My perspective before the debate:
The day I heard about the debate I was always on the side of nurture. I believe that Humans are clay while the upbringing are the hands that shape us.
While watching the documentary I thought that Bruce could be turned into a girl (Brenda) if in the right circumstances. I feel that it can be done successfully at a young age because the brain hasn’t matured yet.
But when they revealed that Bruce was not been able to be changed into a girl, it made me rethink my perspectives and be more open-minded in the debate so i would know which truly is the side which determines gender, Nature or Nurture?
My perspective after the debate:
I am a person who believes in statistics and data more than other factors. Thus, after considering both sides and grinding my gears I came to the understanding that it is Nurture that determines our behaviour and gender rather than nature. I stuck to my original understanding of the topic but I also learnt that nature also plays a role in determining these factors but not as much as our upbringing. There are many factors that made me think so. Such as:
- The famous Bobo doll experiment( Bandura, 1961). Which tested children who were shown a video on a person being violent to a doll and letting the child in a room with the doll by itself. The children acted violently to the doll and copied the actions of the adult. Other children were not shown the man being violent and played peacefully with the doll.
- From an early age we develop by imitating people and learning from experiences. Whilst sHow often do you read a story and a character has changed by the end this is obviously because of all the events they have experienced in the book rather than some gene they have within them.
Both of these points take me to the side of nurture, but the debate has definitely changed the way I look at things on the side of nature. Thus, I feel that even though Nurture plays a big roll in our behaviour that does not mean Nature does not affect us at all.
I like how perceptive and thoughtful you are in this post. You also use sound logic to convey your argument. However, I do feel that you could have maybe added some more data to support your perspective. Also, this is more of just a question but how would you counter the claim that gender identity is predetermined due to the amount of hormones in the brain’s SDN?