David Reimer: Gender Analysis

When it comes to gender there are only two sexes that are universally recognized, male and female. Gender identity refers to how an individual perceives himself or herself to be either man or woman. In order to identify with one the person has to fit into the norms that come with the gender. In society males are seemed to be more aggressive, emotionless and stern. Females are portrayed as gentle beings, emotional, and a lot of value is placed on their looks. The question is are we genetically prewired to act on the gender that we are born or are we a product of our environment; this question brings up the concept of nature versus nurture. Being born with ambiguous genitalia allows them to fall somewhere in the middle of the gender spectrum. How does one decide what gender to raise their child? They may question if the sex that they chose was the right choice. John money proposed the idea that gender is learned by ones upbringing and social constructs rather than being born with the mentality of one specific gender in order to help with problems that may come up …show more content…
John Moneys theory of psychosexual gender neutrality. John Money believed that a person can be raised as any gender under the right circumstances and he would stop at nothing to prove his theory. During a long and extensive experiment to prove that you can raise a child to be any gender that you choose John Money ran into many obstacles. His perfect candidate was identifying more with male than female. Joan as she was called in the article did not feel like a girl, she wanted to play with “boy” toys and she didn’t want to wear dresses. The question at hand is why did she identify more with male than female if John Money’s theory was right because she was simply told she was a girl and was raised as a girl she should feel and act like a