Former Boxing Promotor Frank Maloney to undergo gender reassignment surgery

wretcheddomain wrote: »

It's true to say that gender roles exist in society that are socially constructed, where a 'man' and a 'woman' are expected to fulfil certain roles. Nobody can argue against these social constructs.

Partially. One hand feeds the other. Where do you think these social constructs originated in the first place?

However, from a biological perspective, people are born with a specific sex,

Nope science doesn't agree with you. Between "classic" male and female there is an overlap, a grey area. And this can be demonstrated physiologically. Male and female brains differ in a number of organisational ways for a start. You even see this in the range of conditions and how they affect the genders differently. More men are stutterers, left handed on the autistic scale. Women tend to recover better after stroke as many functions aren't as localised in the female brain. Even sensory perception differs. Women have better colour vision and sense of smell in general, men are better at tracking movement. It's a long list. However as I said there is overlap between the two.

When it comes to gender identity there is another overlap. We all start out as "female" in the womb(physically speaking), a burst of hormone in pregnancy switches on the "male" bit. If that's interrupted or changed even slightly it could cause gender to be less set in the adult. There''s a few theories as to the why and how of it all.

Nevertheless there are case studies that show that personal gender is very much internal and social conditioning is less in the mix. Intersex children and adults a good example. People who are born with not fully formed or over formed genitals. In the past these poor kids were usually assigned a gender by doctors. So an underdeveloped penis was removed and they were sent out in the world as a girl, yet they would nearly always seek out the gender they felt right in in adulthood.

Now I'm not dismissing mental illness in some cases as that would be stupid to do so, but given the struggles and the long road so many of these people walked to become who they knew themselves to be I'd reckon the majority are nowhere close to mentally ill.

TL;DR it's far more nature than nurture.

Diego Simeone wrote: »

Should dentists look at the animal kingdom and conclude that people shouldn't bother to brush their teeth?

Maybe they should One thing that's noticeable about ancient human remains is how few cavities they have and how uncrowded their teeth tend to be. A dentist in the paleolithic would be twiddling their thumbs waiting for clients and orthodontists would be near unemployable. Their diet and lifestyle and resultant mouth bacteria and environment was far better for dental health than ours. Put it another way, wolves don't get cavities or plaque, yet they're pimping dental doggie chews on TV...