Friday, September 30, 2011

Nature vs. Nurture

So earlier in the week I posted a link to twitter about a case I talked about in class. A man was born a male, but as a result of a bad circumcision he was surgically reassigned as a female and raised as such. He was not aware of the surgery and at the age of 15 began living as a man after his parents informed him of his past. That case provides strong evidence for the idea of nature being more important than nurture.

Today I read an article about Chaz Bono being on dancing with the stars. The article tends to focus on the idea that nurture is more important than nature. Chaz was born a perfectly healthy female, (chastity) identified herself as a female, and at the age of 40 had a sex change and became Chaz.

So here I have found two cases which show both sides of the argument. I'm sure there are many more cases with different factors involved. I personally believe the idea that nature and nurture are reliant on each other. A person has to be predisposed to react to their environment for their environment to have an effect on them.

I'm curious which of these ideas people believe after reading these articles.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2011/09/26/140827257/sex-gender-and-dancing-with-chaz-bono?sc=fb&cc=fp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

No comments:

Post a Comment