The Gender Blur Deborah Blur Analysis

Nature and Nurture: A Gender Sandwich It has always been said that both nature and nurture are the main ingredients in shaping a person’s behavior for the rest of their lives, like the meats and the cheeses to your favorite sub sandwich. Deborah Blum seems to think that not only do these things greatly effect human behavior but also gender identities. She gives the reader a new perspective on nature and nurture, arguing that it is way more than just nurture that paves the path of gender roles. Blum’s essay “The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over?” does a great job convincing the reader with it’s incredible use ethos, slight use of pathos, and so-so use of logos allowing it to be determined as a successful essay. Throughout
Since most people usually prefer the good news before the bad news, let’s start with the fact that she does use an incredible amount of research in her writing. As I previously stated, her intellectual sources and legitimate statistics pave the way to her success in this particular category. In the second to last paragraph on her second page, Blum quotes a behavioral endocrinologist from the University of California at Berkeley, stating, “There’s plenty of room in society to influence sex differences (679).” She also makes sure to credit biologist Alfred Jost’s experiment from the 1950’s as her proof for the importance of testosterone in a particular part of her
While Blum does an amazing job arguing her points to the reader, there are moments while reading her work the reader can find themselves sitting there thinking: Okay, what does this have to do with the paragraph before it? And why is she throwing all of this scientific information at the reader? It’s beginning to look like a foreign language. After rereading the essay a few times, it does seem to flow a little better, but there is a bit of an organizational issue. There are parts where she goes off on a bit of a tangent while shoving so much information down the readers throat that it would be completely understandable for them to start to lose interest and doubt her. As far as any other errors that are noticeable in this essay, the logical fallacy of appeal to ignorance can be found from the get go. Notice how Blum pretty much assumes that every single kid that grows up will basically only play with the toys that are gender appropriate. This is not always true. There are plenty of little girls who love the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or even little boys who love stuffed animals! Parts of this can be especially confusing for people who are not educated in psychology or even biology because their lack of knowledge on either nature, nurture, behavioral factors, and things of the like can lead them to be persuaded more easily. Blum ignores the evidence on the other side of