Question
Activity 5
Section 3: Sexual Physiology and Behavior
Sexuality is inherent in the body and has biological imperatives and expression which then influence human behavior. In this section, you will explore the development of sexual behavior throughout the lifespan.
Assignment 5 Gender
Most of us have an immediate sense of being male or female and of what that means in our particular time and culture. In this activity, you will consider how gender is expressed and understood from a social and physiological perspective.
Activity Resources:
Crooks, Bair (2010) Chapter 5
David Reimer: The boy who lived as a girl
Walker, Jesse (2004, May 24)
Who was David Reimer (also, sadly, known as “John/Joan“)?
4 Activity 5: Main Task
Prepare a paper in which you examine the case of David Reimer. Include in your paper an explanation of what happened to him, what Dr. Money’s theory was and why the experiment is considered a failure. Present what you think are the ethical violations in this controversial case.
Support your paper with at least three references to articles published in the past five years in peer-reviewed journals.
Length: 5-7 pages
Be sure to include citations for quotations and paraphrases with references in APA format and style. Upload the completed assignment in the Activities area of the course.
Times New Roman Style font w/ Conclusion
Please check spelling and commas
Answer
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Contents
Sexuality: Physiology and Behavior. 2
Introduction
Sexuality: Physiology and Behavior
Sexuality may be referred to as the manner in which an individual’s sexual tendencies manifest themselves or are expressed. Sexuality manifests itself in the body and it has biological expressions and imperatives that influence human behavior. Sexual behavior develops over a long time in an individual’s lifespan.
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The awareness of an individual’s sexual self manifests itself as an integrated aspect of one’s identity that begins during infancy. This manifestation takes the form of the attitudes that are communicated by caretakers with regard to the physical body. The sexual response cycle is often present at birth. There is evidence for the presence of neurological maturation that is necessary to bring about penile erection in new-born babies (Rosario,2009).
However, the expression and development of erotic response in the course of the human lifespan is a phenomenon that has not been studied well enough (Rosario,2009). Additionally, normative data are yet to be compiled for all sexual behaviors that characterize adulthood and adolescence stages (Rosario,2009).
Erotic responses consist of a complex interplay of psychological and physiological factors. As children grow up, these factors become increasingly susceptible to religious, familial and cultural values, mores, attitudes and folkways. The styles of sexual attitudes and expressions that are acceptable have been fluctuating historically and culturally. The shift has been between polarities that are generally negative and those ones that are positive. The extent to which particular sexual expressions are positive or negative from one culture to the other.
Presently, today’s restrictive culture causes people to preoccupy themselves with the imposition of sexual constraints instead of promoting sexual competencies as the underlying value system (Rosario, 2009). However, today, people are not as zealous in this pursuit as they were in medieval times.
The often unconscious attitudes of caretakers towards child-rearing tend to perpetuate feelings of covert discouragement from any expression of sexual interest or behavior among children, especially when the adults are around. The attitudes also continually obfuscate the scientific answer to the question of what ought to be the ideal form of sexual expression.
Cultures that are sexually submissive allow adult sexuality to be expressed in a less fettered manner. Likewise, they give attention to children’s sexual behaviors as long as there is no blatant display of sexual expression. Sexually supportive cultures promote sex as an indispensable element of human happiness. They encourage the early expression of sexuality as an indicator of development into positive sexual attitudes and adult sexual competency. The expression of sexually in societies that are sexually permissive and those that are sexually supportive express a highly similar developmental pattern. This pattern does not manifest itself in sexually repressive societies.
In permissive societies, the infancy stage is characterized by manual and oral stimulation of both male and female children in efforts to comfort them. In early childhood, children may engage in masturbation, either alone or in groups. They explore and experiment among children of the same gender as well as the opposite gender. Late childhood or prepubescent ushers in the era of attempted intercourse and heterosexual role modeling. Girls may start engaging in sex with older boys.
During pubescence, girls get into the stage of intense sexual experience. They acquire basic sexual techniques similar to those of adults. The same case applies to boys, although they do not learn as quickly as girls since they tend to experiment only with younger girls.
During adolescence, sexual activity increases with both adults and peers for both girls and boys. Girls tend to get married in late adolescence, but boys tend to delay marriage for financial considerations. Therefore, they engage in the sexual patterns of adolescence for a longer period.
Apart from gender-based influences on the definitions of normal and healthy sexuality, the changes that take place within a person’s lifespan also significantly affect what people consider to be normal and healthy. Changes such as aging and all the related health concerns affect an individual’s sexuality. Men and women face different concerns at different ages. Although aging has an effect on sexuality, many myths and stereotypes exist with regard to the sexuality of older adults.
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In the quest for what is ‘healthy’ or ‘normal’ with regard to one’s sexuality, one should bear in mind that sexuality keeps changing throughout an individual’s lifespan. Despite many negative stereotypes of loss of sexual interest among older adults, research has demonstrated that these people remain interested in sex long after celebrating their 70th birthdays ((Sutcliffea, Dixona, &Akehursta, 2009). Obviously, the health conditions associated with the natural process of aging impact on a person’s sexuality. For women, menopause is the most significant long-term physiological change that affects sexuality in different ways.
Gender
Gender is the immediate sense of being a male or a female in term so of the meanings attached to each of these categories in our time and culture. Gender is often expressed from both social and psychological perspectives. Gender is one of today’s universal dimensions on which differences in the statuses of people are based. It differs from sex in that it is a social construct that prescribes how the roles of men and women are to be played out both culturally and socially.
Traditionally, women have enjoyed an inferior status compared to men. This situation has been made to exist like this mainly because of the presence of gender divisions. In other words, gender acts as a mask or costume with which men and women engage in an unequal dance (Valocchi, 2005). However, the extent to which disparities in status is expressed between the two sexes varies across different times and cultures of the world.
Gender is a psychological notion that refers to human awareness and reaction to the biological aspects of our sexuality. Therefore, gender is determined by sociological, biological and psychological factors. The main terms used to describe one’s gender are ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’
The Case of David Reimer
David Reimer was born in 1965 and he was an identical twin boy. When he was 8 months, both David and his twin brother had a small medical problem that involved his penis. A doctor decided that the best way to treat this problem was through circumcision. The doctor used an inappropriate method while circumcising David and accidentally burnt his entire penis.
David’s parents were advised by John Money, a psychologist at John Hopkins University, to have David’s sex ‘reassigned’. Therefore, David was made into a girl through hormonal, surgical and psychological treatments. This is the method that Money was advocating for in all intersex children.
For a long time, John Money propounded the claim that he had turned David into a ‘real’ girl whose gender identity was feminine. The approach that Money bolstered is still used in many parts of the US and most of the developed world (Sutcliffea, Dixona, &Akehursta, 2009). The approach is based on the assumption that gender identity has nothing to do with nature (inborn traits); it has everything to do with nurture (upbringing). According to Money, the key to treating every child with atypical sex anatomy is gender assignment.
This case became very controversial and many ethical concerns were raised with regard to a medical practice that purported to go against the age-old notion of associating sex with gender. The main ethical issue regards the realization by David on what happened to him. Immediately he realized that he had been a boy at birth, he switched his identity into that of a boy. He committed suicide in 2004. David’s story clearly shows us how people can be harmed by being lied to as well as treated in inhuman ways.
This situation triggered a change of thoughts, whereby David Reimer’s case was used by people who argued for the theory of gender being an inborn trait (Irving, 2008). It is not possible to predict with absolute gender identity that an individual will grow to have. However, it is certain that children who have been treated with secrecy, shame, and lies will grow up to suffer, either because of social prejudices or in the hands of medical practitioners who may be convinced that their intentions and theories are the best.
Dr. Money’s experiment has been termed in the medical world as a failure. In an article entitled Archives of Adolescent and Pediatric Medicine, Milton Diamon, a University of Hawaii-based biologist and Keith Sigmundson, a psychiatrist from British Columbia, gave lengthy documentation of the twin’s struggle with the imposed girlhood since the first day of the experiment. The article triggered a raging debate across medical circles globally on the ongoing sex reassignment practice.
It took almost 20 years before a follow-up was brought forth to reveal the exact outcome of the experiment. The failure of Money’s experiment has a lot to do with the fact that this damning follow-up was done by outside researchers and not Dr. Money. The debate on the failure of this experiment characterized a rivalry between various eminent sex researchers, which has lasted for almost 30 years. The debate also gives the suggestion that human sexual identity is shroud in mysteries.
References
Irving, D. (2008) Normalized transgressions: legitimizing the transsexual body as productive, Radical History Review 3(4), 38-59.
Rosario, V. (2009) Quantum Sex: Intersex and the Molecular Deconstruction of Sex, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 15(2), 267-284.
Sutcliffea, P. Dixona, S. &Akehursta, L. ((2009) Evaluation of surgical procedures for sex reassignment: a systematic review, 62(3), 294-306.
Valocchi, S. (2005) Not Yet Queer Enough: The Lessons of Queer Theory for the Sociology of Gender and Sexuality, Gender & Society, 19(6), 750-770.