gender identity

Examples of gender identity in the following topics:

• Gender Identity in Everyday Life

  • Gender identity is one's sense of one's own gender.
  • Gender identity is one's sense of being male, female, or a third gender.
  • Gender identity is not only about how one perceives one's own gender, but also about how one presents one's gender to the public.
  • What causes individuals to sense a sort of confusion between their biological gender and their gender identity?
  • Gender identities, and the malleability of the gender binary, vary across cultures.

• Development of Gender Identity

  • Gender identity is a person's subjective experience of their own gender; how it develops is a topic of much debate.
  • Studies suggest that children develop gender identity in three distinct stages:
  • Around age 5–7, gender identity becomes rigid in a process known as consolidation.
  • According to proponents of queer theory, gender identity is not a rigid or static identity but can continue to evolve and change over time.
  • Apply social-learning theory and gender-schema theory to the context of gender identity development and the gender spectrum

• Gender as a Spectrum and Transgender Identities

  • This social dichotomy enforces conformance to the ideals of masculinity and femininity in all aspects of gender and sex—gender identity, gender expression, and biological sex.
  • In contrast, some societies have "third gender" categories that can be used as a basis for a gender identity by people who do not identify with the gender that is usually associated with their biological sex.
  • The gender continuum (sometimes referred to as the gender matrix) is an extension of this gender spectrum that includes additional gender identities.
  • The continuum approach to gender identity provides individuals with more personal freedom in which to express themselves.
  • In addition, people may identify as androgynous, bigender, pangender, ambigender, non-gendered, agender, intergender, third gender, or another identity altogether.

• Gender Dysphoria

  • In 2013, the diagnosis was renamed from "gender identity disorder" to "gender dysphoria" after criticisms that the former term was stigmatizing.
  • The previous diagnosis of gender identity disorder (GID) caused a great deal of controversy.
  • The official reclassification of gender dysphoria as a disorder in the DSM-5 may help resolve some of these issues, because the term "gender dysphoria" applies only to the discontent experienced by some persons resulting from gender identity issues, rather than suggesting that their identity is disordered.
  • Gender dysphoria exists when a person suffers discontent due to gender identity, causing them emotional distress.
  • The current medical approach to treatment for persons diagnosed with gender dysphoria is to support the individual in physically modifying their body to better match their psychological gender identity.

• Gender and Research

  • Sociological research will study such things as social stratification between genders, the socialization of gender, influences of sexism on educational performance, gender and mass media, inequality in the workplace, gender roles and social norms , and other gender-related topics and social phenomena.
  • Early gender identity research hypothesized a single bipolar dimension of masculinity-femininity—that is masculinity and femininity were opposites on one continuum.
  • This led to the development of a two-dimensional gender identity model, in which masculinity and femininity were conceptualized as two separate, orthogonal dimensions, coexisting in varying degrees within an individual.
  • Other conceptions of gender influenced by queer theory see gender as multidimensional, fluid and shifting; something that cannot be plotted linearly at all.
  • Two instruments incorporating the multidimensional aspects of masculinity and femininity have dominated gender identity research: the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ).

• Context of Culture and Gender

  • Understanding the cultural and gender context of your speech is vital to making a connection with your audience.
  • Both culture and gender play key roles not only in how you perceive your audience, but in how your audience perceives you.
  • When we think of gender, we often think of male or female; that's only half of understanding gender.
  • Many people use sex and gender interchangeably, but one does not have to be male to identify as masculine, and vice versa.
  • Pay attention to the unique dynamic and interplay of your gender and cultural identity in relation to the cultural and gender identities of your audience members, as they invariably influence one another.

• Gender Socialization

  • Gender is included in this process; individuals are taught how to socially behave in accordance with their assigned gender, which is assigned at birth based on their biological sex (for instance, male babies are given the gender of "boy", while female babies are given the gender of "girl").
  • Gender stereotypes can be a result of gender socialization.
  • For example, individuals that identify as transgender feel that their gender identity does not match their biological sex.
  • These identities demonstrate the fluidity of gender, which is so frequently thought to be biological and immutable.
  • Gender fluidity also shows how gender norms are learned and either accepted or rejected by the socialized individual.

• Gender

  • Genderism is the cultural belief that gender is binary, or that there are, or should be, only two genders—male and female—and that the aspects of one's gender are inherently linked to the sex in which they were assigned at birth.
  • It reinforces negative attitudes, bias and discrimination toward people who display expressions of gender variance or nonconformity and/or whose gender identity is incongruent with their birth sex.
  • Gender neutral language and gender inclusive language aims to eliminate (or neutralize) reference to gender in terms that describe people.
  • Gender-neutral language should not be confused with genderless language, which refers to languages without grammatical gender.
  • It has become common in academic and governmental settings to rely on gender neutral language to convey inclusion of all sexes or genders (gender inclusive language).

• Defining Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

  • But have you ever been asked to provide your sex and your gender?
  • It may not have occurred to you that sex and gender are not the same.
  • A person's sex, as determined by his or her biology, does not always correspond with their gender; therefore, the terms "sex" and "gender" are not interchangeable.
  • Gender identity is a person's sense of self as a member of a particular gender.
  • The term "transgender" encompasses a wide range of possible identities, including agender, genderfluid, genderqueer, two-spirit (for many indigenous people), androgynous, and many others.

• The Social Construction of Gender

  • Social constructivists propose that there is no inherent truth to gender; it is constructed by social expectations and gender performance.
  • A social constructionist view of gender looks beyond categories and examines the intersections of multiple identities and the blurring of the boundaries between essentialist categories.
  • Gender is never a stable descriptor of an individual, but an individual is always "doing" gender, performing or deviating from the socially accepted performance of gender stereotypes.
  • In other words, by doing gender, we reinforce the notion that there are only two mutually exclusive categories of gender.
  • Gender is maintained as a category through socially constructed displays of gender.