Gender Identity
Raymond Santiago
PSY 265
March 24, 2012
Laura Schulz

Gender Identity Gender identity is one’s belief that one is male or female, and an important aspect of self-concepts. Studies show there are a variety of factors that help determine gender identity. Most of us can remember something that helped determine our own personal identity. These personal experiences were important as they helped shape the future and what gender would be identified with. I will share my own personal reflection at what exactly helped me determine my own personal gender identify. There are also stereotypes that associate with each gender that help shape characters and who we are as well as who we will become. These stereotypes will be addressed as well as their importance. Biological factors play a huge role in shaping children's physical development. For instance, boys and girls are born with distinctive sexual organs, and become further differentiated when secondary sexual characteristics emerge upon puberty. Naturally occurring chemical messenger compounds in the body known as hormones are responsible for coordinating the appearance of these physical differences. Some research suggests that the same sex hormones that enable sexual organ differentiation in utero and which later trigger puberty also plays an important role in shaping gender identity. Boys tend to have more androgens (male sex hormones) than girls. However, some boys and girls are born with a condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), which causes them to have significantly higher levels of androgens than their non-affected peers (Rathus, Nevid, & Fichner-Rathys, 2011). Scientists have studied children with CAH in order to understand how their extra androgen levels affect behavior. Boys with excess androgens play and behave much like normal male peers. However, girls with high androgen levels tend to display more gender-stereotypic male traits and behaviors than do than their same-age hormonally-normal peers. In addition, girls with CAH are born with external genitalia that look like male genitalia. Though these girls appear to have penises, they are still female. Girls' true gender is determined genetically rather than anatomically. Females possess two "X" chromosomes, while males possess a single "X" chromosome and a "Y" chromosome (Rathus, Nevid, & Fichner-Rathys, 2011). Other studies have shown that children's upbringing and social environments also impacts their developing gender identities. This work can be summarized by stating that children's interests, preferences, behaviors and self-concept are strongly influenced by parental and authority figure teachings regarding sexual stereotypes occurring in or before the early portion of middle childhood. Children taught that certain traits or activities are appropriate or inappropriate for them to engage because they are a girl or a boy do tend to internalize and be influenced by these teachings in later life. Children learn vicariously, in part, through their observation and imitation of what they see their primary caregivers doing. They tend to imitate and internalize what they see and then repeat those patterns in their own lives as though they had come up with them independently. Children were raised watching their parents adhering to strict gender-stereotyped roles are, in general, more likely to take on those roles themselves as adults than are peers whose parents provided less stereotyped models for behaving. A minority of boys and girls do not experience this sense of comfort. These youth have a different experience of anxiety because their gender-identity is out of sync with social expectation because of their homosexual or trans-gender identity. Children who develop a homosexual sexual preference experience a physical-gender-consistent gender identity, meaning that they are boys who feel comfortable and normal being boys, or girls who feel comfortable and normal being girls. However, they find themselves sexually attracted to homosexual (same-sex) peers rather than the normal case of heterosexual (opposite-sex) attraction. Trans-gendered youth have developed a gender identity in opposition to their physical gender. They may be physically male but experience themselves as female or physically female but experience themselves as male. We should all remember a personal experience that we can reflect on that helped shaped our own gender identity. These are important experiences as they helped shape the future. I can remember specific situations such as always being told “you are a boy, boys don’t cry!” This was a saying said to most young boys as they are growing up that helps shape their thinking as they get older. Boys are tough and boys don’t cry. Boys must hide their emotions when they want to cry to be tough and viewed as a boy. All this can complicate how a man expresses them as they get older and the lack of emotional value they may carry. Another experience are the toys I was allowed to play with. I did not play with anything my sister possessed as a toy. I played with G.I. Joe, cars, airplanes, and anything related to sports. This helped me identify with male athletes, military which is primarily male, and cars which is also a primarily male identifier. Another experience involved friends and who we were allowed to “hang out” with. When I spoke to girls or girls were involved in friendships I received much less criticism than my sister who was not allowed at all to be around boys. My sister had girl-friends. For myself, the saying, “He is just being a boy” was often heard and I took advantage of the space given to me. All these experiences can be reflected upon and seen where specific stereotypes have come from and why they exist. A stereotype is a fixed, conventional and often distorted idea about a group of people (Rathus, Nevid, & Fichner-Rathys, 2011). There are many different stereotypes for both men and women some ranging from men are more active, physical, rigid, and rational while women are emotional, complicated, and submissive. There is a song by the recording Grammy artist Beyoncé called “If I were a Boy.” She describes how if she were a boy she could stay out light, not pick of the phone, and hang out with the guys. The famous stereotype that “men are dogs” plays along in the song. This bothers me simply because the men that defy such stereotypes find it hard to gain the trust of women because of this stereotype.

References
Rathus, S. A., Nevid, J. S., & Fichner-Rathys, L. (2011). Human Sexuality in a World of Diversity (8th ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database.