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Gender Identity And Gender

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Sex and gender have been used in literature underlying different meanings. Being both complex processes to describe and distinguish, there has been some confusion in the psychological literature on the operationalization and the conceptualization of these two notions.
Unger (1979) is the pioneer of the discussion about the differences between sex and gender. She argues that there are two types of people: those who consider sex as a mainly biological variable and tend to assume that psychological differences between males and females are the result of sex; and those who consider sex as a commonly social phenomenon and lean towards to assuming that the sex of males and females is a result of their different experiences. In the review of literature …show more content…

According to this, gender identity could be a more significant predictor of the individuals’ behavior than is biological sex. Whereas gender involves the mannerisms and comportments considered characteristic of each sexual category, gender identity is more properly used when these attributions are made with oneself as the stimulus person (Unger, 1979). Gender identity takes multiple forms and can be a concept filled with ambiguity and uncertainty, because the messages about gender can come from a large number of sources (e.g., society, organizations, friends, family) that are often uneven and contradictory. This identity is a social construction under a constant development where social norms, structures, people and the self are very important (Ely & Padavic, 2007). Gender was classified as a social category linked with multiple social processes that generate and sustain differences between women and men not making it an innate concept for people. When gender is defined as a stable part of who someone is, it may be harder to understand the situational nature of this concept. In this way, gender theories are exceeding the understanding of gender as sex roles and sex differences to recognize gender as a multilevel structure. Gender is being defined as equally a structure and a process. This is an approach that promotes gender as a set of opportunities to which individuals are held responsible while engaging in other activities not related to gender (Correll, Thébaud & Benard,

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Introduction The concept of sex and gender has been socially constructed for a very long period of time, and it was a lot stricter in the past. As author Zimmerman indicated in his reading “Doing Gender” that “Those of us who taught courses in the area in the late 1960s and early 1970s were careful to distinguish one from the other.” (Zimmerman 1987) Nowadays, we know that the society is gradually changing and people are becoming more open-minded than before.

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“The Federalist,” written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison under the surname ‘Publius,’ attempts to convince the American people that a republican government would be beneficial to both the people and the United States as a whole. Since ‘Publius’ is, in actuality, three different people, one would expect to find some discrepancies between authors. However, in analyzing “The Federalist,” Madison and Hamilton present a unified front – in order to control the effects of factions, they agree that a government should be able to protect its constituents from their misguided passions, that virtual representation is necessary, and that checks and balances among the divided powers of the government are vital. Factions are a source

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In recent years, gender has become a hot topic of discussion. Gender is defined as “the state of being male or female”, however, some gender theorists suggest that gender is a social construction that was not founded on sex. According to gender theory, the term gender is not expressing the state of being feminine or masculine. Many suggest that the separation between gender and sex has to deal with dominance being associated with gender as opposed to physical characteristics being associated with sex. Until the rise of industry in the West, the strong divide of gender was not prevalent.

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In the following essay, we will explore how your sex and gender affect your identity in society. Let us take a look at the word identity. According to the dictionary of psychology on alleydog.com, a persons identity is defined as their “own sense

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“Whatever a “women” has to be “female” and man has to be “male”.” (Lorber) She also includes how one’s gender gives them characteristics that are feminine or masculine. This ties into Millers article because the girls are negatively biased of their science and math skills because in society it is a masculine dominant area. Lynn Webber also wrote A Conceptual Framework For Understanding Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality.

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Ey found that not only are ey examples of gender as a spectrum but that ey are not alone. It showed that a person can possess as much or as little from either the female or male characteristics to be themselves. It shows that “there are differences among these beings we call men and women, but the differences themselves don’t contain a specific meaning” (Nealon and Giroux 182). This highlights the difference between sex and gender in the way that sex is something assigned at birth and gender is something learned. It is obvious that the way in which these ideas are taught makes it seem that there are only two options when it comes to gender but, there are numerous ways in which one can identify as.

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“A sex category is achieved through application of the sex criteria, but in everyday life, categorization is established and sustained by the socially required identificatory displays that proclaim one’s membership

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Unlike ‘sex’, which typically refers to the biological and physiological differences, gender is a sociological concept that describes the social and cultural constructions that is associated with one’s sex (Giddens & Sutton, 2013, p. 623-667). The constructed (or invented) characteristics that defines gender is an ongoing process that varies between societies and culture and it can change over time. For example, features that are overly masculine in one culture can be seen as feminine in another; however, the relation between the two should not be seen as static. Gender socialization is thought to be a major explanation for gender differences, where children adhere to traditional gender roles from different agencies of socialization. Gender

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The other 8 children had male identities (Reiner & Gearhart, 2004). On a practical level, the results are fascinating. This study clearly shows that there is more to gender identity in children than their anatomy. After all, more than 60% of the children in the study declared their gender to be male at some point (Table 1). Furthermore, the fact that subjects 7 and 8 went from a declared male identity to an unclear identity over the course of 84 and 59 months, respectively, indicates that gender identity in children may be driven, in part, by social pressures and expectations, at least when those pressures are in direct conflict with what a child feels (Table 1).

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As society has grown and has shaped from the beginning of time, the difference between gender, sex, and identity has not become such a well-known issue until recently. Most people do not realize the difference between gender and sex; Sex is biological while gender is based on the social role of the person. The biggest part that society has to realize is that everyone's gender identity, a person's perception of having a particular gender, which may or may not correspond with their birth sex, is personal and varies from person to person. The idea of girls being girls and boys being boys and never “switching” is an older way of thinking that does not work in the modern society we have today. Gender roles, the role or behavior learned by a person as appropriate to their gender, determined by the prevailing cultural norms, are starting to change; Women used to have to stay home and care for the home and children but women today are more powerful than ever and hold very important jobs while men have taken on more household responsibilities.

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According to sexologists John Money and Anke Ehrhardt, sex and gender are separate categories. “Sex, they argued, refers to physical attributes and is anatomically and physiologically determined. Gender they saw as a psychological transformation - the internal conviction that one is either male or female (gender identity) and the behavioral expressions of that conviction” (Sterling 4). Although there are biological differences between the two sexes, but gender roles are socially constructed. They determine how males and females should think, speak, dress, behave and interact with society.

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We are ever since educated that we only have binary sexes – male or female, in schools. Traditions and cultures also suggest perceptions and conventions that creates the “correct” type of male and female. While the majority have their biological sex and gender identity aligned consistently, some just find theirs do not fit perfectly. Schools and the society were not able to explain this phenomenon and thus people related and mixed it to disorders and mental illness, tried to control it and to ‘fix’

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Transgender refers to those who 've exempted themselves from their in-born sexuality assigned at birth and thereby transitioned across these culturally and socially constructed binary concepts such as gender and sexuality and who 've in fact, created a 'cultural-turn ' in the society along the course of seeking to determine an "identity" for themselves reaching far beyond these constructs and redefining them as separate dimensions. Although sex is known to follow gender and thus define an individual 's gender identity conventionally, as binarically as possible, transgenderism is a revolutionary term that argues the fact that gender should not necessarily correspond to sexuality whereas an individual 's gender identity is a depiction of one

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The question about whether or not an individual’s identity is innate or acquired, has always been a debatable issue. Some people argue that gender identity is a result of the social context they live in, while others believe a person is born into it. Gender identity is a “person 's subjective sense of themselves as masculine or feminine and is exhibited by the degree to which they act upon their gender roles” (Whalen & Maurer-Starks, 2008). However, based on the current society people live in, it is more likely that an individual’s identity, such as their sexuality, education, and social status are acquired as a result of the social context they live in.

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In conflating the many concepts of sex as well as gender, it has been proved though historical studies and anthropological studies that there are different forms of gender identities and expressions which are not at all times linked to the biological sex of that person. Hermaphrodite, for instance can be used to describe the concept of homosexual men in the society but the truth is it just conflates the intersex conditions of sexual desire and the sex-role behavior physically. Understanding gender drives the understanding of sexuality in many of the cultures and thus makes it easy to understand homosexual and heterosexual. Many of the cultures consider homosexual to consist of only people of the same sex and their biological bodies are not put into much consideration. In most of the Native American cultures, same-sex relationships do not traditionally mean a union of people of the same gender; rather it separates the two concepts, that is, the biology concept and the concept of gender identity (Arlene, 2013).

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