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Originally Posted by DanaC
Right down to how they are held (boy babies tend to be held facing outwards, girl babies facing inwards, i think i have that the right way around :P) and there is a good amount of evidence to suggest that it is this difference in how babies experience the world from the start that leads to gender distinct brain development in some areas.
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I mostly held my boy facing out, and my girl facing in. Because you see, the boy squirmed like mad when he was facing inward. He wanted to see what was going on. Meanwhile, the girl wouldn't let me hold her facing outward. She wanted the close contact and comfort. Some people do treat babies differently, no question. But some babies really do just meet stereotypical expectations.
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The truth is, despite the evidence I spoke of for the elasticity of 'brain gender' at the start of life, and the likely impact of culturally agreed gender norms on brain development, we don't fully know. This sort of thing can only be experimental. We have no way to kmnow for sure that we haven;t been barking up the wrong tree for the past 30 years of neuro-science when it comes to gender. For the very simple reason that it is all but impossible to test.
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There was at least one real-world test in the sixties. I forget the name of the psychologist, but he was trying his hardest to prove that gender was completely and totally a societal construct. There was a case of twin boys at that time (maybe this is the same one UT was referring to) where by accident one of the boys was horribly maimed during the circumcision. He convinced these parents to complete the removal of what was left, and raise the child as a girl. This was not a child who was intersexed or otherwise hormonally ambivalent, he just didn't have his physical genitalia anymore.
The psychologist continued to have regular contact with both children over the next 20 years, so there's quite a lot of documentation about the boy's feelings during this time, and how miserable and confused he was, and how angry he was after he finally found out as an adult what his parents had done.
Society doesn't tell us whether we are a boy or a girl or anything in between. It just sets the ground rules over whether we'll be miserable with how we're treated. Accepting a kid for whoever they innately are is different than pretending it's all a big choice that they're free to make.