I heard a story on NPR tonight,
Two Families Grapple with Sons' Gender Preferences, involving young (<6 yrs) boys who believe they're girls. Their behavior involves playing with feminine toys, preferring the company of females, and wanting to dress in feminine clothing. It got me thinking: these gender-associated devices aren't simply social constructs -- they must actually be physical extensions of our primal values.
I've always thought dresses were a device of female oppression. At least that's what I've picked up from those angry Sunday mornings when my sisters yelled at my dad for making them wear flower-print dresses to church service.
Apparently, though, dresses (and the colors pink/blue, toys, etc.) all have value associations distinct from social constructs.
Testosterone heightens sexual stimulation with the color 'red' but that might not have anything to do with blue or pink. I don't have a clue about the dresses thing.
Maybe the kids in the NPR story are using social expectations in conjunction with their gender identity perception.
On this note on society and self, an idea has been bugging me for the last month: Individuals affect society and society affects individuals -- evolution, genetic algorithms. If I can't figure out the proper algorithm for a problem, why not build a system that can figure it out for me? The random algorithm would be like the DNA for each agent; the dataset would be the environment. Natural selection favors the agents best able to make predictions on the dataset. I'm going to work on this after finals, if nothing else than to get away from everyone making plans for me this summer.
Comments (1)
Interesting.....
I wonder whatever happened to the little boy up the block in NY who used to make towel turbins and tell everybody he was a "Jenie". He used to steal tulips from our yard. I bet he grew up to be a tranny hooker.
His sister used to hit people and play lots of softball.