Common sense tells us that there are obvious differences between females and males: after all, biology, not culture, determines whether or not you’’re able to bear children. But culture and cultural myths do shape the roles men and women play in our public and private relationships: we are born female and male, but we are made women and men. Sociologist distinguishes between and gender — between one’’s biological identity and the conventional patterns of behavior we learn to associate with each . While biological remains a constant, the definition of "appropriate" gender behavior varies dramatically from one cultural group or historical period to the next. The variations show up markedly in the way we dress. For example, among many American Indian tribes, men who lived and dressed as women were respected as people who possessed special powers, whereas in contemporary Anglo-American culture, cross-dressers are usually seen as deviant or ridiculous. Male clothing in late seenth-century England would also have failed our current "masculinity" test: in that period, elaborate laces, brocades (织锦), wigs (假发), and even makeup signaled wealth, status, and ual attractiveness for men and women alike. History shows us how completely our gender derives from cultural myths about what is proper for men and women to think, enjoy, and do. And history is replete with examples of how the apparent "naturalness" of gender has been used to regulate political, economic and personal relations between the es. In his classic 1832 treatise (论述) on American democracy, for instance, James Fenimore Cooper remarked that women’’s domestic role and "necessary" subordination to men made them unsuitable for participation in the nation’’s public life. Thus, he argued, denying women the right to vote was perfectly consistent with the principles of American democracy. Such beliefs have been remarkably persistent in the United States. It took over sy years of hard political work by both black and white women’’s organizations to win the right to vote. But while feminists gained the vote for women in 1920 and the legal right to equal educational and employment opportunities in the 1970s, attitudes change even more slowly than laws. Contemporary antifeminist campaigns voice some of the same anxieties as their nineth-century counterparts over the "loss" of femininity and domesticity. Women continue to suffer economic inequities based on cultural assumptions about gender. What’’s defined as "women work" — nurturing, feeding, caring for family and home — is devalued and largely uncompensated; a 1980 study by the World Labor Organization showed that while women do two-thirds of the world’’s work, they receive only 10 percent of its income. But men, too, pay a high price for their culturally imposed roles. Studies of men’’s mental and physical health suggest that social pressure to "be a man" (that is, to be emotionally controlled, powerful, and successful) can contribute to isolation, anxiety, stress, and illness, and may be partially responsible for men’’s shorter life span. According to this passage,_____.