gender, we tend to attribute most of our personality to psychological and social factors. In reality, there are biological and genetic components<\/a> to personality\u2014they just aren\u2019t as easily identifiable. We can see the effect biology has on personality by looking at identical twins. Even when twins are raised completely separately, they often have measurably similar personality traits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Babies
Babies don’t develop a sense of self identity until they are around 2 years old.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Just like all the other aspects of our identity, gender is rooted in the complex beauty of biology, but it is ultimately so much greater than even biology can predict. To understand where gender comes from, let\u2019s go back to our screaming, genderless baby. For about the first two years of life, a baby is in what is known as the sensorimotor stage of cognitive development<\/a>, which is really just a fancy way of saying they scream and put things in their mouth. During this period, they absorb massive amounts of information about the world, how it works, and how they are meant to interact with it. At this point, babies have no sense of self<\/a> at all. If you draw an X on the baby’s forehead and place them in front of a mirror, they will reach out for the mirror, thinking it\u2019s another baby. But around two years old, babies develop a self-concept that allows them to identify that the X is on their own forehead. As they start speaking, they begin using words like \u201cI\u201d \u201cme\u201d and \u201cmine,\u201d indicating themselves as separate individuals with their own thoughts and feelings. They develop feelings associated with self-consciousness and shame or pride and self-esteem\u2014feelings that rely on knowledge of how the self fits into its social context. Throughout the years of early development, children learn about their identity primarily through the lens of others via socialization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Socialization<\/a> is a large part of early cognitive development that helps children understand themselves and their place in the world. In the beginning, babies have very few preexisting instincts and essentially no information about the world. They learn what things are and how they work directly, using their senses. Similarly, they begin to learn who they are and who other people are in relation to them through interactions with others. At first, they imitate what they see in others and what others reflect back to them (turns out even babies know how to fake it till they make it). Later, they may start to play around with the identities they see around them\u2014this is when children start to enjoy playing pretend. Then, children learn how to adapt their identity to different contexts and interactions. It\u2019s only late in childhood that children start gaining a sense of their identity in a holistic sense.<\/p>\n\n\n