Gender Identity

1896 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: How gender influences identity

Gender Identity
Gender identity is an extremely relevant topic today. Many people have their own ideas on what is right and what is wrong for each gender to act, and these people are very vocal and opinionated about their ideas. One recent controversial story about gender identity was when a couple refused to tell anybody whether their child named Storm was a boy or a girl. Their oldest child, Jazz, who was originally born male, “always gravitated to dresses, the colour pink and opted for long hair often fixed into braids” (Poisson, 2013). Jazz now asks to be called “she”, and her experiences with gender identity are what inspired her parents to raise Storm as a gender neutral child. People were so upset over this decision that it sparked a huge controversy about whether or not this was a bad thing for the child (Poisson, 2013). In this paper, I will be discussing the many different theories that cover gender identity and also will be explaining differences and simulates between being male and being female. Gender identity is a large part of development that is a spectrum defined by a combination of culture and biology, and is best created by raising children as gender neutral as possible.
Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis explains cultural differences in gender as a result of the unconscious. This theory comes from his idea that human life is driven by the need to satisfy desires for gratification. These desires, however, are repressed in early life and pushed into the unconscious. In terms of child development, Freud discovered what he called infantile sexuality, where infants have different stages of desires that need to be gratified in order to survive. During these stages, the child has no sense of identity, only dri...

... middle of paper ...

...S. L. (1983). Gender Schema Theory And Its Implications For Child Development: Raising Gender-Aschematic Children In A Gender-Schematic Society. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 8(4), 598-616.
Maccoby, E. E. (2002). Gender And Social Exchange: A Developmental Perspective. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2002(95), 87-106.
Maccoby, E. E. (2000). Perspectives on gender development. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 24(4), 398-406.
Perry, D. G., & Pauletti, R. E. (2011). Gender and Adolescent Development. Journal Of Research On Adolescence, 21(1), 61-74.
Poisson, J. (2013, November 15). Remember Storm? We check in on the baby being raised gender-neutral. thestar.com. Retrieved December 9, 2013, from http://www.thestar.com/life/parent/2013/11/15/remember_storm_we_check_in_on_the_baby_being_raised_genderneutral.html

Show More
Related

  • Gender Identity In Doc Mcstuffins

    2060 Words  | 5 Pages

    The creation of an identity involves the child's understanding of the public disposition of the gender normalities, and the certain gender categories that

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Article 'Learning To Be Gendered'

    708 Words  | 2 Pages

    In today’s society, it can be argued that the choice of being male or female is up to others more than you. A child’s appearance, beliefs and emotions are controlled until they have completely understood what they were “born to be.” In the article Learning to Be Gendered, Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell- Ginet speaks out on how we are influenced to differentiate ourselves through gender. It starts with our parents, creating our appearances, names and behaviors and distinguishing them into a male or female thing. Eventually, we grow to continue this action on our own by watching our peers. From personal experience, a child cannot freely choose the gender that suits them best unless our society approves.

    Read More

  • Compare and Contrast Two Theories of Gender Role Development

    1366 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the stage of gender stability children are able to indicate that a gender remains the same throughout time and therefore, children start to realise that they will be male or female for the rest of their lives. Nevertheless, their understanding of gender i...

    Read More

  • Exploring Identity: Role of Gender, Sex and Sexuality

    868 Words  | 2 Pages

    Identity is simply said to be a person’s own sense of their self, their personal sense of who they are or the image they give out to the rest of the society. Gender, sex and sexuality play a big role in our identity today because it also determines who we really are, not only to ourselves but also to the society. In society today, gender is when a lady acts so feminine or when a man acts manly while sex is either a man or a woman and sexuality is one is attracted to their opposite sex. People mostly judge on how a person looks like and then decide their sex.

    Read More

  • Awareness in Boys and Girls by Alice Munro

    1017 Words  | 3 Pages

    It is not an easy task for a child to understand the obligations that accompany their assigned gender, yet while they encounter difficulties processing these thoughts they are also achieving a greater sense of identity. Different stages of life consist of social rules that encode how one is to behave, however, it is not clearly defined when the transition should occur from young girl to young woman. It is not surprising that learning about gender roles and their associated responsibilities is not an easy part of a young child’s maturation and is often the result of a very emotionally charged collection of experiences.

    Read More

  • A Freudian Reading of The Great Gatsby

    1029 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to Freud's theory, in the beginning of sexual development of both boys and girls, the mother is the first desired object, seen as almighty and capable ...

    Read More

  • Forced Gender Conformity Essay

    1033 Words  | 3 Pages

    Fresh from the womb we enter the world as tiny, blank slates with an eagerness to learn and blossom. Oblivious to the dark influences of culture, pre-adult life is filled with a misconception about freedom of choice. The most primitive and predominant concept that suppresses this idea of free choice involve sex and gender; specifically, the correlation between internal and external sex anatomy with gender identity. Meaning, those with male organs possess masculine identities, which involve personality traits, behavior, etcetera, and the opposite for females. Manipulating individuals to adopt and conform to gender identities, and those respective roles, has a damaging, life-long, effect on their development and reflection of self through prolonged suppression. This essay will attempt to exploit the problems associated with forced gender conformity through an exploration of personal experiences.

    Read More

  • Gender, Sexual, And Gender Identity

    2006 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Gender Neutrality in Children

    1001 Words  | 3 Pages

    Society today suggest that revealing the “gender” or “sex” of a child from the moment of conception forward is a necessity. But, in all actuality to some this is an invasion of their privacy and beliefs. Many believe that raising a child gender specific is not important to their upbringing or to their growth and development. Gender is defined with several different meanings such as the behavioral, cultural or psychological traits typically associated with the one sex. The sex of an individual, male or female, based on reproductive anatomy (the category to which an individual is assigned on the basis of sex) and the personal traits or personality that we attach to being male or female. Sex is defined as the biological distinctions determined by our genitalia.

    Read More

  • Gender Identity Theory Essay

    1387 Words  | 3 Pages

    In this paper I will examine different psychological theories on binary gender identity and diverse gender identity. My intention is not to argue which set of theories is more accurate but more to provide information and let the reader decide for themselves in the light of their own experiences what theory makes the most sense to them. The psychologically charged debate over gender identity and its presence in society has taken the form of intuitions because of social necessity. On one side, diverse gender identity argues that traditional binary gender norms are no longer relevant nor an accurate reflection of the society that we live in today. The other side argues the more traditional concrete male/female gender identifications are paramount

    Read More

  • Gender Identity: A Child's Identity

    1898 Words  | 4 Pages

    As a child grows and conforms to the world around them they go through various stages, one of the most important and detrimental stages in childhood development is gender identity. The development of the meaning of a child’s sex and gender can form the whole future of that child’s identity as a person. This decision whether accidental or genetic can effect that child’s life style views and social interactions for the rest of their lives. Ranging from making friends in school all the way to intimate relationships later on in life, gender identity can become an important aspect to ones future endeavors.

    Read More

  • A Comparison Between Freud and Erikson

    1947 Words  | 4 Pages

    From a Freudian perspective, human development is based on psychosexual theory (Wedding & Corsini, 2014). Psychosexual theory indicates that maturation of the sex drives underlies stages of personality development (Shaffer et al., 2010). It was Freud’s perspective that there are three components of personality (the id, ego, and superego) that become integrated into his five stage theoretical model. The id was the biological or drive component that is innate from birth. The sole purpose of the Id is satiate an individual’s internal drives (Wedding & Corsini, 2014). The ego is the conscious portion of our personality that mediates between our id and superego. Throughout development the ego reflects the child’s emerging ability to...

    Read More

  • The Social Construction Of Gender

    3360 Words  | 7 Pages

    Gender is such a ubiquitous notion that humans assume gender is biological. However, gender is a notion that is made up in order to organize human life. It is created and recreated giving power to the dominant gender, creating an inferior gender and producing gender roles. There are many questionable perspectives such as how two genders are learned, how humans learn their own gender and others genders, how they learn to appropriately perform their gender and how gender roles are produced. In order to understand these perspectives, we must view gender as a social institution. Society bases gender on sex and applies a sex category to people in daily life by recognizing gender markers. Sex is the foundation to which gender is created. We must understand the difference between anatomical sex and gender in order to grasp the development of gender. First, I will be assessing existing perspectives on the social construction of gender. Next, I will analyze three case studies and explain how gender construction is applied in order to provide a clearer understanding of gender construction. Lastly, I will develop my own case study by analyzing the movie Mrs. Doubtfire and apply gender construction.

    Read More

  • Freud vs Piaget

    1027 Words  | 3 Pages

    In examining the Freudian view of human development, the main characteristic of human development is one of a primitive and sexual nature. Freud defines the id as a unconscious part of the mind focused on the primitive self and is the source of the demands of basic needs. Freud explains that the mind of an infant consists only of the id, driving the basic needs for comfort, food, warmth, and love. In later stages of early development, as a child’s mind begins to grow, the ego is formed. The ego is defined as the connection between consciousness and reality that controls one’s thought and behavior. In late pre-school years a child begins to develop what is called a superego. At this stage values are internalized, and the complex connection between the id, ego, and supere...

    Read More

  • My Gender Identity

    891 Words  | 2 Pages

    I define my gender identity as a female because I was born a female, look like a female, and act like a female. While a female usually has a curvy body, long hair, a soft face, a male is tall, muscular, and with short hair. A female shows off traits of being affectionate, nurturing, beautiful, delicate, and dependent, while male traits display strength and independence. Those who define themselves with a female identity must portray those traits and characteristics listed, just like male identities must show the inverse of whats listed above. My gender map was always consistent on the feminine side. As I look back at it now I notice that my gender map is even marked by a bolded pink font, which I believe was a subconscious connection to my

    Read More

More about Gender Identity

Open Document