[joshzayin]

Hm, that's an interesting story. (Somewhat weird and immoral that they would change someone's biological gender before they have the ability to understand what's going on, much less consent, but we can look at the case.)

I don't think that Reimer's case disproves what I say--I was dealing more with the roles which the genders often play, and the fields to which men vs. women are more likely to enter, while this case deals with gender identity. Gender identity is likely not something which is affected significantly by environmental changes, but it is far more likely (I unfortunately don't have numbers and don't know where to look--does anyone know of a relevant study?) that gender roles could be significantly affected by upbringing.

There's no natural reason why women shouldn't go into tech, other than that it's a male-dominated field and that women are, in modern society, often encouraged to avoid such fields.

[ZeroGravitas]

As sad as the story is, I find it a bit of a stretch that a boy would "naturally" tear off a dress at age 2 either, since children of both sexes were dressed in such manners for many centuries. It seems much more likely that he'd picked up cues that he was supposed to be male and was rejecting things that his culture told him were female.

[joshzayin]

It's entirely possible that he did. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity#Formation_of_ge...) says that "studies estimate the age at which gender identity is formed at around 2-3."

It's probably both cultural and biological in this case, I'd imagine. (it could be that he'd learned that dresses were associated with females through cultural conditioning, but he mentally knew on some level [maybe subconscious] that he was male, or something along those lines.)