引用人類學家瑪格麗特 • 米德（Margaret Mead）在她1935年的作品《三個原始部落的性別與氣質》[1] 舉出的典型例子。在這個著名的民族誌研究中，米德比較新幾內亞[2] 的三個部落：阿拉佩什（Arapesh）、蒙杜古馬（Mundugumor）、德昌布利（Tjambuli）。在每一個部落，男性與女性所表現出來的個人氣質十分多元，而且很不同於美國人的預期。阿拉佩什的女人與男人的舉止是米德的讀者可能已預期美國女人所會有的行為：她們表現出「某種氣質……由雙親面向來看，我們稱之為母性氣質，由性別面向來看，我們稱之為陰柔氣質」。[3] 然而，蒙杜古馬的男人與女人，其舉止是許多米德的讀者可能已預期美國男人會有的行為──是更極端的表現。「男人與女人都變得粗魯、好鬥、極有性欲，個性中帶有極少的母性的珍貴部分」。男人與女人的性格趨於同一種類型，在我們社會裡，這種類型只出現在未受訓練與兇暴的的男性身上。[4] 德昌布利與阿拉佩什與蒙杜古馬（這兩個部落皆貶低性別的對比）形成顯著的對照，米德發現，德昌布利如同她所在的當代美國社會，男人與女人之間劃界得相當清楚，但不同於美國社會的是，德昌布利存在著對於性的刻板印象確實與1930年代的美國刻板印象相反：存在著一種「真正地在性別上的翻轉，有別於當代社會的性態度，女性是具有支配性的、客觀的、有主宰力的夥伴，男性是較缺乏責任感、情緒上依賴的人。[5] 在最後，米德的研究說明了文化對於形塑所謂的性的輪廓（contours），佔了極大的份量。米德寫道：「這三種情勢呈現了非常明確的結論」。「如果那些我們習慣上視為陰柔的性情態度──例如順從、易感、樂意撫育小孩──可以這麼容易地在其中一個部落成為陽性的典型，而對於另一個部落多數的女人與男人而言，這種性情卻受到禁止（outlawed），我們不再有任何依據認為這個行為面向與性染色體相連結」。[6] 對米德來說，全然將女人和男人的行為連結到生物學──視他們「與性染色體有關」──便會遺漏了文化是如何形塑「男」「女」的行為的輪廓。
Take a classic example presented by anthropologist Margaret Mead in her 1935 book, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. In this well-known ethnographic study, Mead compared three tribs of New Guinea: the Arapesh, Mundugumor, and the Tjambuli. In each of these groups, men and women exhibited personality traits that were highly variable, and very different from what Americans might expect. Arapesh women and men behaved in ways that Mead's readers may have expected American women to act: they displayed "a personality that ... we would call maternal in its parental aspects, and feminine in its sexual aspects". Mundugumor men and women, hower, behaved in ways that many of Mead's readers might have expected American men to act - in the extreme: "Both men and women developed as ruthless, aggressive, positively sexed individuals, with the maternal cherishing aspects of personality at a minimum. Both men and women approximated to a personality type that we in our culture would find only in an undisciplined and very violent male." In marked constrast to both the Arapesh and the Mundugumor (both of whom downplayed the contrast between the sexes), among the Tchambuli Mead found that, as in her comtemporary American culture, men and women drew clear lines between the sexes; but , unlike Americans, Tchambuli harbored stereotypical attitudes about the sexes that were the exact opposite of 1930s American stereotypes: there was "a genuine reversal of the sex-attitudes of our ow culture, with the woman the dominant, impersonal, managing partner, the man the less responsible and the emotionally dependent person." In the end, Mead's study illustrated that culture had an enormous role in shaping the contours of the so-called sexes. "These three situations suggest, then, a very definite conclusion," wrote Mead. "If those temperamental attitudes which we have traditionally regarded as feminine - such as passivity, responsiveness, and a willingness to cherish children - can so easily be set up as the masculine pattern in one tribe, and in another be outlawed for the majority of the women as well as for the majority of men, we no lnoger have any basis for regarding such aspects of behavior as sex-linked." For Mead, linking the behavior of women and men entirely to biology - seeing them as "sex-linked" - misses how culture shapes the behavioral profiles of "man" and "woman."
[1] [譯注] 米德著、宋踐等譯。1995。三個原始部落的性別與氣質。台北：遠流。
[2] [譯注] 位於澳洲北方的島嶼。
[3] Margaret Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (New York: Morrow, 1935), 279.
[4] 同前。
[5] 同前。
[6] Mead, Sex and Temperament, 279-80.
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