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De Beauvoir Nature Vs Nurture

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The topic of nature versus nurture has long been studied and argued. Back then, the answer to what is more dominant or influential is always the one or the other, but never both. Recent findings regarding human growth and development have shown that both nature and nurture play an important role in this development, as they influence each other. A person can be born intelligent as he or she inherits it from one of his or her parents through genetics, but this intelligence wouldn’t be enhanced to its maximum level if it won’t be nurtured through education. This same concept can be applied to our topic for this week, in which Truth argues that one is born a woman (nature) while de Beauvoir claims one becomes a woman (nurture). In her speech, …show more content…

She has claimed throughout her work that “one is not born a woman, but becomes one”. De Beauvoir argues that female entities are shaped to become women. De Beauvoir also claimed that the term “feminine”, “women”, or “female” are just terms that are used to define the “masculine”, “men”, or “male”. This reminds me of our lecture from Systems of Power and Identity (Lecture 4) where the definition of “femininity” is only used to accentuate “masculinity”, or what de Beauvoir named as the “other”. One gender must be weak (feminine) in order to highlight how strong the other gender is (masculine). There was also a statement wherein women were stereotyped as unable to perform the tasks that men do as women “think with her glands”, which bring us back to the issue of Power and Political Women (Lecture 2) stating that women are not competent enough to lead a nation because their emotions make them think …show more content…

Let’s take the transgender community as an example. If we look at it through biological definition, a woman is defined as an adult female, born with female genitalia. By this definition, a transgender woman is not a woman because she wasn’t born to be one. However, on nurture’s point of view, a person develops, learns, or feels that she is a woman. And by this distinction, a transgender woman is indeed a woman. Celebrities such as Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner (formerly known as Bruce Jenner) are just some of the biggest examples that one can become a

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nurture debate. Yet, he applies his reasoning not in a manner that concludes the prominence of one over the other, but in which Capote ultimately qualifies a murderer (or a mere criminal) as a product of the interaction between his environment as well as his genetics—consequently labeling this a seemingly tragic fate in itself. Amongst the world of psychology, the nature-nurture issue is defined as “the longstanding controversy over the relative contributions that genes and experience make to the development of psychological traits and behaviors,” in which today’s scientific minds see traits and behaviors arising from the simultaneous interaction of both nature and nurture (Myers 9). Rooted and intertwined into essentially every underlying concept and thought-process debated and agreed upon in the psychological sphere, scientists as well as ancient thinkers have long contested the prominence of one’s influence over the other.

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Nature vs. nurture is complex theory and has been analyzed through the ages and both play critical roles in determining who and what people become as they

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Brandon Do Mr. Mitchell English III 30 April 2023 Holden’s Naivete The “Nature vs. Nurture” debate is a widely known phenomenon that tackles the question of whether someone is more influenced by biological predisposition, or if one is influenced by society. A significant point for the “Nurture” side of the debate is the influence that peers close in someone's life have on said individual.

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In these two scenes and in many other scenes and quotes throughout the book beauty is portrayed in a way that does not solely depend on outward appearance and is not defined by normative standards of class, sex, gender, sexuality, and femininity. Simone de Beauvoir’s thoughts in “The Second Sex” also agree with these statements by reiterating the fact that the “feminine woman” is a social construct and that society has controlled how people are supposed to think about normative beauty and women. Beauty cannot be defined. A woman cannot be defined. Beauty is an intersectional concept that includes all identities and all people regardless of outward appearance or what society says is beautiful.

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Considering that women have suffered from discrimination in public and private life, politics were not going to be the exception. As we could see in the previous chapter, throughout history and even until recently, it was considered that women did not have the capacities needed to create their own opinion. Therefore, the possibility for women to reach the political sphere was unimaginable. The feminine sex was not believed competent for intellectual jobs; women had to spend their lives doing domestic work without the possibility of being educated as

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To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex;” She claims that to the government women are nothing and that women were blessed to within women, but it meant nothing. This point made it emotional how women are still people and just as good as men but yet they have no place in

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Nature versus Nurture is an age old debate in Psychology. Nature vs Nurture relates to an individuals behaviour and characteristics and whether they are inherited through their DNA and genes, which can be seen as an innate approach to the debate. This is because innatism believes that the mind is born with all knowledge. Nurture states our behaviour and characteristics are learned through our environment and experiences, This therefore can be seen as empiricist approach as empiricism states that we are born a blank slate and everything we know is learned through our senses. Reproductive behaviour looks at how patterns are established and formed to continue the survival of humanity.

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Nature is the predetermined traits that people are born with, while nurture is the influence that affects people after they’re born. The debate surrounding Nature V. Nurture is how much of a person’s traits is predetermined and how much is influenced by the environment. Mary Shelley's believes in nurture more than nature. Victor Frankenstein has certain traits that he’s born with. Frankenstein is born into a prestigious, wealthy family.

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Are we as humans formed by ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’? Since the first genetic experiment by Gregor Mendel in the 1860s, eugenicists have tried to determine why some people have certain physical and behavioral traits and some do not. The nature-versus-nurture discussion has continued to thrive as scientists, historians, and sociologists debate why certain people’s behavior follows a trend line while other’s represents behavioral digressions shunned in the societal construct, even in the same environment. The people who diverge from the established societal norm of success where other people flourish typically become stigmatized as ‘the Other’ in a society, an outsider who does not conform to that society's ideal image. These questions are the approach that Mary Shelly attempted to develop throughout her novel.

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One of the most debated topics throughout the world is nature versus nurture. When psychologists debate this topic, they are studying what influences a person’s personal development. Some say that a person’s nature influences personal development while others say a person’s nurture influences personal development. A lot of people spend time contemplating which one actually does the influencing but what some do not realize is that, perhaps, both nature and nurture help shape a person’s personal development. One topic that comes up quite often is whether or not a person is born a criminal.

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Thus, in doing gender, one does not move beyond this context, but instead gender identity is “performatively constituted by the very “expressions” that are said to be its result” (55). Gender, for Butler, is “the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame,” it is something fluid that congeals over time “to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being” (63). In this sense, one can never become woman because there is no ontological ‘woman’; it is a “substantive appearance” (64). Butler uses the example of drag to illustrate how it disrupts the “very distinctions between the natural and the artificial, depth and surface, inner and outer through which discourse about genders almost always operates” (27). Drag is not an imitation of true gender, but an act that exposes foundational categories that create the notion of gender as an effect of a “specific formation of power” (27).

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Nature is when it is genetic and biological influences, Nurture is when it is social, economic and environmental influences. Underneath are five different opinions from 5 different people on the nature nurture debate and which side they agree with. Both theories have a point. I say this because some people are born to be the way they are but at the same time this could be changed by many aspects of a person’s life.

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The most prominent point of The Second Sex is to illustrate how women are segregated from society by men, something which happens a lot in Heart of Darkness. De Beauvoir explains to the audience that men and women often do not understand one other and because men hold a higher social status in a patriarchal society, they have made women the ‘Other’ group in society. This is made evident by De Beauvoir’s following quote: “To pose Woman is to pose the absolute Other, without reciprocity, denying against all experience that she is a subject, a fellow human being.” (De Beauvoir 1266). As a consequence of not understanding women, De Beauvoir explains, men use this false sense of mystery as an excuse not to understand women or their problems.

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The nature vs. nurture debate centers on whether human behaviour and personality are inherited (nature) or acquired (nurture); in other words, whether a person’s environment or a person’s genetic inheritance determines their behaviour and personality. Goldsmith and Harman (1994) adopt a neutral position, in which both nature and nurture influence people, stating that they “believe that the fundamental issue concerns the interplay between characteristics of the individual and of the relationship” (54). Goldsmith and Harman discuss temperament and attachment for infant, with temperament being linked to the nature side of the debate and attachment being linked with the nurture side; as a result, the infant’s temperament influences the attachment bond between the infant and the mother, but the attachment bond influences the temperament of the child as well. Therefore, both nature and nurture interact with each other to produce people’s behaviour (Harman et al. 54). Andersen and Berk (1998) take on the nurture perspective, while Leary (1999) claims that nature is the determining factor of a person’s personality.

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Nature and Nurture Influences on Child Development Karla White ECE 205: Introduction to Child Development Instructor: Alesia Lane October 2, 2017 Nature and Nurture Influences on Child Development Describe the relationship between nature versus nurture. The nature vs. nature debate is the scientific, cultural, and philosophical debate about whether human culture, behavior, and personality are caused primarily by nature or nurture. Nature is often defined in this debate as genetic or hormone-based behaviors. Our genes determine the different traits that we have, such as eye color, hair, ear size, height and other traits.

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