Contrary to initial expectation, school didn't make me do any more (non-required) writing. But today's discussion on gender in my Social, Emotional and Personality Development class prompted me to do some reflection and writing.
I was reminded of the important distinction among gender identity (identifying yourself as male or female), gender expression (the extent of your masculinity or femininity) and sexual orientation (your preference for a partner of the opposite or same sex). It's fairly easy to answer where one stands on the first and the third, but lines are extremely blurred for the second concept. It depends both on your understanding of yourself, combined with your standards and society's expectations of masculinity and femininity.
Taking these into account, I would classify myself as androgynous. I believe that I display both feminine and masculine characteristics, but I find it more interesting to examine how that happened. Family influences are most obvious - after all, it's a running joke that there are five Ochoa boys in this family (when, as you might know, there are three biological females). The basketball hoop that we have at home wasn't set up for my brothers. It was initially installed for my sister and me. We're also extremely competitive and achievement-oriented. At a personal level, I never owned a Barbie doll, asked Santa for remote control cars, and was (and sometimes still is) fondly considered by my dad as his little boy. Until now, dressing like a girl requires conscious effort, and I am still incapable of putting on (full) make-up. I'm starting to suspect that we were prenatally exposed to high normal levels of testosterone.
Now on a totally unrelated note, you have to watch Discovery Channel's octopus documentary. Apparently, this under appreciated species (save for Paul the Octopus) is capable of observational learning. Who knew that Bandura's modeling extends even to such a seemingly simplistic species? Even cooler is the octopus' neural structure. Apparently, they have a master brain and eight sort of mini-brains on each tentacle, with each acting as a hub of neurons. Anyway, my descriptions don't do justice to the documentary. Watch it for yourself and be amazed!
PS The video isn't from the documentary, but shows some of what I'm talking about.
