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Believe it or not this discourse on gender roles and gender perscriptions v. descriptions is particularly pertinent to one of my art history courses this semseter which focuses on the theme of gender in Medieval art. One of the core tenants of this course is to try and define (or at least explore the possiblity of) the line between sex (i.e. biological dimorphism) and gender performance (i.e. societal norms for the behavior of man v. woman in a gregarious culture). It is clear to me that both aspects are pertinent to this discussion as many have already pointed out and that what we define as "gender" and "sex" are equally important in what goes into how we think of the distinct male organism versus the distinct female organism. There are differences between male and female organism in their biology and thus in their behavior; however, this does not mean that these differences are absolute, after all, we have had several examples of hermaphroditic organisms (worms. bacteria (everyone remember the little "conjugation" demonstration we were fortunate enough to witness), slugs and leeches) that are capable of "performing" both male and female roles in terms of reproductive acts as well as certain species of fish and frogs that can change sex if contained in a single sex environment...which means "behaving" like a male organism or a female organism (i.e. becoming more or less aggressive, even altering phenotype to match the other sex). Thus, the gender discussion cannot be delineated by specifcally black and white borders (or confined to the realm of the human organism alone...for we are still animals even if our behavioral makeup, especially in terms of gender and sex, is particularly plastic---however, we must also be aware that the definitions of male and female roles are human constructs superimposed upon other organisms. Yet, the fact that we are aware of some fundamental difference existing, even on a purely operational level, is important in and of itself) but is more accurately described as a spectrum in which a given individual's postion upon the spectrum is potentially subject to change given the extenuating circumstances and the organisms biological capabilities (including, as is our case, the higher levels of organization that contribute to the very intricate, and very mutable, nuances of gender play, such as those seen in social organisms). However, just because gender play and "sex" can be potentially mutable does not mean that distinctions do not exist (or at least within the realm between sexually reproductive organisms). If one looks outside of our species these gender distinct behaviors are perhaps more obvious, especially in cases where gender dimorphism is very obvious, and is a major part in sexual reprodcution (peacocks and peahens). Organisms where reproductive success is dependent upon sexual dimorphism, where the male is extremely different in appearance (loud, flashy, and ultimately a walking sign post for a meal for hungry predators) and behavior (i.e. mating/courtship rituals, especially were the behavior is potentialy risky--but hey nature rewards risk in many cases) have very clear distinctions in gender behavior, which cannot be so easily explained by "cultural" perscriptions since in many cases these organisms do not have the type of social hierarchy that could dictate such gendered behavior (it must therefore be a more biological and thus neurological distinction).

In the not so distant past of humans as well biological differences were used to describe what was seen as very clear-cut differences between what was male and what was female (and this goes back to Aristotle (grrrrr...) Plutarch and Gelatian)...in which the female was at times viewed as a completely different organism from the male human...or else seen as some kind of failed/flawed male (i.e. something went wrong in the reproductive process and the mutant thing created was a female)--and as such the behavior of the female organism was a gray area, a thing entirely dependent on what she lacked in contrast to the male (she doesn't have this, or it looks like that instead of this and thus she acts like this kind of mentality of providing rational in differing behavior---which would seem to indicate that beyond soicietal perscriptions something fundamentally different was observed in genderal between the two genders), for instance "hysteria" was an intricacy of female behavior arising from that wilely, roaming organ (or parasitic animal as described it as) known as the uterus which was often viewed as an underdeveloped and inverted set of male reproductive organs (also Gelatian had the idea that both males and females secreted two different types of semens which were both necessary and contrary to one another in order to produce a baby). The point is that despite the obvious fact that the dominant discourse back in the day discussed the female gender in terms of the male this sense of difference, and a difference that connected biological/phenotyical dimorphism with large scale social behavior/gender constructs at that, did exist. Why does this persistance for determining a difference between gender exist if there is not some basis for it?