Gender Roles
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Transcript of Gender Roles
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Gender Roles
• In this section, we continue to pick apart ideas about how sexual/affectional orientation relate and interact with gender.
• We’ve been talking about sex, which is whether someone is physically male or female.
• Let’s define gender role as: – a person’s conformity with a society’s rules
about what a male or female is “supposed to be or act like”
– These rules are known as gender norms.
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Gender Roles
• Let’s also define two more terms:
– Gender identity: a person’s fundamental sense of belonging to one sex
And– Sex-typed behavior: observable
behaviors typically studied and associated with gender role and identity (affiliation for same vs. opposite sex peers, interest in rough and tumble play, fantasy roles, toy interests, and dress-up play)
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Gender Roles: Questions
• Do heterosexuals automatically assume gender roles (males take male roles and females take female roles)?
• Do gay men assume female gender roles and lesbians male gender roles?
• Do boys who play with dolls and “tomboy” girls grow up to be gay and lesbian?
• What about bi folks?• And why the hell does cross-gender
behavior upset people so much?• Which reminds me…
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What does the Research Say?
• The article by Bailey & Zucker (1995) reviews many different studies about sex-typed behavior and sexual orientation, and analyzes them.
• It looks at two types of studies: – Prospective studies look at children and
wonder how they’ll “turn out”– Retrospective studies look at adults
and have them recall their childhoods
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Prospective Studies
• Most studied male children who already displayed significant cross-gender behaviors
• 63-80% of them turned out to be gay or bi in adolescence or young adulthood
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Prospective Studies
• While this seems to show a strong correllation, keep in mind that:– The studies did not involve girls– The samples were drawn from kids already
at clinics, and therefore may represent kids who show more extreme cross-gender behavior to begin with
– They’re freakin’ expensive studies (due to having to follow around each child for years asking “are you gay yet?” every few weeks until adolescence--at least!) so there aren’t very many of them.
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Retrospective Studies
• Studies asking women and men, both straight and lesbian/gay, to recall their childhoods have found:– More atypical sex-typed behavior
among gays and lesbians– With great consistency
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Retrospective Studies
• However, there are some problems:– Sampling bias (nonrepresentative samples)– It’s not a “perfect correlation”--some gay
men and lesbians don’t recall any cross-gender behaviors in childhood
– Recall is not perfect!• Memory distortion: Did I really have this
experience in childhood, or might the memory be influenced by my internalizing of stereotypes?
• Selective recall: Am I more likely to remember my cross-gender experiences because I’m gay, or less because I’m straight?
• Childhood amnesia: Am I really able to remember?
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What did the research look like?
• Bailey and Zucker analyzed 48 studies (41 published and 7 unpublished), most between 1960 and 1995 (Kinsey’s 1948-1953)
• Sample sizes ranged from 34 to 8,751 (median=189)
• Culturally, most samples were drawn from Western industrialized countries (2 studies from Brazil, Guatemala, Peru, and the Phillipines)
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So does being a tomboy mean I’m gonna be a lesbian
or what?
• They found:– 6% of girls who are tomboys (or display
other types of cross-gender behavior) will become lesbians and
– 51% of boys who display atypical sex-type behavior will become gay
– Cross-gender behavior is thus more predictive for boys than girls
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And um, why?
• Biological explanation: – Neural structures that involve both sex and orientation
are influenced prenatally by hormones– One neural structure involving sex is influenced
prenatally by hormones, and then affects another structure involving orienation
– Neither of these are validated.
• Psychosocial explanation: – Identification with opposite-sex parent/distant same-sex
parent– Parental socialization--parents more tolerant (not
validated, and doesn’t explain why cross-sex behavior relates to sexual orientation
– Neither of these are validated. There are also other unvalidated ideas too. But I’m not listing them ‘cause I don’t want to. So there.
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And what about…
• “Within-orientation differences”: Lesbians and gay men who didn’t have cross-gender behaviors in childhood?– Biology:
• One brain structure controls sex-type behavior and another controls orientation, or
• one structure for both develops each at different times.
• Again, not validated. So why am I teaching this stuff?
– Biology may only account for children who displayed atypical sex-type behaviors and also became homosexual adults; other explanations may account for children with typical sex-type behaviors who become homosexual adults.
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And bi the way…
• Okay, that’s an awful pun.• Men becoming bi (or at least straight with
gay interest) has some correlation with childhood sex-type behavior, and
• Women becoming bi involves less “childhood gender nonconformity” than women becoming lesbians.
• In studies, men with childhood atypical sex-type behavior may show lower self-esteem, higher rates of depression and anxiety, and higher suicidality. Why d’ya think?