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Cultural Anthropology Research

Choose one of the girls’ stories from the documentary to write a summary of her life (one paragraph) Expand by researching her country’s statistics on the occurrences of child brides.

Habi was forced to marry at a young age; she tried to escape to her relatives but she did succeed. Habi was born in the country of Niger. The statistics of that country showed that for the twenty million mothers, there were only fourteen centers to help them during birth time. This resulted to a higher number of children who are born at home. Consequently, Habi had no exemption from this early marriage. She developed fistula complications and is currently undergoing medication in an effort to stabilize it.

What consequences for child marriages are outlined in the documentary? Expand and give specific examples from the documentary.

When girls get married at an early age, a number of issues may arise like the likelihood of having premature births. Girls are more prone to death during childbirth than adults and are likely to develop health problems such as premature birth, fistula, or even contact aids

What are the solutions given for the economics of the family and the society? How does the education of women benefit the family?

It is clear that every family there has some standards it has to meet. Some of these standards are fertility, mortality rates and demand for children or even child health. Women education is important in the society. For example, women perceive things differently than men; this will enable every issue in the society to have multiple perspectives in solving the solutions (Kottak).

From your text, what is gender? How is it different from biological sex? Next Documentary: “Dr. Money and the Boy with No Penis

Gender is referred to as a social opportunities attributed to both male and female. The relation between men and women or boys and girls are part of gender. Relationships and opportunities are acquired socially and learned through socialization procedures. Relationships and opportunities are in the context that they are variable and take specific time. Gender is different from the biological sex in that, biological sex is how people are distinct as being male or female based on internal and external bodies of people. This includes a person’s sexual reproductive, genetic and hormones’-   composition.

What is Dr. Money’s Theory of Gender Neutrality? Describe the theory in detail. How is this related to the nature / nurture?

In the theory of gender neutrality, Dr Money tries to show that attributed opportunities of being a female and a male can be changed. That is, through training and adoption that a person can adopt the characteristics as well as behaviors of the opposite biological sex.

What are gender roles? How does Brenda’s mother reinforce gender? How does our society today reinforce gender roles?

The role of gender is personal and cultural. They are certain determinants of how males and females should speak, think, and dress as well as the interaction criteria within a society context. In the documentary, we can see Bruce’s mother treating Bruce differently like a female and not like a male. Bruce taught her how to apply make-ups among other things. On the other, hand in adults undertakes the teaching young boys and girls in the society. These children are able to adapt to their roles culturally and conserve them. The media is used in facilitating the passing of gender in the society.

What behaviors did Brenda (Bruce/David) display that shows that she rejected her female gender as a child? What did Dr. Money do as a result? How did his reaction escalate and what were his motivations? “That’s how you know you are a girl.”

Instead of Brenda (David) behaving like a female as everyone expected, she instead refused to dress like a female. Although she tried to walk a girl, he did not like keeping long hair, and generally, he did not like to do activities done by females. What Dr Money did is that he continued subjecting Bruce to therapy and even went ahead and published this article. In this article, the experiment done with Bruce was successful. Dr Money asserted that Bruce behavior had adopted and changed to that of a female. Some of the motivators Dr Money used showed Bruce’s sexual explicit images, which he considered as crucial part of therapy

Faced with a suicidal 13 year-old, the parents tell the twins the truth. How did Brenda/David react? How did Brian react? How did this affect the relationship between the twins?

At the age of fifteen years, David learned about his nature and immediately started behaving like a boy. He also adopted a new name, had his haircut short, started dressing like a male, and went ahead and removed the breasts, which had developed due to hormonal medication.  Finally, Bruce went ahead, refused, and swore to never see Dr. Money again. His brother Brian suffered from a schizophrenia disease and died later due to an overdose. It was hard for Brian to accept David as a male as he knew him as a female or his sister. Therefore, it was hard for the two to continue leaving a harmonious life again.

When David discovered that Dr. Money still published the experiment as a success, what do the twins do? What happens to Brian? David? How and why?

After David realized the publishing of the book by Dr Money, he disapproved those facts. After Dr Milton contacted him, he agreed to publish his true story in order to make it public to all the people and to prevent treatments like these never to occur to any other child. Brian suffered from a schizophrenia disease and died later due to an overdose.

With the benefit of hindsight, what do we know now about sexual reassignment and the difference between gender and sex? And nature and nurture?

Sex reassignment is the process of trying to change the nature of a person that is, the internal and external organs. Sexual reassignment is hard to achieve. Typically, people have features that form their gender. It is clear that one can only poses the characteristics of either male or female.