Culture is generally considered to be a shaping device for behavior. The individual is like a flat steel plate with no structure. It is placed on the steel plate press of culture and pressed into a shape that conforms to cultural norms. , as the saying goes, “it’s about humanities that transform the world.” This is the truth. Are human acquired behavioral patterns the result of cultural shaping? People need to go through cultural education to learn science, and to master an expert skill need to go through cultural education. So is showing male or female characteristics also a product of cultural education?

Men and women do have many physical, behavioral, and personality differences. Physiological differences need no introduction and are not the focus of this article. The differences in behavior and personality are indeed quite obvious. Women are sentimental, timid, and observant, while men are steady, competitive, and brave. What's more, the terms used to describe the differences between men and women can reflect certain praise and blame. Obviously, with the awakening of women's gender consciousness, it is indeed necessary to fundamentally examine why women are given such colors for this unwarranted prejudice.

Beauvoir's "The Second Sex" believes that women are the product of society. As the women's rights movement is a programmatic document, in this book, Beauvoir sharply pointed out that women's social role is the result of the education of the entire human civilization, or a successful conspiracy by men against women. Beauvoir wrote:

Philosophical conclusions are certainly thought-provoking, but if there is solid empirical evidence that can radically eliminate people's inherent gender bias, how can we empirically prove that gender is the product of cultural upbringing? Woolen cloth? Theoretically, family environment, education and genes may all cause gender differences. Therefore, if you want to test whether gender differences are the product of acquired education, empirical research must control the two variables of family environment and genes. Identical twins are the ideal research subjects. The birth of a pair of male twins in Canada in 1965 will forever remain in the annals of research on gender differences, but will leave behind a painful meeting for future generations.

Twins Bruce Reimer and Brian Reimer were originally good brothers who could be healthy, happy and successful. But during the circumcision operation of 2-year-old Bruce, his genitals were accidentally damaged by surgical instruments. Because the damage was too serious, it was not repaired through plastic surgery. It was such an incident that cast a shadow of history on the brothers and their family. While the Remers were anxious about Bruce, Professor John Money of Johns Hopkins University was looking for empirical evidence to test his gender-neutral hypothesis. The gender neutral hypothesis believes that people's gender awareness comes from the socialization process. Professor Monet persuaded the Remers to allow Bruce, who had no gender awareness, to undergo sex reassignment surgery and then raise him as a girl, so as to minimize the gender problems caused by the lack of male reproductive organs.

Remer’s parents accepted Professor Monet’s suggestion. Bruce also changed his name to Brenda after completing his first gender reassignment surgery. The Raymers raised Brenda like a girl, dressing her in dresses and telling her that she was a girl and would grow into a woman like her mother. During puberty, Brenda was also injected with female hormones to help her body develop into a female form. Professor Monet is very concerned about Brenda's growth and her understanding of her own gender. After all, she is the only empirical material to prove her gender-neutral hypothesis.

However, the facts did not develop as Professor Monet expected. Slowly, Brenda discovered that she was different from other girls. She doesn't like dolls or pretty clothes. She likes to fight as much as boys and wears boy-style clothes. Brenda wore her mother's soft sheepskin gloves not for looks, but just to have better control of the steering wheel when driving a sports car around dangerous corners. Even though she has been raised as a girl, there are many such behaviors that are completely inconsistent with her gender. After that, Brenda fell in love with a woman and began to refuse injections of female hormones.

In the end, Remo's parents told Brenda the real situation and told her: You are a boy, but your circumcision operation failed. You believed Professor Monet's gender-neutral hypothesis and changed your gender to reshape you. Soon, Brenda completely rejected her female identity, cut her hair short, and wore men's clothes. In 1987, 22-year-old Bruce underwent sex reassignment surgery. He was injected with testosterone, had a mastectomy and two penile reconstruction surgeries, and regained his male body. At the age of 25, Bruce got married and became the stepfather of two children.

If the story ends when Bruce is 25 years old, it seems that this is a story of many good things and many near misses. However, the tragic childhood experience had already planted seeds in Bruce's heart. On July 1, 2002, his brother Brian committed suicide by taking an overdose of antidepressants. On May 2, 2004, his wife Jane wanted to divorce him. Two days later, Brian shot himself.

There are many ways to interpret this tragic story. First of all, Bruce's two transitions show that there are big problems with the gender-neutral hypothesis. People's gender consciousness is not just a product of social education. There are some stable and solid core gender consciousness that may have a lot to do with biological sex.

Secondly, gender consciousness is a complex concept. There are serious ethical and moral problems in experimentally studying the origin and development of human gender consciousness. Professor Monet's hasty actions are the main reason for this tragic story. Finally, Bruce's story does not mean that the gender differences between men and women are innate, so people should treat men and women differently. In the author's opinion, social inequality between men and women is largely not due to gender differences, but to the gender discrimination imposed on women based on gender differences. There is no solid evidence that the physiological differences between men and women have a direct impact on work, study, and personal achievements. More influence comes from society and stubborn social ignorance.

Finally, we need to review again the standard social science model that uses culture to explain differences in individual human behavior. The standard social science model places culture as an eternal explanatory item and believes that culture has nothing to do with the psychological and physiological characteristics of individuals. Culture is an emergent attribute at the group level. This understanding does not take into account the potential constraints of human universal psychological and physiological mechanisms on cultural phenomena. The standard social science model uses culture to explain culture and does not inquire into the natural origin and evolution of culture. As a result, our understanding of culture can only seek confirmation in the overall cultural system, which is prone to circular explanation problems.