Gender Identity

Gender identity is the private experience of being male or female. Gender role is the public expression of gender, everything a person says or does that indicates a status as male or female. Gender role includes social and legal identification. Usually gender identity and gender role correspond like two sides of the same coin, with a unity of gender identity/role.

Gender is a psychological and cultural concept, in contrast to sex, which is a biological term. Sex refers to the physical appearance of the genitals and reproductive organs (gonadal sex or sex phenotype) or in some cases the chromosomes (genotype). Sexual dimorphism refers to the division of sex into two classes, male or female. However, some individuals are born with physical intersex conditions, such as a hermaphrodite whose genitals are ambiguous at birth, so that the person cannot readily be typified as one sex or the other. Usually these people are assigned to one sex for rearing. In some societies they may be assigned and reared as hermaphrodites.

The word gender was used primarily to refer to classes of nouns in languages until psychologist John Money adopted the term in 1955 to refer to sexual attributes of people. He first introduced the term gender role to discuss whether hermaphrodites socially disclosed themselves as male or female. Some were reared as boys, others as girls. In most cases, their gender role corresponded to their assigned sex of rearing. The term gender identity was popularized by Money's naming in 1966 of the Gender Identity Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, which pioneered in evaluation of transsexuals and sex reassignment.

Since the 1970s, the use of the term gender has captured the public imagination in contexts that go far beyond hermaphroditism and transsexualism. Gender has evolved as the term, particularly in feminist usage, to represent the social and cultural characteristics of the sexes as distinct from the biological differences between males and females. Thus, gender is used to imply what is acquired or learned by the sexes, while sex is used to refer to what is thought to be biological and unchangeable. In this framework, sex represents intractable nature, and gender represents malleable nurture. This is a reversal in connotation for the term gender, which Money had used to describe individuals whose physical sex (or intersex) was hormonally and surgically altered to correspond to their psychological gender status.

Development of Gender Identity

Gender identity develops through a process of differentiation: interactions of biological, social, and cognitive-learning factors that occur over time. Differentiation means that a basically similar structure develops differently, depending upon the influence of other factors. Chromosomally female and male human fetuses are undifferentiated (have a similar physical form) until after the second month of prenatal development. As development progresses, various influences increase the difference between the sexes. Changes in sexual and gender development occur (or do not occur) at specific times or sensitive periods, and thereafter may be immutable. The process begins prenatally with the sex-determining chromosomes, the development of fetal gonads, and the influence of hormones on the fetus including influence on the brain. The basic model is female, and something extra has to be added to differentiate a male.

At birth, almost all infants are socially labeled as either a girl or a boy, based on the appearance of the external genitals. Children may be treated differently, depending upon the labeled sex. The child begins to develop a body image of the self as a girl or a boy. After the child acquires language, by eighteen months to two years, the child can label the self as girl or boy. This is the early expression of gender identity. Learning of some aspects of gender identity occurs at biologically sensitive periods of time; once learned, it is difficult to alter.

All societies partition some aspects of human existence into two distinct roles of male and female. The specific content of female and male gender roles varies among different societies. These characteristics may or may not be closely related to the biological functional differences between females and males: females have a vagina and may bear children; males have a penis and may impregnate. The difficulty that children face in the learning process is determining which characteristics are gender-linked and which are not.

Children develop gender-identity constancy by five to six years of age. Gender constancy is the idea that if a child is a girl, she will always be female and will grow up to be a woman; if a child is a boy, he will always be male and will grow up to be a man. These continuities are not obvious but must be learned. Before puberty, girls and boys are more like each other than either are like adult women and men. Juvenile gender identity is consolidated through social experiences of exploring sexual and gender characteristics, which may include games such as "show me" and "playing doctor" and sexual rehearsal play.

The hormones of puberty induce changes in the sexual characteristics of the body. Usually these changes are consistent with the gender identity and gender role. Sometimes they are not, as when boys develop breasts, or when the physical changes are delayed or do not meet expectations. These physical changes must be incorporated into the gender identity. Standards of feminine or masculine physical attractiveness change from childhood to adulthood, as do other aspects of gender roles. Social pressures intensify for conformity to female or male gender roles. In addition, the sex hormones fuel romantic and sexual interests. Sexual orientation, as heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual, also becomes part of an adult gender identity and role, although it originates much earlier in development.

Gender identity is generally consistent from early childhood through adulthood. Although gender identity as man or woman is stable, some of the content of an individual's gender role may change over a lifetime because of changing social norms or a move to another society.

The conceptualization of the self as male or female is a basic part of human identity in all societies. In some societies, however, another gender identity is possible, culturally labeled as a third sex or third gender (Herdt 1994). The Native American berdache is accepted as an individual with two spirits, both masculine and feminine. These rare individuals (who are usually genitally male, but may be female) are believed to have supernatural powers. Berdache roles, and associated gender identities, have been documented in North and South America, Oceania, Siberia, Asia, and Africa.

The hijra of India are recognized as a special caste, born with male genitals, who live in a neither male nor female gender role (Nanda 1990). They identify themselves as hijra rather than as male or female. Some undergo genital surgery to remove the penis or testicles, but a vagina is not constructed. They engage in sexual relations only with males, but are not labeled as homosexual or as men who have sex with men.

In the Islamic culture of Omani, males who wear clothing that mixes masculine and feminine characteristics and engage in sexual relations with males are called khanith and are considered to be a third gender. They are not allowed to wear the veil or certain ritualistic clothing restricted to women.

A distinctive gender identity may be linked to sexual behavior and cross-gender social presentation in different parts of the world. This gender identity includes individuals who do not fit into the society's traditional masculine or feminine sex roles, especially when it involves same-sex relationships, and there is no cultural identity as homosexual (Murray 1999). The acault of Burma are socially recognized as males who live as females, and they do not have genital surgery. The faa fa'fini (Samoa), the fakaleiti (Tonga), and the mahu (Hawaii and Tahiti) are males with an effeminate gender identity who dress in feminized styles. In Africa there is great diversity in social roles for nonmasculine males and nonfeminine females, which includes different homosexualities, as well as mixed-gender shaman roles (Murray and Roscoe 1998). Research is only beginning to ascertain which of these roles may correspond to alternative gender identities. Historically, the eunuch males in the Dahomey court (lagredis) and Mossi court (sorones) were one type of alternative gender identity.

Implications of Changing Social Sex Roles

In some societies sex-role stereotyping is decreasing. Even in traditional two-parent families, distinctions between appropriate tasks, roles, and occupations for women and men are changing. Styles of personal grooming and dress are becoming less differentiated, particularly among younger people.

There is no precedent for a human society without distinction between males and females: no society is sexless or gender neutral. However, societies vary in the content of different sex roles and in the number of characteristics that are sexually differentiated. The irreducible distinction is having a penis or having a vagina. When social differences between males and females are minimized, as in some tribal societies, children are usually exposed to nudity of both sexes. These children can develop gender identities based on physical differences between the sexes and not the social conventions of styles of grooming, dress, or social tasks and roles.

Social learning of new content of gender roles can be as difficult as learning a new language. Changes in the social content of gender roles may be threatening for individuals who developed their gender identities based on superficial gender characteristics.

In marriage and other social relations, interaction and communication are facilitated by a shared sense of gender roles. An individual's own gender identity presupposes a complementary schema for the gender-related behavior of the spouse and individuals of the other sex. Insofar as people do not share the same schema for gender roles, there can be conflict and misunderstood communication. For example, accurate interpretation of the verbal or nonverbal sexual communication of wife and husband presupposes that they each have similar mental schemas for male and female behavior.

Sex, Gender, and Intersex

Intersex individuals (hermaphrodites) do not neatly fit into either the male or female physiological categorization of sex. Truly ambiguous genitalia are a rare condition, but there is a range of variability in all of the physical characteristics that are considered sexual. Historically, the study of intersex individuals has made unique contributions to the understanding of physiological influences on sex differences and gender identity (Money 1997). Some medical historians (Dreger 1998) and biologically trained feminists (Fausto-Sterling 2000) have critically reevaluated the two-sex social categorization system. These theorists present the idea that sex is a socially constructed categorization system, developed particularly with the collusion of medical practitioners. They see the two-sex system as an expression of gender politics, rather than the simple labeling of facts of nature. They raise questions about the conceptualization of gender identity based upon only two sexes, male or female.

Intersex individuals are still raised as either male or female in most societies, and this seems unlikely to change. However, these individuals are challenging medical thinking that they should be surgically or hormonally assigned to one sexual category or the other, particularly during infancy or childhood before they have consolidated their gender identity (Intersex Society of North America). In most societies, intersex individuals do end up living in one gender role or the other and have either a male or a female gender identity.

In a few societies there is a distinct social sex role for some intersex individuals. Two examples of this are the turnim man in New Guinea and the guevodoces in the Dominican Republic. Newborns with these syndromes (Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia) may look like girls or boys at birth. However, in some cases the midwives recognize them as intersex, and they are raised in an intersex role. These children masculinize at puberty. They are not marriageable as females and often assume a male role after puberty. The hijra caste in India includes intersex individuals who may be placed there for raising from childhood, although the hijras are predominantly composed of non-intersex males.

Variations in Gender Identity

Some children exhibit many of the gender characteristics of the other sex. This has been mostly studied in Western cultures. Some boys may prefer girls for playmates, avoid rough-and-tumble play and team sports with peer boys, and may identify with female characters and prefer feminine roles in play. Such boys may express dissatisfaction with their male sex and express a desire to be the other sex. Despite considerable rejection and teasing from peers, they persist in their incongruous gender role behavior. Some girls excel in sports and athletics and prefer to engage in these activities with boys. They may avoid domestic play with girls and refuse to wear dresses or skirts. Some also express dissatisfaction with their sex and say they want to be male when they grow up. These girls are subject to peer pressure to be more feminine, but are not usually teased as much as the boys with incongruous gender role behavior.

Extreme manifestations of these characteristics can be considered symptoms of gender identity disorders in children. Parents, teachers, and other professionals may be concerned that these children want to change their sex. However, almost none of these children seek sex reassignment when they grow up. Most of these gender incongruous boys turn out to be homosexual, as do some of the girls. The diagnosis of gender identity disorder in children and the associated benefit of treatment have become controversial. The outcome of homosexuality is not a disorder, and treatment does not seem to influence this outcome.

Homosexuality is a sexual orientation that is also a variation in gender identity and role. Lesbians and gay men fall in love and are sexually attracted to people of the same sex instead of the other sex. This aspect of a person's gender identity is usually revealed in sexual fantasies in adolescence or young adulthood. This variation may come as a surprise to some; to others it explains the incongruity of gender identity and role that was present from earlier childhood but not understood as sexual orientation. Individuals go through a process of adjusting to this newly revealed component of their gender identity, which is sometimes confusing and upsetting.

Transsexualism represents a severe incongruity of physiological sex, gender identity, and role. Adolescents and adults with a gender identity disorder (transsexuals) know which sex corresponds to their body and the gender in which they were raised. Instead of being comfortable with this gender identity and role, however, they experience discomfort, called gender dysphoria. They believe that the other gender role is more appropriate and consistent with how they feel about themselves (their gender identity). This leads them to seek out medical procedures to alter their body and social presentation to correspond with their gender identity. Transsexuals may be either male-to-female or female-to-male. The frequencies of both of these types of transsexuals vary among different societies.

Some individuals have developed a transgendered identity, rather than identifying as male or female. These individual gender identities do not currently correspond to any specific social gender role. The International Journal of Transgenderism shows that this phenomena has been occurring in different societies. Some of these individuals may seek to change only some aspects of their sexual characteristics, or have an identity or social presentation that does not correspond clearly to either the male or female social categories.

Variations in gender identity can cause difficulties of acceptance within families of origin or marriage. In these cases, the traditional gender-role expectations of others have been disappointed. In situations where there is some social tolerance, the individual usually strives to live according to her or his gender identity. Difficulty of acceptance, however, can be associated with a higher suicide rate among gender variant individuals, particularly adolescents and young adults.

Individuals and societies may be hostile toward individuals who manifest variations in gender identity and roles. However, changes in social gender roles have little immediate impact upon the gender identities of members of that society. Gender identity, once established, is remarkably stable and resistant to change.

See also:Childhood; Family Roles; Family Stories and Myths; Gay Parents; Gender; Lesbian Parents; Names for Children; Play; Sexuality; Sexuality in Adolescence; Sexuality in Adulthood; Sexuality in Childhood; Sexual Orientation; Symbolic Interactionism; Women's Movements

Bibliography

dreger, a. d. (1998). hermaphrodites and the medical invention of sex. cambridge, ma: harvard university press.

fausto-sterling, a. (2000). sexing the body: gender politics and the construction of sexuality. new york: basic books.

herdt, g., ed. (1994). third sex, third gender: beyondsexual dimorphism in culture and history. new york: zone books.

money, j. (1997). principles of developmental sexology.new york: continuum.

murray, s. o. (1999). homosexualities. chicago: university of chicago press.

murray, s. o., and roscoe, w., eds. (1998). boy-wives and female husbands: studies in african homosexualities. new york: palgrave.

nanda, s. (1990). neither man nor woman: the hijra ofindia. belmont, ca: wadsworth.

other resources

international journal of transgenderism. available from http://www.symposion.com.

intersex society of north america. available from http://www.isna.org.

gregory k. lehne

Gender identity

The sense of identification with either the male or female sex, as manifested in appearance, behavior, and other aspects of a person's life.

Influenced by a combination of biological and sociological factors, gender identity emerges by the age of two or three and is reinforced at puberty . Once established, it is generally fixed for life.

Aside from sex differences , other biological contrasts between males and females are already evident in childhood . Girls mature faster than boys, are physically healthier, and are more advanced in developing oral and written linguistic skills. Boys are generally more advanced at envisioning and manipulating objects in space. They are more aggressive and more physically active, preferring noisy, boisterous forms of play that require larger groups and more space than the play of girls the same age. In spite of conscious attempts to reduce sex role stereotyping in recent decades, boys and girls are still treated differently by adults from the time they are born. The way adults play with infants has been found to differ based on gender—girls are treated more gently and approached more verbally than boys. As children grow older, many parents, teachers, and other authority figures still tend to encourage independence, competition , and exploration more in boys and expressivity, nurturance, and obedience in girls.

A major step in the formation of gender identity occurs at about the age of three when children first become aware of anatomical differences between the sexes, usually through observation of siblings or peers. The awareness of physical difference is followed by awareness of the cultural differences between males and females and identification with the parent of the same sex, whose behavior the child begins to imitate. The most famous 20th-century theory about the acquisition of gender identity at this stage of life is the Oedipus complex formulated by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Like its female counterpart, which Freud termed the Electra complex, the Oedipus complex revolves around a child's wish to possess the parent of the opposite sex, while simultaneously wishing to eliminate the parent of the same sex, who is perceived as a rival.

In the Oedipus complex, the young boy develops incestuous desires toward his mother, while regarding his father as a rival for her affections. Fearing that the father will cut off his penis in retaliation—a phenomenon Freud called castration anxiety—the boy represses his forbidden desires and finally comes to identify with the father, internalizing his values and characteristics, which form the basis for the child's superego . In the female version of this theory, the young girl's discovery of sexual difference results in penis envy, which parallels castration anxiety in boys. The girl blames her mother for depriving her of a penis, and desires her father because he possesses one. As in the Oedipus complex, the girl eventually represses her incestuous desires and identifies with the same-sex parent (in this case, the mother).

The Oedipus complex has been widely criticized, especially by feminist critics who reject its assumption that "anatomy is destiny." One respected feminist theory is that of Nancy Chodorow, for whom the central factor in gender identity acquisition is the mother's role as primary caregiver, which leads to a greater sense of interrelatedness in girls, who identify with the mother and go on to reproduce the same patterns of mothering in their own adult lives, while boys, needing to identify with the parent of the opposite sex, acquire a defining sense of separateness and independence early in life. This "reproduction of mothering," being both biologically and sociologically determined, is at least theoretically open to the possibility of change if patterns of parenting can be altered.

The formation of gender identity has been approached in different terms by Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987), who formulated the concept of gender constancy , the awareness that gender remains fixed throughout a person's lifetime. Kohlberg noted that while children are aware of their own gender and the gender of others by the age of three, they do not really begin assuming appropriate gender-based behavior until the age of about seven, when they first understand that gender is permanent—that they cannot change gender the way they can change their clothes or their behavior. Kohlberg believed that children do not start systematically imitating the behavior of members of their own sex until that point.

While most people follow a predictable pattern in the acquisition of gender identity, some develop a gender identity inconsistent with their biological sex, a condition variously known as gender confusion, gender identity disorder , or transgender , which affects about 1 in 20,000 males and 1 in 50,000 females. Researchers have found that both early socialization and hormonal factors may play a role in the development of gender identity disorder. People with gender identity disorder usually feel from their earliest years that they are trapped in the wrong body and begin to show signs of gender confusion between the ages of two and four. They prefer playmates of the opposite sex at an age when most children prefer to spend time in the company of same-sex peers. They also show a preference for the clothing and typical activities of the opposite sex; transsexual males may show interest in dresses and makeup. Females with gender identity disorder are bored by ordinary female pastimes and prefer the rougher types of activity typically associated with males, such as contact sports.

Both male and female transsexuals believe and repeatedly insist that they actually are members of the opposite sex. They desire to live as members of the opposite sex, sometimes manifesting this desire by cross-dressing, either privately or in public. In some cases, adult transsexuals (both male and female) have their primary and secondary sexual characteristics altered through a sex change operation, consisting of surgery followed by hormone treatments.

Further Reading

Chodorow, Nancy. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: University of Berkeley Press, 1978.

Diamant, Louis, and Richard D. McAnulty, eds. The Psychology of Sexual Orientation, Behavior, and Identity: A Handbook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995.

Golombok, Susan, and Robyn Fivush. Gender Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

GENDER IDENTITY

The term gender identity, meaning a person's relative sense of his or her own masculine or feminine identity, was first used in 1965 by John Money (Money, 1965). The term was introduced into the psychoanalytic literature by Robert Stoller in 1968 (Stoller, 1968).

Money used the term to distinguish the subjective experience of gender from the concept of "gender role" which he used to describe the socially determined attributes of gender.

Stoller (1968) developed the idea further to distinguish between the psychological and biological dimensions of sex. He used gender to distinguish ideas and experiences of masculinity and femininity—both socially determined psychological constructs—from sex, the biologically determined traits of maleness and femaleness. This usage has become the standard in psychoanalytically derived discussions of gender and sexuality to refer to the psychological aspects of sexuality, what Freud (1925) called "psychical consequences of the anatomical distinction between the sexes."

Stoller (1968) further distinguishes the general sense of masculinity and femininity—gender identity —from the earlier awareness of sexual difference, what he calls core gender identity, a relatively fixed sense of maleness or femaleness usually consolidated by the second year of life, prior to the oedipal phase.

Stoller identifies three components in the formation of core gender identity: 1) Biological and hormonal influences; 2) Sex assignment at birth; 3) Environmental and psychological influences with effects similar to imprinting.

In contrast to Freud's belief that the primary identification is masculine, Stoller believes that both the boy and the girl begin with a female core gender identity obtained from the maternal symbiosis. Core gender identity is derived non-conflictually through identification and, in essence, learning. Failure to interrupt the maternal symbiosis pre-oedipally with boys may result in permanent core gender identity disorders like transsexualism. Otherwise, normal development facilitates the boy's shift to a male core gender identity and the subsequent oedipal conflicts associated with obtaining a masculine gender identity.

The concept of gender identity is important historically because it separates masculine and feminine psychology from the innate biological determinism suggested by Freud. Increasing attention to the diversity and multiplicity of the origins and workings of gender have made even the terms gender identity and core gender identity less than adequate to describe the nuances of such a central organizing factor of personality and behavior. It is important to differentiate the term, gender identity, which describes the individual's sense of gender, from Stoller's speculative theory about the origins of core gender identity.

Christopher Gelber

See also: Femininity; Feminism and psychoanalysis; Identity; Imaginary identification/symbolic identification; Masculinity/femininity; Perversion; Sexual differences; Stoller, Robert J.; Transsexualism.

Bibliography

Freud, Sigmund. (1925j). Some psychical consequences of the anatomical distinction between the sexes, SE, 19: 241-258.

Money, John (Ed.). (1965). Sex research: New developments. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Stoller, Robert. (1968). Sex and gender: On the development of masculinity and femininity. New York: Science House.

Further Reading

Benjamin, Jessica. (1998). Shadow of the other. Intersubjectivity and gender in psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge.

Breen. Dana. (Ed.). (1993). The gender conundrum. London, New York: Routledge

Chodorow, Nancy. (1978). The reproduction of mothering. Psychoanalysis and the sociology of gender. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Fast, Irene. (1999). Aspects of core gender identity. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 9, 633-662.

Stoller, Robert. (1985). Presentations of gender. New Haven, London: Yale University Press.

Wagonfeld, S., rep. (1982). Panel: Gender and gender role. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 30, 185-196.