Gender Identity: Gender Roles And Stereotypes

Stereotypical Gay Man  has feminine interests such as decorating and gardening works in an occupation such as hairstyling and designing  has feminine mannerisms  uninterested in sports  opposite of macho

Stereotypical Lesbian has short hair  wears baggy clothes or masculine clothes  never wear jewelry and make-up

examples of stereotype people: David Kopay – has written autobiography about being a gay professional football player

Marlene Dietrich – glamorous heterosexual symbol who is apparently, sexually involved with women.

“Man as a feminine and Woman as a masculine” •individual being described has the attributes or characteristics of the opposite sex. • Gay men are feminine in their sexual orientation but masculine in their physical appearance and organs • while Lesbians are masculine in terms of sexual orientation but feminine in appearance and organs • It is like “A woman trapped inside a man’s body and vice versa”

Gender Roles • Behaviors, attitudes and personality traits that a society designates as masculine or feminine, that is, more “appropriate” for or typical of the male or female social role. • a set of behaviors that indicates one's gender, specif. the image projected by a person that identifies their femaleness or maleness; an overt public presentation of gender identity (dictionary.com)

• Measurement of Gender Role in children: Preferences of friends (male to male and female to female), Games and Toys played (robots for boys, dolls for girls; rough games for boys, dress-up play for girls) • Measurement of Gender Role in adults: Occupational and Recreational Interests (beauticians are mostly women while carpentry are for men), Attitude in the society (women are nurturing and caring while men are aggressive and courageous)

Gender Identity • One’s subjective sense of being either female or male • a person's inner sense of being male or female, usually developed during early childhood as a result of parental rearing practices and societal influences and strengthened during puberty by hormonal changes (dictionary.com)

Transsexualism • a discordance between gender identity and anatomical sex • "intense desire to change one's sexual status, including the anatomical structure,"

Childhood Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Boys behave differently than girls and this becomes prominent when they reach the age of 3. Boys who behave like girls are called “sissies” while girls who behave like boys are called “tomboys”

 According to some researches, the most very feminine boys become gay or bisexual man when they grow older.  While on girls, although there is a high rate of tomboys becoming lesbians, still, most of these tomboys turns out to be heterosexual when they grow up.

Feminine Boys to Gay Men

a. Study by GREEN (1987) • He wants to study if feminine boys become gay men when older • He recruited 66 feminine boys (Fboys) and 56 non-feminine (NFboys) boys (mostly 7 year old but ranges from 4-12 years) though newspaper advertisements

•The results of his study are as follows: -70 % Fboys cross-dress while 0 NFboys cross-dress -50% Fboys play with dolls while only 5% NFboys play with dolls -60% Fboys take feminine roles in role playing while 0 NFboys take them -80% Fboys relate better to girls compared with 5% of the NFboys -80% Fboys wish to be girls compared to 10% of the

•The parents of these children reported that the feminine behaviors of the Fboys emerged quite early. •Green found evidence for a small effect of parent’s reactions on their son’s subsequent behavior . Parents who discourage feminine behavior among the feminine boys

•Green became interested in transsexual men who undergo sexual surgeries to change their gender. •1 of Green’s subjects became a transsexual man which is a boy from the feminine group. The ratio of 1:60 boys (Green’s) is

b. Study by ZUGER (1984) •He conducted a similar study using 55 feminine boys as his subject. He did not use any nonfeminine boys. 16 of which boys range from 12 – 16 years old. The overall average of these boys is 9 years old. •His findings are somewhat similar to that of Green’s. •73% were judged to have homosexual or bisexual orientations •6% have heterosexual orientations •21% could not be determined due to lack of information given •Although he does not have a control group (nonfeminine boys), the rate of homosexuality that he got is much higher.

^^ Conclusiveness of the evidence •Zucker (1990) reviewed prospective studies about feminine boys including that of Green and Zuger’s. •There were a total of 99 boys followed to adulthood. 59 of them had homo/bisexual

^^ Were most gay men feminine boys? Although very feminine boys are most likely to become gay men, it does not necessarily follow that all gay men were feminine boys. Several analyses suggest that many, not all, gay men were somewhat

Tomboys to Lesbian

a.Study by Green and his Colleague (Green, Williams and Goodman, 1982) They compared 49 tomboys to 50 girls The tomboys are quite different with respect to their preferred toys, gender of their peer group, sports participation, roles in role playing and their wish on being boys.

studies support the likelihood that an association exists. The female distribution indicated that: 81% lesbians exceeded the typical heterosexual woman 12% of heterosexual women exceeded the typical lesbian on measures of childhood gender atypicality.  Thus, the retrospective study suggests that, on study, Lesbians were more tomboyish children than were heterosexual

 In contrast, female homosexuality appears to be less common than male homosexuality. (Gebhard, 1972) Using the results of meta-analysis, we estimated that of girls as masculine as the typical prelesbian, only 6% will become lesbian. In contrast, the analogous estimate

Adult Gender Identity Are Gay Men Feminine? Are Lesbians Masculine? •Research on Adult Gender Identity is more difficult to characterize than that of children. •One possible reason why: Differences in gender identity between heterosexual and homosexual individuals may be less pronounced in adulthood than childhood. Whitam (1977) – observed that most

*One-and two-factor scales of masculinityfemininity •The measurement of gender identity is presently less satisfactory for adults than for children. *Scales of masculinity-femininity •Scales that were typically constructed from a large pool of items that discriminate between men and women •Unfortunately, most of the M-F tests are based on coherent theory and so, it is unclear what the findings mean.

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory M-F subscale oMost frequently used scale in research on sexual orientation oIncludes only 1 thing: “I am very strongly attracted to members of my own sex.” Pillard (1991) – reviewed studies containing measures of M-F and found that in 26 or 27 studies, gay men were significantly more

[ Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI, Bem 1974) Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ: Spence and Helinreich 1978) ] •Instruments that were conceptually premised on the notion, that psychological masculinity and psychological femininity are two different factors. Fillard (1991) – found that in using either BSRI or PAQ, gay men tend to be higher on femininity or expressiveness. However, gay men tend to be as high as heterosexual men on the masculinity subscale and lesbians as high as heterosexual women on the femininity subscale.

ther sexual dimorphic traits

Other sexually dimorphic traits a. Sexual behavior •Such as: interest in visual sexual stimuli, sexual versus emotional jealousy, interest in uncommitted sex, and importance of a partner’s physical attractiveness, status, and youth (Bailey, Gaulin, Agyei and Gladue, 1994)

Gay men respond similarly to heterosexual men and lesbians to heterosexual women Gay and heterosexual men are equally interested in casual sex while lesbians and heterosexual women are disinterested. Gay men and lesbians were also

Contrasts: Lesbians appeared more interested than heterosexual women in visual sexual stimuli such as erotica. Lesbians were similar to women in their greater concerns with emotional than with sexual infidelity and were intermediate between women and heterosexual men in the emphasis they

“Neither gay men and lesbians are generally masculine or feminine. Further, the degree of masculinity or femininity depends on the sexually dimorphic characteristic.”

b. Aggressiveness 1.Men are verbally and physically aggressive and competitive than women. 2.Gay men recall being physically unaggressive as boys. 3.Lesbians reported less physical aggressiveness

Gladue and Bailey (1994) – administered aggressiveness and competitiveness questionnaires to a large sample of gay men, lesbians, heterosexual men and women. (68 to 82 per group) They found that Men are more physically aggressive and more competitive than

Occupations and Careers Gay men and lesbians continue to face discrimination in the workplace, they may be hesitant to occupations may be the most likely to remain closeted and therefore the least likely to be

Gay men are underrepresented in bluecollar occupations and overrepresented in service occupations compared to heterosexual men, perhaps because the latter occupations are more consistent with their gender identities. Gay men are overrepresented as artists, dancers, and fashion designers while lesbians are among soldiers and professional athletes.

Other Scientific Issues

Biological Interpretation The most prominent biological hypothesis is that sexual orientation is a function of the degree of masculinization relevant brain structures due to the effects of early

Psychosocial Interpretations Male homosexuality was hypothesized to result from the combination of an excessively close mother-son relationship and a distant , if not antagonistic,

Within-Orientation Differences in Gender Identity Meyer-Bahlburg (1993) speculated that hormonal theories of sexual orientation may be most relevant to lesbians and gay men who were atypical in their childhood gender identity.

Biosexuality Most research on sexual orientation either excludes bisexual subjects or includes them with gay or lesbian subjects. Phillips and Over (1992) studied childhood gender identity in a sample of gay and bisexual men. They reported that each of 10 items

Transvestism and Transsexualism Transvestism: Transvestite – typically experiences a compulsion to cross-dress, often in private. -Heterosexual men who had masculine gender identity as children.

Normative Issues

Homosexuality has not been classified as a mental disorder since 1973 in the US. Gender Identity disorder of childhood raises especially difficult questions. Ambivalence:

2 reasons for ambivalence apply more to gay men than to lesbians: 1.In many cultures, feminine boys and men are often treated badly, generally worse than masculine girls and

Ambivalence implies mixed feelings rather than unmitigated hostility. Femiphobia – description of gay men being the most