In my opinion, I believe gender identity is a product of nurture. Before I support my side, I want to talk about the term sex which is closely related to gender, but they are different from each other. So, sex is the product of nature. From the reading, we know that sex is thea biological being that results from paring of chromosomes X and Y from the parents, XX for a girl and XY for a boy, and determines the baby’s physical, reproductive appearance. The physical sex will be more obvious through puberty time when the sex hormones work to develop the sexual characteristics. However, it doeis not always the case that a person with male characteristics will feel himself as a male or a person with female physical sex will feel herself as a female. I think people are gender neutral at birth, and the gender identity is developed through psychological, environmental, and societal influences. A baby who is taught to behave and dress up like a girl way will determine herself as a girl regardless of biological sex. Josie, fromin the movie “Sex, Lies, and Gender” is an example inof this situation. Josie was born with male physical reproductive organs but she refused to be a boy and determined herself as a girl regardless of what other people thinkought about her. Therefore, it is true that how a person is raised develops his/her belief and feeling for gender identity. For this reason, parents tend to treat their sons and daughters in different ways, and girls and boys are taught to behave in appropriationely with females and male,s respectively.
I oppose the sexual reassignment surgery for thean infant at birth, and it should be postponed until the child is of consenting age. There are some cases in which the babies are born as intersex, that means born with genitals that cannot be determined as male or female. To normalize the genitals, many parents and doctors decide to do surgery at birth when it is not complicated and does not threaten the child, but they cannot anticipate the consequences that could affect the child mentally. Most of the time, parents tend to hide their children abfroutm their birth details in case of intersex and the reassignment surgery if any. In “Sex, Lies, and Gender”, Rudy was born intersex and surgically changed to become a boy at birth;, however, later in his life, he felt confused, depressed, mistrusted, and betrayed by his parents when he discovered his intersex condition. The worset case is when the person will feels ashamed and isolated, that leads to adverse consequences including killing himself/herself. The other reason that reassigned intersex should not be done at birth is that everyone has the rights to decide faborut his/her medical condition;, therefore, without the person’s consent, the doctor’s and parents’ decision would be wrong and unethical. Parents often do not have adequate information about the surgery as well as its impact on the child, and they just make a decision to fix the problem based on the doctors’ advices. It is important for a doctor to discuss and provide the parents with sufficient information about the condition along with its impact, in order to help them make the right decision. Again, Josie from the movie, experiences intersex and she has the right to choose her gender identity, has support from her parents, and beings happy to identify herself as a girl.