Anorexia And Gender Analysis

One’s disagreement with their assigned sex, Corradi claims, is like an anorexic person’s perception of one’s body (19). Doctors would not help the person lose weight because that person thinks he/she/they are overweight, so doctors should not help a person transition into another gender because he/she/they think they are that other gender. These two examples are not similar, though. Anorexia can harm or even kill a person, whereas having a non-binary gender cannot physically harm a person. Helping an anorexic person lose weight could harm that person more, but helping a non-binary person feel more comfortable in their body will usually not harm them outside of standard surgery recovery or reactions to hormones. “Usually” is stressed as Corradi …show more content…
Richards et al. point out that there are no psychological fields in which males and female are completely separate; they always overlap somehow and that overlap is greater than the difference (99). So men and women are not entirely different, thus allowing for a spectrum between the two. Perhaps instead of one X or Y chromosome, the true difference between men and women is socially constructed and thus so are gender roles. This leads into the discussion that gender roles have no scientific reasoning and that it is up to each individual to determine his/her/their own gender and respective gender role. While most people tend to stay on the side that their sex correlates to, it is clear that people differ in masculinity and femininity. An example would be a “tomboy” and a “girly girl;” both can be biologically female and identify as female but are at different points on the spectrum. Traits and personalities vary from person to person and trying to label everyone as absolutely feminine or absolutely masculine does not account for this variation. While having a gender spectrum rather than two extreme categories would better represent mankind as a whole, this spectrum is not well-known, and individuals often feel as though they must go against who they are to meet society’s standards of what is a man and what is a woman. In fact, as Zucker et al. explain, some parents who seek treatment for their child admit the problem is not that the child’s gender identity is wrong; rather it is that the parent does not understand (373). Being aware of this spectrum would help everyone, especially binary people, act like themselves instead of how society believes a member of their sex should behave. One of the best ways to introduce this idea is through the