The question of if a person is born gay or if their environment has made them into a gay person is a major question within our society today. Carol Vance addresses the question in her article about the social construction theory.
Carol Vance argues that ideas about gender and sexuality must not be understood as natural or unchanging truths but as social constructions (29). She means that you are not born with a certain set of sexual feeling inside you. Your environment, where you’re from and how you’re raised can affect these ideas. Overtime you can also change perceptions of gender and sexuality, they are not static.
The social constructionist view would say that you are a product of your environment and your culture. The text states that “relationships between sexual acts and sexual identities is not fixed and is projected from the observer’s time and place.” The “place” refers to the fact that all cultures have a different idea about sexual acts and depending on which one you’re in you have a different set of norms. A sexual act does not carry a universal sexual meaning. However people over time do not have to carry the same idea of that sexual meaning, there is ability for the meaning to change as the person matures.
On the other side of the argument there is the idea of biological determinism. This is the thought that you are born with these characteristics in your body and in your genes. They do not allow for change. Essentialism, a set of characteristics that are part of the object or person, can also account for this. There is again the idea that these are unchanging. Religious people who are against the idea of evolution cling strongly to the idea of essentialism.

Through out the readings another area that I found interesting was the sex and the body article by Nelly Oudshoor. Being a biology major I am constantly looking at diagrams of the human body, to think that at one point they did not even differentiate between the male and the female body astounds me. Oudshoor points out that until the late 18th century there was a one sex model in drawings of the human body. The idea that they were the same was based around the idea of “theirs are inside the body and not outside.” The female body was a lesser version of the male but not a different sex. Today in drawings the eyes are the only body part that is not differentiated by sex. Also today’s scientist focus on sex hormones that also show differences in the sexes.
Today science plays an important role in some of the ideas of women’s studies. The perception of women has changed since the early start to provide for more equality among the genders. As read about in this section science also plays an important role in trying to explain sexual orientation. But like everything there is still much more to be done.