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How do we learn to act in what are called "gender appropriate" ways? How did you learn to act like a girl and then a woman? Or like a boy and then like a man? Did you experience either penis envy or womb envy? Did this happen as a result of what Freud would call an oedipal complex or perhaps does our tendency to behave in stereotypical masculine and feminine ways come about more simply as a result of watching other males and females in your family, among your friends and on TV? In this episode of The Psych Files we look at the interesting and complex issue of gender identity.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Ingenious!
I love this podcast.
Happy Birthday from Germany. You’ve got quite bunch of fans here, too.
Thanks Lily!
Hi there, I’d like a little more of “typical” when talk about gender based behaviour — as a female who DOESN’T have a lot of typical female skills, I find saying “girls do XX, b0ys do YYY” very annoying — you did use “typical in a few places, but not initally.
Thanks!
(PS, yeah, I blame this on my mother not raising me right — in a good way)
Shannon,
I understand where you’re coming from on this. I’ll keep an eye on this in future episodes.
Michael
Hi, I’m a newbie to your show and I’m on the 29th episode now!
I’m so happy that i’ve found a psych podcast.
Keep up the great podcast!
-Jed from Philippines
Thanks Jed! You may be my first listener from the Philipines. Glad you found the podcast – enjoy. Michael
I just wanted to comment that I am currently taking a Lifespan Development course and this web site great to help the student understand and make it easy to learn!
Gaynelle – thanks for the comment and I’m glad the podcast is helping out. Keep on listening – lots more episodes to go. – Michael
I only can agree with Shannon.
And after listening to the podcast, I had the feeling of: Okay, so. I’m not really femal!” I played with dolls, when I was little but I rather played with my older brother with playmobile, lego and matchbos cars, or we played soccer outside or what you called typical boys because of the aggression, we played to shout each other.
Maybe my parents just didn’t want to do the gender enforcment, and I just my brother was my role model. (Fo instance my mother didn’t want to buy me any Barbie stuff, I had to do it secretly.)
What caught my interest was that you talked about the influence of hormones on the fetus. My university did a research on the influence of testosterone on the fetus. They measured this with the proportion of the index finger and the ring finger. They found that these were acting more manly (it didn’t matter if they were men or women), if there was more testosteron present. I was a little bit amazed to here that about androgene as well. You said, you are going to make an episode on this but I couldn’t find it. Did you make one? Whick one is it?
Thank you,
Ruth