Framework for Understanding Gender Identity Essay

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Sex vs. Gender VideoSex refers to biology—genitalia, chromosomes, hormones, and so on. Sex is all objectively determined. Gender, however, is subjective, according to the lecture: gender is how you “move through the world,” and how you see yourself as well as how others see you. In the lecture Dr. BP even admits that these concepts are confusing and that even though it is important to understand the distinctions between the two, it is easy to confuse them.I would have to agree with that statement—especially when it comes to “identifying” others. So, for instance, what happens if a person who is objectively a man—i.e., his biological sex is male—moves through the world identifying as a woman. He identifies as a woman and wants to be seen as a woman. Yet, another person, identifies him still as a male. This entire situation seems explosive and like a giant conflict waiting to happen. The person who wants to emphasize gender over sex will say that he has a right to identify as he likes. But what about the right of another person to identify that same individual as he prefers? This seems very stressful to me. And then there is the added conflict of, say, a situation like the current one in the media, where there is a male swimmer that identifies as a woman at a US college and that swimmer is dominating in the female swimming competitions. Other female swimmers feel the male has a biological advantage over them and that it shows in the competitions—even though the male has been undergoing hormone therapy and so on. This is the type of conflict I am envisioning when this separation of sex and gender is really emphasized. I am wondering if this separation is a recent development in our society, or if it has been one that people have generally recognized for a long time in the past.Clearly hormones affect behavior, which means biology does impact how we see ourselves or see others, for men and women alike, as the PPT in Week 3 shows. And if a person who wants to identify as a sex other than that which he was born with then gets hormone therapy to be more biologically like that sex he wants to identify as—I am not seeing what gender really is other than a subjective interpretation of things. So is the subjective elevated over the objective when it comes to appreciating the psychology of gender—or is there something else going on?This is a topic I would like to explore in more detail, especially as it applies to my final paper, which I might focus on sex, gender, and suicide or sex, gender and crime.

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I am interested in the conflict aspect of this discussion, and how it relates to the sociology of sex and gender. It seems like we are using terms that reflect something more of an ideology that not everyone has embraced or really wants to embrace. So how does this tension get resolved—and how does it affect people at the individual level?Theories of Gender Development, Week 4This was an interesting…

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…clearing up some of the confusion I have. If anything, they just make an already confusing topic and make it even more confusing for me.I would like to hear more about some of the negative repercussions of transitioning, however. I know I have read stories about how suicide rate are very high among people who have transitioned from male to female. I recall one story about a man who transitioned to become a woman and then deeply regretted for all the biological problems and psychological problems it caused him. Instead of seeing the transgender topic as this always positive thing, I think it is important to highlight some of these issues. It reminds me of the Dave Chappelle special, where his trans friend Daphne ended up killing herself after she defended Dave from critics who wanted to cancel him over his trans jokes. Dave argued that people are being cruel to each other and it needs to stop—but at the same time, people need to be able to joke because joking is a really social act. But again, there is a ton of conflict here as well—and it all comes down to how people define their frameworks, their ideologies. It really seems to me to be a question not of sex and gender but of ideology that is underlying all of this. That is something I would like to study more in my final paper, too, and maybe incorporate some ideological perspectives on sex and gender and where they come from. For me this would help me to better understand….....

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