11 Mar 09 PHISICAL CHANGES AND SOCIETY
Similarly, the age at which a boy’s genitals increase in size is very variable, and neither the boy nor his parents need be over-concerned if his penis has not grown as much as those of his age-mates, at least until he is 16.
The physical changes associated with adolescence may provoke psychological anxiety as the youth becomes confused about his body’s changes, and may become over-sensitive to his appearance, particularly in a society which stresses a stereotype of a young male in advertising. If the adolescent sees himself as different from the cultural stereotype, he may lose his self-respect and feel unattractive and unwanted. Similarly, a boy who matches (or exceeds) the cultural stereotype may receive such a measure of recognition from others that his self-image becomes magnified, and he becomes vain and over-bearing.
*41/16/113*
Tags: Men’s Health
11 Mar 09 SOCIETY CONDEMN SEX FOR CHILDREN
In our type of society such activities are condemned and because, for most children, sex is not mentioned, or is mentioned in a condemnatory manner, many children form the opinion that sex is dirty and feel guilty if they enjoy fondling their genitals. As two American sociologists, William Simon and John Gagnon, say: ‘. . . learning about sex is learning about guilt: conversely, learning how to manage sex constitutes learning how to manage guilt’.
The belief that sex is dirty is encouraged by small actions. Boys are taught it is ‘bad’ to fondle their penis (‘If you don’t leave it alone, I’ll cut it off). Small girls are taught to cover their chests long before any breast development has occurred, and to sit with their legs together long before the child’s vulva has developed in any way. Both sexes are taught that their genitals are a ‘shameful’ area, and that it is ‘good’ to keep them covered at all times.
During the childhood years, the child’s sexuality can be damaged by the way its parents behave in sexual matters and by their reaction to its curiosity about sexuality.
If parents let the child know, by their behaviour, that they believe the unclothed human body to be indecent, and that the genital area is scandalous and unmentionable, they may plant the seeds for later sexual disability. Many parents encourage their children to be competitive, even if this requires violence, but when a child seeks to understand why boys and girls have different genitals and to look at the genitals of a child of the other sex, or play with its own genitals, a frozen disapproval appears and the child is often punished. This induces shame in the child’s mind about its genitals. It may also induce guilt, because the child has enjoyed what it was doing, but now feels this was wrong because of its parents’ disapproval.
*32/16/113*
Tags: Men’s Health
11 Mar 09 HOW DOES A SMALL CHILD LEARN THAT IT IS A BOY OR A GIRL?
Theory 3
A third theory suggests that a child obtains its gender-identity as part of the growth of its observational powers, which adds information to its brain cells. The behaviour of its parents and other visitors to it, when it is very small, starts the process.
As I have said, people treat boy babies differently from girl babies from the earliest days after birth. As the child becomes increasingly mobile, these early memories direct it to look at, and assess, men and women differently. It does not do this for rewards of parental approval, nor to identify with one or other parent, but because it makes a value-judgement of what it wants to be. It sees its father, or some other male, as stronger, more powerful than its mother. A boy child has already had ‘memory traces’ on its brain that it resembles a male, more than a female, and this is the impetus for it to begin to identify with males. As the child identifies, it models its behaviour on the male behaviour it observes, not for any reward or approval, but because of its ‘memory traces’.
During the years between 2 and 7 the boy’s gender-identity and his body concepts may be influenced by other information he receives from the outside world and absorbs, but his inclination is to value things which his own sex does and to note, but not act on, things the other sex does. Quite quickly the boy child develops a sex stereotype, which is a shorthand way for him to recognize his own sex.
Later, in early adolescence, many boys and girls develop an emotional attachment to a person of their own sex. A boy, for example, seeks the approval and recognition of the chosen male and does all he can to get that approval, by behaving in a way he expects will be rewarding. As the boy develops physically he replaces this emotional attachment with emotional attachments to girls.
Whatever the mechanism, each child seems to go through several stages. Up to the age of 2 or z\ the boy does not know his own sex. By the age of 3, a boy child is able to answer correctly, ‘I am a boy’, and knows what a boy is and in what ways he is different from a girl.
By the age of 4, a boy can identify other children as boys and as girls by clothing, hair, or other physical characteristics. And one or two years later, a boy (and a girl) believes that its sex is firmly unchangeable. A boy will always be a boy. Rather surprisingly perhaps, a knowledge of the differences in its own genital anatomy and that of girls seems to be relatively unimportant. This suggests that gender-identity is not determined by a child’s instinctual wishes but by observation of the general behaviour of each sex.
What has been written should not be taken to imply that gender-identity is fixed in all instances. The wide variability of human perceptions, thoughts, and behaviours means that some individuals do not obtain a fixed gender-identity.
It is also important to understand that behaviours appropriate to gender-identity are constantly changing. For example, men today do many household chores which forty years ago would have been considered inappropriate, and women do many things which, in the past, were considered to belong to men exclusively. Another example can be found in dress, in the use of jewellery, and in hairstyles. In all these areas there has been a trend to a ‘unisex’ position, and the firmly held beliefs of what dress, jewellery, or hair-style was appropriate to men and women have been abandoned.
*22/16/113*
11 Mar 09 SEX DIFFERENCES – PSIHOLOGY 3
What can be concluded from these important studies? Only that pre-natal hormones may have a small effect on behaviour after birth, at least in choice of toys and in tomboyish activity, and that the hormones may alter the person’s threshold to certain activities.
This possible influence can be examined in another way. A small number of male foetuses have a genetic defect which renders the tissues of their body insensitive to the testosterone secreted by their testes, although the other substance which inhibits the growth of the female ducts is secreted and is effective. These children are born with female external genitals and a very short vagina (but no internal genitals). They look exactly like baby girls and are brought up as girls. At puberty, their breasts develop like those of other girls, but they fail to grow body hair and they fail to menstruate. This leads to an investigation when the true situation is disclosed. Although these children are genetically male, all their behaviour in childhood, their sexual hopes, their dreams, and their fantasies are feminine and the children tend to be non-aggressive. While this could be entirely due to childhood conditioning, as the children are considered to be girls by their parents from birth, it is possible that their lack of sensitivity to testosterone has prevented the ‘male’ imprint on their brain cells occurring. Dr Money suggests that these findings are evidence that in humans, as in other mammals, the sex hormones imprint a pattern on the foetal brain. But it seems, as I mentioned in the last chapter, that the effect of pre-natal testosterone is to ‘blur’ or ‘flavour’ the behaviour of the child, rather than modify it markedly.
This theory would be strengthened if it could be shown that male and female foetuses have different levels of testosterone circulating in their tiny bodies. And they have! If the foetus is male, it makes a larger quantity of testosterone than if it is female, particularly between the 10th and 30th weeks of pregnancy. This could presumably give the ‘blurring’ to the behaviour of the child after birth, although there are two problems.
The first is that, although more testosterone is made by male foetuses, there is an overlap; some female foetuses produce as much testosterone as do males. The second is that from the 30th week of pregnancy there is very little difference in the amount of testosterone produced by either sex. This may be important as the brain cells grow more quickly and make most of their connections with their neighbouring brain cells, to complete circuits, after the 30th week of pregnancy.
The effect of testosterone during the time the boy is in his mother’s uterus may also condition or permit boys to learn aggressive behaviour earlier and more easily than girls. In boys, aggressive tendencies begin at about the age of 5. Small boys indulge in more rough-and-tumble play, push other children more, and hit them more than little girls do. Small boys imitate aggressive acts more often than girls after seeing aggression on television or at a film. More small boys choose television programmes in which there is more aggression, than do girls. Small boys, who form groups more frequently than girls, are more hostile to a newcomer seeking to break into the group. Small boys are verbally more aggressive and have more aggressive fantasies when day-dreaming, than do girls. But once again there is a problem in accepting that the behaviour is due to testosterone rather than to the ways boys are reared.
*13/16/113*
