Gender

Researchers (and perhaps common sense) have shown that the behavior pattern most associated with males is that of aggressiveness, and this has undoubtedly influenced gender characteristics in women, including the relative servitude that has marked their history as the subordinated sex. Aggressiveness, however, has varied levels in males, with some being much more aggressive than others. The same differential exists in females but at a lower scale. If this has any meaning politically, then the way to lessen its impact is by equal opportunity laws and regulations, a path that feminists and others have adopted in the United States and elsewhere.

When all the findings about gender are summarized, it seems that there is a wide variation in gender behavior between and among the sexes. Those societies that in the past had adopted strict dimorphic gender patterns will have more difficulty in changing to sexual equality than those that allow somewhat more ambiguity. In the United States and in much of the world, cross-gender behavior in the past was stigmatized and punished. Since the nineteenth century, when the medical model came into prominence as a means of diagnosing nonconforming sex and gender behavior, significant departures from a dimorphic model of masculinity and femininity were labeled as an illness. Similarly, sexual orientations other than exclusive heterosexuality were considered an illness until the American Psychiatric Association voted in 1973 to drop ordinary homosexuality from the upcoming edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.