Discussing a Thesis Video: Is gender merely a role we play?

[The Voice of Time]

Shakespear once wrote a sentence that has since been immortalized: "The world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players", at his time it is worth noting, there were scarce female players also, as the crew in his Globe Theatre were entirely men, and the role of a woman was performed by men.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoL6rXq7Wsw

The video is ~3 minutes long and part of a kind-of championship among PhD researchers to explain their thesis in 3 minutes. In the end the PhD-researcher concludes that woman is merely a role we play, her research material focuses on an odd tradition in the boy-loving culture of Afghanistan.

So after you've watched it: do you think she is right?

Yes, there is a number of things that biologically and strikingly distinguishes male from female, but, is it that simple and could we not also generate genders based upon any variation, not just penis versus vagina, but absolutely any variation, both biologically, socially, psychologically and even philosophically, of any human beings? Like those cultures that has tons of words for something they find important to themselves, like the Inuit and their dozens of words for snow? Surely to the person in question, what distinguishes them from others, may be far more important than whether they have a penis or a vagina...