Nature Vs Nurture

Drew Bethoney

Prof Wolfe

PDP

September 25, 2017

Nature VS Nurture

There have been many articles written today on what makes a man a man and a woman a woman. There have also been many discussions on whether these articles are part of nature or part of nurture. If one believes that gender roles is part of nature then they believe that the natural stereotypes of men and women is what makes them up as a person. For example, a person that would believe in the nature side, they would just naturally believe that men have more power than women. On the other hand, we have the nurture belief; nurture is when one believes the exact opposite of nature, that everyone is equal and should be able to do the same things. I tend to believe on the nature view between gender because men and women are very different with their everyday lives. Men do not mind being messy and unorganized meanwhile, women always must be organized and prepared… which is a very good thing. The three articles “Blum Gender Blur”, “The Confidence Gap”, and “Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes” have very good details in them that can support both Nature and Nurture views. There are always going to be exceptions with everything but what makes a man a man is very different than what makes a woman a woman.

In my point of view Nature is what makes up the genders in the modern society. However, I do believe that there is not much of a difference between guys and girls at a young age. Girls and guys do not start differentiating until they are in middle school. In elementary school girls used to do almost everything guys did but, like I said, there are exceptions. The middle school and high school years of a person’s life is really where most of the changes occur. Girls and guys are then into different things than each other and start to get viewed differently. I look at girls that I used to play around with in elementary school now and do not have the same thoughts towards them. Men and women hormones obviously grow as they get older so most guys don’t view their elementary school play buddies the same as they would in the high school point of life. I would say it is safe to say that everyone has nurture das in their life but as they get older men and women start to divide into their different groups. From viewing everyone at a young age I would say women have a dramatic change in their life due to their differences of adapting to a new person. Men and women have different stereotypes attached to them that, in my opinion, will never go away. For example, men are strong and powerful and women are weak. Sometimes the stereotypes affect me because I tend to have some “women stereotypes” to me. I have always had good handwriting and I cannot tell you the number of times I have heard “you write like a girl” … have been hearing it since 1st grade.

First article that explains a lot of the Nature view is “Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes” by Aaron Devor. This article talked about what can make up a gender and how they act differently in the process. He began the article with the quote “boys will be boys, and girls will be girls” which directly tells you that he believes men and women are gendered naturally. He talks about the body postures between the two genders; he then says that men have a more threatening look to them where as women appear to have no threat in them at all due to a constant smile. Men always have a serious look to them where as women always appear to be happy. Men deal with differences with other men than women deal with differences with other women. Men always want to physically fight and just get over it that way, women like to fight with words and show their differences emotionally rather than physically. He then gets into the differences in the genders speech. Men are going to physically have a deeper voice and they are usually confident with themselves which explains why they speak louder. Women have soft, gentle voices which is not bad at all but they do not speak the same as men at all. Devor had a lot of good ways to express that men and women are naturally differentiated.