Gender identity

Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own

The 2012 book Introduction to Behavioral Science in Medicine says that with exceptions, "Gender identity develops surprisingly rapidly in the early childhood years, and in the majority of instances appears to become at least partially irreversible by the age of 3 or 4".[12]^[13] The Endocrine Society has stated "Considerable scientific evidence has emerged demonstrating a durable biological element underlying gender identity. Individuals may make choices due to other factors in their lives, but there do not seem to be external forces that genuinely cause individuals to change gender identity."^[14]

There are several theories about how and when gender identity forms, and studying the subject is difficult because children's immature language acquisition requires researchers to make assumptions from indirect evidence.^[16] John Money suggested children might have awareness of and attach some significance to gender as early as 18 months to 2 years; Lawrence Kohlberg argued that gender identity does not form until age 3.^[16] It is widely agreed that core gender identity is firmly formed by age 3.^[16][12][17] At this point, children can make firm statements about their gender^[16][18] and tend to choose activities and toys which are considered appropriate for their gender^[16] (such as dolls and painting for girls, and tools and rough-housing for boys),^[19] although they do not yet fully understand the implications of gender.^[18] After age three, it is extremely difficult to change gender identity.^[13]

Martin and Ruble conceptualize this process of development as three stages: (1) as toddlers and pre-schoolers, children learn about defined characteristics, which are socialized aspects of gender; (2) around the ages of five to seven years, identity is consolidated and becomes rigid; (3) after this "peak of rigidity", fluidity returns and socially defined gender roles relax somewhat.^[20] Barbara Newmann breaks it down into four parts: (1) understanding the concept of gender, (2) learning gender role standards and stereotypes, (3) identifying with parents, and (4) forming gender preference.^[18]

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) comprehensive sexuality education should raise awareness of topics such as gender and gender identity.^[21]

Factors influencing formation

Nature versus nurture

Although the formation of gender identity is not completely understood, many factors have been suggested as influencing its development. In particular, the extent to which it is determined by socialization (environmental factors) versus innate (biological) factors is an ongoing debate in psychology, known as "nature versus nurture". Both factors are thought to play a role. Biological factors that influence gender identity include pre- and post-natal hormone levels.^[22] While genetic makeup also influences gender identity,^[23] it does not inflexibly determine it.^[24]

Social factors which may influence gender identity include ideas regarding gender roles conveyed by family, authority figures, mass media, and other influential people in a child's life.^[25] When children are raised by individuals who adhere to stringent gender roles, they are more likely to behave in the same way, matching their gender identity with the corresponding stereotypical gender patterns.^[26] Language also plays a role: children, while learning a language, learn to separate masculine and feminine characteristics and subconsciously adjust their own behavior to these predetermined roles.^[27] The social learning theory posits that children furthermore develop their gender identity through observing and imitating gender-linked behaviors, and then being rewarded or punished for behaving that way,^[28] thus being shaped by the people surrounding them through trying to imitate and follow them.^[29] Large-scale twin studies suggest that the development of both transgender and cisgender gender identities is due to innate genetic factors, with a small potential influence of unique environmental factors.^[30]

John Money was instrumental in the early research of gender identity, though he used the term gender role.^[31] He disagreed with the previous school of thought that gender was determined solely by biology. He argued that infants are born a blank slate and a parent could be able to decide their babies' gender.^[32] In Money's opinion, if the parent confidently raised their child as the opposite sex, the child would believe that they were born that sex and act accordingly.^{[33][page needed]} Money believed that nurture could override nature.^[32]

Case of David Reimer and contrasting case

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A well-known example in the nature-versus-nurture debate is the case of

After Reimer tried to commit suicide at age 13, he was told that he had been born with male genitalia. Reimer stopped seeing Money, and underwent surgery to remove his breasts and reconstruct his genitals.[35] In 1997, sexologist Milton Diamond published a follow-up, revealing that Reimer had rejected his female reassignment, and arguing against the blank slate hypothesis and infant sex reassignment in general.^[36]

Diamond was a longtime opponent of Money's theories. Diamond had contributed to research involving pregnant rats that showed hormones played a major role in the behavior of different sexes.^{[33][page needed]} The researchers in the lab would inject the pregnant rat with testosterone, which would then find its way to the baby's bloodstream.^[32] The females that were born had genitalia that looked like male genitalia. The females in the litter also behaved like male rats and would even try to mount other female rats, proving that biology played a major role in animal behavior.^{[33][page needed]}

One criticism of the Reimer case is that Reimer lost his penis at the age of eight months and underwent sex reassignment surgery at seventeen months, which possibly meant that Reimer had already been influenced by his socialization as a boy. Bradley et al. (1998) report the contrasting case of a 26-year-old woman with XY chromosomes whose penis was lost and who underwent sex reassignment surgery between two and seven months of age (substantially earlier than Reimer), whose parents were also more committed to raising their child as a girl than Reimer's, and who remained a woman into adulthood. She reported that she had been somewhat tomboyish during childhood, enjoying stereotypically masculine childhood toys and interests, although her childhood friends were girls. While she was

In a position statement, the Endocrine Society stated:^[14]

The medical consensus in the late 20th century was that transgender and gender incongruent individuals suffered a mental health disorder termed "gender identity disorder." Gender identity was considered malleable and subject to external influences. Today, however, this attitude is no longer considered valid. Considerable scientific evidence has emerged demonstrating a durable biological element underlying gender identity. Individuals may make choices due to other factors in their lives, but there do not seem to be external forces that genuinely cause individuals to change gender identity.

Transgender and transsexuality

Some studies have investigated whether there is a link between biological variables and

Research suggests that the same hormones that promote the differentiation of sex organs in utero also elicit puberty and influence the development of gender identity. Different amounts of these male or female sex hormones can result in behavior and external genitalia that do not match the norm of their sex assigned at birth, and in acting and looking like their identified gender.^[57]

Social and environmental factors

Social scientists tend to assume that gender identities arise from social factors.^[58] In 1955, John Money proposed that gender identity was malleable and determined by whether a child was raised as male or female in early childhood.^[59][60] Money's hypothesis has since been discredited,^[60][61] but scholars have continued to study the effect of social factors on gender identity formation.^[60] In the 1960s and 1970s, factors such as the absence of a father, a mother's wish for a daughter, or parental reinforcement patterns were suggested as influences; more recent theories suggesting that parental psychopathology might partly influence gender identity formation have received only minimal empirical evidence,^[60] with a 2004 article noting that "solid evidence for the importance of postnatal social factors is lacking."^[62] A 2008 study found that the parents of gender-dysphoric children showed no signs of psychopathological issues aside from mild depression in the mothers.^[63] It has also been suggested that the attitudes of the child's parents may affect the child's gender identity, although evidence is minimal.^[64]

Parental establishment of gender roles

Parents who do not support gender nonconformity are more likely to have children with firmer and stricter views on gender identity and gender roles.^[57] Recent literature suggests a trend towards less well-defined gender roles and identities, as studies of the parental association ("coding") of toys as masculine, feminine, or neutral indicate that parents increasingly code kitchens and in some cases dolls as neutral rather than exclusively feminine.^[65] However, Emily Kane found that many parents still showed negative responses to items, activities, or attributes that were considered feminine, such as domestic skills, nurturance, and empathy.^[65] Research has indicated that many parents attempt to define gender for their sons in a manner that distances the sons from femininity,^[65] with Kane stating that "the parental boundary maintenance work evident for sons represents a crucial obstacle limiting boys' options, separating boys from girls, devaluing activities marked as feminine for both boys and girls, and thus bolstering gender inequality and heteronormativity."^[65]

Many parents form gendered expectations for their child before it is even born, after determining the child's sex through technology such as ultrasound. The child thus is born to a gender-specific name, games, and even ambitions.^[43] Once the child's sex is determined, most children are raised to in accordance with it, fitting a male or female gender role defined partly by the parents.

When considering the parents' social class, lower-class families typically hold traditional gender roles, where the father works and the mother, who may only work out of financial necessity, still takes care of the household. However, middle-class "professional" couples typically negotiate the division of labor and hold an egalitarian ideology. These different views on gender can shape the child's understanding of gender as well as the child's development of gender.^[66]

A study conducted by Hillary Halpern^[66] demonstrated that parental gender behaviors, rather than beliefs, are better predictors of a child's attitude on gender. A mother's behavior was especially influential on a child's assumptions of the child's own gender. For example, mothers who practiced more traditional behaviors around their children resulted in the son displaying fewer stereotypes of male roles while the daughter displayed more stereotypes of female roles. No correlation was found between a father's behavior and his children's knowledge of stereotypes of their own gender. Fathers who held the belief of equality between the sexes had children, especially sons, who displayed fewer preconceptions of their opposite gender.

Intersex people

Estimates of the number of people who are

A 2012 clinical review paper found that between 8.5% and 20% of people with intersex variations experienced gender dysphoria.^[75] Sociological research in Australia, a country with a third 'X' sex classification, shows that 19% of people born with atypical sex characteristics selected an "X" or "other" option, while 52% are women, 23% men, and 6% unsure. At birth, 52% of persons in the study were assigned female, and 41% were assigned male.^[76][77]

A study by Reiner & Gearhart provides some insight into what can happen when genetically male children with cloacal exstrophy are sexually assigned female and raised as girls,^[78] according to an 'optimal gender policy' developed by John Money:^[72] in a sample of 14 children, follow-up between the ages of 5 and 12 showed that 8 of them identified as boys, and all of the subjects had at least moderately male-typical attitudes and interests,^[78] providing support for the argument that genetic variables affect gender identity and behavior independent of socialization.

Gender variance and non-conformance

Gender identity can lead to societal security issues among individuals that do not fit on a binary scale.^[79] As of 2022, only 23 states plus Washington D.C. currently have state laws that explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Moreover, only "53% of [the] LGBTQ population live in states prohibiting housing discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity", while "17% of [the] LGBTQ population lives in states explicitly interpreting existing prohibition on sex discrimination to include sexual orientation and/or gender identity".^[80] In some cases, a person's gender identity is inconsistent with their biological sex characteristics (genitals and

The terms gender identity and core gender identity were first used with their current meaning—one's personal experience of one's own gender[1]^[16]—sometime in the 1960s.^[88][89] To this day they are usually used in that sense,^[8] though a few scholars additionally use the term to refer to the sexual orientation and sexual identity categories gay, lesbian and bisexual.^[90] Gender expression is distinct from gender identity in that gender expression is how one chooses to outwardly express their gender through one's "name, pronouns, clothing, hair style, behavior, voice or body features."^[91] It is thus distinct from gender identity in that it is the external expression of gender but may not necessarily portray a person's gender identity and may vary "according to racial/ethnic background, socio-economic status and place of residence."^[92]

Early medical literature

In late-19th-century medical literature, women who chose not to conform to their expected gender roles were called "inverts", and they were portrayed as having an interest in knowledge and learning, and a "dislike and sometimes incapacity for needlework".^[93] During the mid-1900s, doctors pushed for corrective therapy on such women and children, which meant that gender behaviors that were not part of the norm would be punished and changed.^[94][95] The aim of this therapy was to push children back to their "correct" gender roles and thereby limit the number of children who became transgender.^[93]

Freud and Jung's views

In 1905, Sigmund Freud presented his theory of psychosexual development in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, giving evidence that in the pregenital phase children do not distinguish between sexes, but assume both parents have the same genitalia and reproductive powers. On this basis, he argued that bisexuality was the original sexual orientation and that heterosexuality was resultant of repression during the phallic stage, at which point gender identity became ascertainable.^[96] According to Freud, during this stage, children developed an Oedipus complex where they had sexual fantasies for the parent ascribed the opposite gender and hatred for the parent ascribed the same gender, and this hatred transformed into (unconscious) transference and (conscious) identification with the hated parent who both exemplified a model to appease sexual impulses and threatened to castrate the child's power to appease sexual impulses.^[28] In 1913, Carl Jung proposed the Electra complex as he both believed that bisexuality did not lie at the origin of psychic life, and that Freud did not give adequate description to the female child (Freud rejected this suggestion).^[97]

1950s and 1960s

During the 1950s and '60s, psychologists began studying gender development in young children, partially in an effort to understand the origins of

The concept of gender identity appeared in the third edition of the DSM,

The authors of a 2005 academic paper questioned the classification of gender identity problems as a mental disorder, speculating that certain DSM revisions may have been made on a tit-for-tat basis when certain groups were pushing for the removal of homosexuality as a disorder. This remains controversial,^[110] although the vast majority of today's mental health professionals follow and agree with the current DSM classifications. In recent years, however, there has been a "growing chorus of voices contesting the pathologization of transgender lives and the dominance of medical-scientific narratives about trans experience."^[112] As such, in 2019, the World Health Organization removed gender dysphoria from the mental illness chapter and moved it instead to the sexual health chapter, changing the term "Gender Dysphoria" to "Gender Incongruence," thereby removing gender dysphoria as a pathological mental illness.^[113]

International human rights law

No objective measurement or imaging of the human body exists for gender identity, as it is part of one's subjective experience.[119]^[120] Numerous clinical measurements for assessing gender identity exist, including questionnaire-based, interview-based and task-based assessments. These have varying effect sizes among a number of specific sub-populations.^[121] Gender identity measures have been applied in clinical assessment studies of people with gender dysphoria or intersex conditions.

Terminology

Before the

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. Find sources: "gender identity" binary man woman – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2022)

While academic usage of terms man and woman began to diverge at the same time, and become more restricted to concepts related to gender,^[123] this distinction was not universal (and still is not) even in academic usage, and even less so in more informal writing or in speech, which often conflate the two.^[124][125]

Non-binary gender identities

Some people, and some societies, do not construct gender as a binary in which everyone is either a boy or a girl, or a man or a woman. Those who exist outside the binary fall under the umbrella terms non-binary or genderqueer. Some cultures have specific gender roles that are distinct from "man" and "woman." These are often referred to as third genders.

Fa'afafine

In

Hijras are officially recognized as third gender in the Indian subcontinent,^{[130][131][132][133]} being considered neither completely male nor female. Hijras have a recorded history in the Indian subcontinent since antiquity, as suggested by the Kama Sutra. Many hijras live in well-defined and organised all-hijra communities, led by a guru.^[134][135] These communities have consisted over generations of those who are in abject poverty or who have been rejected by or fled their family of origin.^[136] Many work as sex workers for survival.^[137]

The word "hijra" is a Hindustani word.^[138] It has traditionally been translated into English as "eunuch" or "hermaphrodite", where "the irregularity of the male genitalia is central to the definition".^[136] However, in general hijras are born male, only a few having been born with intersex variations.^[139] Some hijras undergo an initiation rite into the hijra community called nirvaan, which involves the removal of the penis, scrotum, and testicles.^[137]

Khanith

The

Many indigenous North American Nations had more than two gender roles. Those who belong to the additional gender categories, beyond cisgender man and woman, are now often collectively termed "two-spirit" or "two-spirited". There are parts of the community that take "two-spirit" as a category over an identity itself, preferring to identify with culture or Nation-specific gender terms.^[141]

See also

• List of gender identities
• Social construction of gender
• Identity (social science)
• Sex and gender distinction
• Neuroscience of sex differences
• Queer heterosexuality
• Queer studies
• Queer theory

References

Further reading

• Marciano A (2014). "Living the VirtuReal: Negotiating Transgender Identity in Cyberspace".
  doi:10.1111/jcc4.12081
  .

External links

Library resources about
Gender identity

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• Online books
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gender identity.

• "Gender identity" –
  Encyclopædia Britannica Online
• Dr. Money And The Boy With No Penis
• International Foundation for Gender Education
• National Center for Transgender Equality
• Gender PAC (archived 9 February 2011)
• Gender Spectrum
• Transgender Law Center
• Human Rights Campaign Foundation, Transgender Resources for the Workplace (archived 17 May 2008)
• World Professional Association for Transgender Health
• Genderology Directory Project, International listing of service providers for those affected by GID (archived 9 December 2004)
• Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES), British Charity encouraging and reporting on research into gender variance
• Gender Anarchy Project
• TransFemmeButch A forum and discussion board for trans men, femmes, and butches (archived 18 March 2012)
• Born Free and Equal – Sexual orientation and gender identity in international human rights law (OHCHR)