SEX DIFFERENCES – BEHAVIOUR IN SOCIETY
The different attitudes and different behaviour towards boy-children and girl-children seem to be common to all societies, from those which are classified as primitive to those classified as culturally civilized. In the wide variety of human societies, the behaviour of parents and other adults towards boy-children and girl-children can, and does, vary considerably, but in all societies studied a distinctly different behaviour was shown towards boys and towards girls. The way people behave to a child and the different expectations they demand of the child, depending upon its sex, ‘imprints’ a distinct pattern of behaviour upon it so that it reacts in a distinctly masculine or feminine way. Once the child’s brain is conditioned in this way, it is difficult to reverse it, unless the society in which the child is reared normally expects such a reversal of sexual identity. Some primitive tribes, notably some North American Indian tribes, and some in the South Pacific, do in fact induce a change in sexual identity in children who do not apparently conform to the expected pattern of male behaviour.
A child’s masculine or feminine behaviour, depending on its sex, has two components. The first is its sex-typing or its gender-role. This is the way a person behaves to others to demonstrate he or she is a male or a female. The second is even more important. This is the person’s own awareness that he or she is a male or a female. This is the person’s gender-identity. Until a child has developed a gender-identity it is confused about its sexuality, and about its gender-role.
In Western societies, a complete reversal of gender-identity can be made with relative ease before the age of 4, but after this time the change is only possible in highly motivated individuals who have had doubts about their real sex induced by the doubting attitude of their parents, or who are exceptionally insistent upon the change, such as transsexuals.
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