What to say, what to say...

      The reading for yesterday's class (Thursday Sept. 2) honestly left me with more questions than answers. Not that I wasn't expecting this, gender has always been something that I've found very confusing to sort through. Is gender completely a social construct? Or does biology play some sort of role? I used to believe that it was completely social, that as we were growing up the world taught us about the gender we're meant to assume. Then I remembered reading an article about a woman who raised her boys in a gender neutral environment. At the end of the article she exclaimed that it didn't seem to matter, her boys still ran towards the trucks and dirt and ignored dresses and dolls. And in the comment section below the article were many other parents who had tried similar parenting styles with the same results. So the question still remains, is there something biological at the root of this social construct? To me the fact that some people feel the need to break the social mold suggests this. If it was solely a social construct and nothing biologically said otherwise, then why do some people feel alienated from the sex they were born into?
      I think that biological or otherwise, the way that we construct gender in American Society is wrong. In my opinion the dichotomy that we currently work under should be replaced with a concept of spectrums. Yes, spectrumS as in two separate but equal parts. One is a spectrum of masculinity and the other, femininity. I personally may place high on the feminine scale and low on the masculine scale but the point is that I DO possess aspects of both. This is the way I like to think of gender and while it doesn't take all of the confusion away, it does help some.