作為人，我們經常將許多事視為理所當然。我們假設我們的行動、行為和想法是天生的或正確的，當我們意識到文化創造了一個有意義的世界圍繞著我們。我們應該知道這也是我們的民族優越感之一。然而，即使基於這項了解，要從我們握有世界的假設中掙脫開來，仍顯困難。近來最有力的假設之一便是『性別』的假設：人類幾乎不論在何處都傾向認為男女的不同是天生的、遺傳的，也是天賦的。儘管他們知道是文化透由我們實踐生命的方式建立起這樣的輪廓──從個人的生活空間到經濟或政治的制度──人們較不願意把這個理解擴展到基本且可能是生物性的（例如性）小事情上。然而，當我們比較世界上的各種社會時，人類所表現出來的性別的最大差異確實說明了這些差異具有文化性，也具有生物性。
As human beings, we take a lot for granted. While we may appreciate that culture crates a world of meaning around s, we may still assume that our actions, behaviors, and thoughts are natural or right. We should appreciate that this too is a part of our ethnocentrism. Even with this knowledge, however, it can be difficult to break free from the assumptions we hold about the world. One of the more powerful assumptions currently is that of gender: human beings almost every where tend to think the differences between women and men are natural, inherent, and inborn. Even if they appreciate that culture establishes the contours through which we live our lives- from individual space to the institutions of economics or politics – people are less willing to extend such understandings to something as basic, and presumably biological, as sex. Yet when we compare the world’s societies, the vast differences we see among human expressions of gender conclusively illustrate that these differences are as much cultural as they are biological.
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