Are characteristics of femininity and masculinity learned behaviors or natural traits?
Probably some of both. There have been a number of studies on this subject. I’ll just mention a couple here. In one study, toddlers were separated from their mothers by a transparent barrier and were then watched to see how they would react when they found out that they could not get to their mothers. The boys usually reacted by attacking the barrier. The girls usually just sat down and cried. There were, of course, exceptions to these norms, but the majority of the toddlers reacted as described. The other study that I have heard about is more in the lines of a cruel experiment. This one family had twin boys. I believe it was shortly after their birth that a botched circumcision left one of them with a badly mutilated genital. On the advice that of a doctor who believed that all behavior is learned, the parents decided to castrate the one twin and raise him as a girl. What followed was a years long experiment in human behavior. The doctor who advised the parents to do this to their son
