Gender Identity
Gender identity has always been a controversial subject because everyone has a different opinion or feeling about the subject, but until everyone fully understands the immense history, the different types of identities, laws that have been passed and changed over the years, money that has been spent, bullying that takes place every single day, or the hundreds of controversies that have been argued about the issue one will never begin to understand the actual subject of gender identity.
Both sexual orientation and gender identity cover the areas between the male-typical and female-typical poles. These can also be classified as the binary genders. Homosexuality can be considered to be associated with gender-atypical behavior.
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Children are no longer growing up in the same world their parents did, where gender roles were clearly divided. But even in today’s society, there are times when classifying as boy or girl makes a difference in how children experience the world (What’s Your…). Gender could be considered a sliding scale, with a wide variety of options that cover beyond just male and female. Some transgender individuals prefer the word non-binary, because it represents all levels of this scale. Other terms like genderqueer or gender nonconforming, also represent a mix of male and female, or the sense of having no gender at all (Vorenberg). People typically think of transgender as meaning gender reversal, where someone identifies as the opposite sex from their birth sex. But transgender is an umbrella term used to cover a wide variety of people whose gender identity is different from the one they were assigned at birth. One of the first Americans to fight in the courts for recognition as non-binary is Jamie Shupe. Shupe made history after a ruling made them the …show more content…
S. to be legally allowed to identify as neither male nor female. Shupe believed their gender identity was more feminine than masculine, but was not interested in changing physically into a female through surgery, and could not identify with the transgender women who felt they were born in the wrong body. America has slowly begun to acknowledge that for many people, gender is much more than simply being a man or a woman, and a growing number of Americans are seeking the recognition of a third gender, neither exclusively male nor female, under the label non-binary (Cummings). As we move forward each day, more gender types are becoming available for people to identify with or conform
The definition of gender has become way more revolutionary and expressive compared to the twentieth century. Gender used to be similar to sex where someone would be identified as a male or female based on their biological genitals however, this day in age it is way more complex. Someone can be born a male but mentally they feel like a male. In “Sisterhood is complicated” Ruth Padawer explains the journey of different transgender males and the obstacles they face while attending Wellesley college. Wellesley is a women’s college that has been around for a very long time and is in the process of the battling the conflict of whether they should admit transgender students. Ariel Levy author of “Female Chauvinist Pigs” tackles the stereotypes and
For instance, sociologists would argue that characteristics of the male gender in a given society include independence, and dominance whereas females express more passive behavior. Gender identity, on the other hand is an individual’s sense of their gender or in other words, their sense as to whether they are feminine or masculine. Therefore, transgender is a term related to “people whose gender identity is different from the gender commonly socially assigned to them on the basis of their biological sex” (Morrow & Messinger, 2006, p. 7).“Biological theories assume that gender should be consistent with biological sex and there are only two genders and two sexes” which does not correspond to transgender people. Furthermore, transgender is also used as a general term to include people such as transsexuals and cross-dressers
Around the world, gender is genuinely seen as strictly male or female. If you step out of this “social norm,” you could be considered an outcast. This disassociation includes, biological males/females, intersexed, and transgendered individuals. These people are severely suppressed by society because their gender identification, behaviors, and even their activities deviate from the norm. Most Americans are exceedingly devoted to the concept that there are only two sexes.
Too many times, parents of transgender people force their children to live somewhere other than their homes, such as with other family members or with friends. While they likely are better off without a discriminative family around, the sense of being disowned or potentially unloved is often too much for some to handle. The word transgender describes those who identify differently than their assigned birth genders. However, an umbrella term, or a word that covers more than one specific topic, such as transgender, does not only describe people who identify as the opposite sex; it also describes people who identify with both male and female genders, people who identify as genderless, or people who fluctuate between two or more genders.
In this article, Shaw and Lee describe how the action of labels on being “feminine” or “masculine” affect society. Shaw and Lee describe how gender is, “the social organization of sexual difference” (124). In biology gender is what sex a person is and in culture gender is how a person should act and portray themselves. They mention how gender is what we were taught to do in our daily lives from a young age so that it can become natural(Shaw, Lee 126). They speak on the process of gender socialization that teaches us how to act and think in accordance to what sex a person is. Shaw and Lee state that many people identify themselves as being transgendered, which involves a person, “resisting the social construction of gender into two distinct, categories, masculinity and femininity and working to break down these constraining and polarized categories” ( 129). They write about how in mainstream America masculinity and femininity are described with the masculine trait being the more dominant of the two. They define how this contributes to putting a higher value of one gender over the other gender called gender ranking (Shaw, Lee 137). They also speak about how in order for femininity to be viewed that other systems of inequality also need to be looked at first(Shaw,Lee 139).
Identity is a key factor of an individual in the society. Identity often is skewed despite the rhetorical statement: “You are who you are.” However, many times a society unconsciously attempts to mold the identities of individuals into homogenous products. The important thing is not to let yourself prejudge individuals or acts of people because this creates an assumption that brings a stigma against the individual. Transgender people face the difficult challenge of being accepted into society because they either do not fit a traditional gender assignment to their sex, or they are not willing to specify a particular gender recognized by society. The court case that I will use to explore transgender identity is Doe v. Yunits. The case of Pat Doe v. John Yunits involves a young, transgender student disciplined by school authorities. The school deems to be an authority on a person’s dress attire while attending school. The court goes through a series of deductions testing the freedom of expression, liberty in appearance, and the application of sex-class discrimination.
“How can you be non-binary and transgender? Non-binary means you don’t identify as neither male or female. Transgender means you’re transitioning from one gender to the other.”
In today’s society we as humans are aware and accepting of more identities than we ever have been before. Civil rights movements all over the world are advocating for everything from marriage equality, to laws protecting gender-queer people. However, it isn’t perfect. Just as there will always be racists and homophobes, there will always be people who say gender identity is a choice. Well, a study done earlier this year proves those people wrong.
For many individuals, sexual and gender identity is a highly controversial topic to discuss. Those who have inconsistency with their internal or mental sense of gender compared to their physical gender is now described as a psychological disorder and is found amongst adults and adolescents. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders gender dysphoria also known as gender identity disorder refers to the stresses that accompany with the variances between one’s physical gender they were assigned at birth and one’s expressed or emotional gender (5th ed.; DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Gender dysphoria can be contributed to many different stressors determined by ones social interactions. Throughout the years the diagnosis of gender dysphoria has evolved due to the progression of medicine and new treatment discoveries to help limit further mental issues that come with sexual identity disorders.
Clinically speaking, a person who was assigned female at birth but identifies and lives as a man is referred to as a transsexual man, or transman, or female-to-male (FTM); a male-to-female (MTF) person is a transsexual woman or transwoman (Glicksman). Some people drop the transgender label after they have transitioned to their new gender. However, they want to be referred to only as a man or a woman. But what if our gender identity, our sense of being a boy or being a girl, does not match our physical body? From a very early age we will start to feel increasingly uncomfortable. For some this is a mild discomfort, for others it is so traumatic they would rather die than continue to live in the wrong body. Unfortunately as transsexual people are a small minority of the population the condition has been labeled by Psychiatrists as "Gender Identity Disorder". With the transgendered, the disordered assumption is that the
Gender identity has been a delicate issue when it comes to determining if a person's gender is set at birth or develops and changes as a person ages. A person’s gender is not as simple as being classified as either male or female. There’s a considerable amount of external factors that can influence someone’s identity. Although society has a major role in gender identity, sex assignment at birth is not final; furthermore, a person's gender can be influenced by psychological, physiological differences and undergoing changes to the human body. A common misconception many people believe is that gender and gender are the same or go hand in hand with one another.
Gender is seen as a spectrum, and one can fall anywhere on this spectrum. Again, according to Sam Killerman, being transgendered means living "as a member of a gender other than that expected based on sex assigned at birth." Just because a person is born with male genitalia does not mean they have to be male.
Gender Theory in Everyday Life”, the various definitions of “trans” depict that it is not possible to place one’s gender into only two categories. In the definitions of “trans”, transformation or transitioning is a common theme. Transforming into their true self or transitioning from one gender to the other. In the third definition, transgendered individuals are seen as transcending gender, thus making gender non-existent; not only to them, but when they view other individuals (Kessler and McKenna 1-2). The individuals in “When Girls Will Be Boys”, had to create a safe space, and find allies that would provide them with resources to help them in their progression as a trans individual. Trans people truly want to be integrated into society, but they are cognisant of the social standards in place that make them othered (Quart 49-50). In the instance of the varied definition of trans and the experiences of people in “When Girls Will Be Boys”, they are all going against the social norms and actively fighting to create a seat at the table. They refuse to to fit in the status quo of accepting that there are only two genders, and one must stay in either category. Instead, they challenge that thinking by being themself, thus having a hand in creating the new norm. These individuals are not passively combating the misconceptions, miseducation, and misinformation. They are actively creating a space for others and themself to grow in self and in
In order to discuss the biology of gender identity and sexual orientation, it is necessary to first examine the differences between multiple definitions that are often mistakenly interchanged: sex, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Sexual orientation is defined by LeVay (2011) as “the trait that predisposes us to experience sexual attraction to people of the same sex as ourselves, to persons of the other sex, or to both sexes” (p. 1). The typical categories of sexual orientation are homosexual, heterosexual and bisexual. Vrangalova and Savin-Williams (2012) found that most people identify as heterosexual, but there are also groups of people that identify as mostly heterosexual and mostly gay within the three traditional categories (p. 89). This is to say that there are not three concrete groups, but sexual orientation is a continuum and one can even fluctuate on it over time. LeVay (2011) also defines gender as “the ...
In the early days most pregnant women would rely on their grandmother’s silly predictions or other old wives tales to predict whether their unborn baby was a boy or a girl. However, women had no way of knowing the sex of their baby until the actual moment of birth. The idea of gender determination has always been a challenge, and to this day one still cannot fully understand the concept of gender determination. However, with the use of modern day technology and much research, experts have found ways to determine the sex of unborn fetus.