David Reimer Research Paper

Such experiences can cause people to think twice about how they are living their lives. David Reimer was brought up a girl by his parents and society. He wore dresses and had long hair. However David loved to play with his brother Brian’s toys. David was restricted mostly to the dolls and cooking items that his parents bought him but once in a while, his brother would let him play with his trucks and cars. David loved playing with them. David was part of the Girl Scouts as well but he always wanted to join his brother as part of the Cubs: “Enrolled in Girl Scouts, Brenda was miserable. “I remember making daisy chains and thinking, if this is the most interesting thing in Girl Scouts, forget it,” I
Background image of page 5 kept thinking about the fun stuff my brother was doing in Cubs” (Colapinto, 2003, pg 58). He always wanted to play with the boys at school as well. When …show more content…
Such experiences caused David to feel uncomfortable around other girls. He felt like he didn’t fit in. These toys and games early in David’s life signaled to David that he might be confused about his gender identity. Jennifer Boylan always had certain cues that caused her to believe she was in the wrong body. According to the Social Learning Theory, “we acquire and learn behavior in two ways: the first way is that we learn behavior that is modeled from someone else, and the second way is that we learn behavior that is gratifyingly reinforced, depending on which gender role we take up. Basically, this theory focuses mainly on an individual’s social environment, which would greatly contribute to sex differences in cognition. Due to observational learning or modeling, children initially develop gender roles by imitating their behavior after models in their social environment, such as their parents or older siblings” (Helgeson, 2012, pp. 148-149). In Jennifer’s novel, she talked about