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Try an experiment sometime. Dress up a boy baby like a girl, or vice versa, and watch how people who don't know the true gender of the child will react. If the baby is dressed like a girl, you'll hear comments like "Isn't she sweet?" and "Oh, she's a little flirt!" With a boy you'll hear "Aren't you a tough little guy?" and "Look how strong he is!"

From earliest infancy, our expectations about how the genders should behave influences their development, and often those expectations become a self-fulfilling prophecy. You behave in a certain way because everyone expects you to act that way.

Even parents who try to raise their children without gender stereotypes are victims of their own unconscious beliefs and expectations about how the genders behave. Studies show that girls get more cuddling, while boys are subjected to more roughhousing and are expected to "tough it out" when they get upset.

There may indeed be some inborn tendencies that are the result of gender, but we are far from understanding them. The debate over nature versus nurture will go on for years to come, because there is a great deal scientists don't understand about gender. Does having a Y chromosome predispose one to certain behaviors? How does other genetic data affect the picture? What about the effect of hormones the baby is exposed to in the womb? Finally, how do these complicated factors interact with environment to produce a unique individual? The issues are incredibly complex, and the answers will be long in coming.

In the meantime, it's important to remember that people differ more as individuals than they do as genders. Everyone has known girls who prefer dump trucks to dolls, and boys whose characteristics seem more feminine. Contrary to popular belief, these gender role-divergent individuals are not always, or even usually, homosexual.

There may be instances when gender expectations and restrictions are justified, but when we insist that individuals conform to a narrow set of expectations, we limit their potential and ours. We are human beings first, men or woman second.

Source: http://www.psichi.org/pubs/art icles/article_112.asp

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