The Fashioned Body Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

The Fashioned Body - Essay Example The essay "The Fashioned Body" discusses the topic of Gender Identity and Social Norms. These include biological factors such as genetic constitution. Social factors also influence gender identity. This paper discusses how one set of social factors, namely social norms, influences a person's perception of being a man or a woman. In order to accomplish this task, backgrounds on gender identity and social norms will be discussed. Thereafter, specific aspects of social norms and how they affect gender identity will be examined. Sigmund Freud is largely held as the father of modern psychoanalysis. In 1905, Freud presented their theory of psychological development in a publication titled Tree Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Freud claimed and purported to prove that prior to birth, infants do not distinguish between the sexes(Elgstrom, 2000). To them, both the father and the mother have the same reproductive organs and abilities. Based on this, Freud inferred that that originally, a per son is wired to be bisexual. They added that heterosexuality was the result of repression during infancy when gender identity becomes embedded in the infant. According to Freud, at this stage, the child experiences sexual fantasies for the parent of the opposite sex while developing hatred for the parent of the same sex. The problem with Freud is that they tried to explain everything in terms of sex and sexuality. For instance, they are on record for claiming that the reason a farmer engages in crop farming.