Gender, Gender And Orientation. Common Myths

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

It seemed to me that there was no need to post such texts on professional sites, but, unfortunately, even among psychologists, there are a huge number of myths, factual errors and misconceptions on this complex topic. Time after time, magazines and websites have published articles full of conflicting information about gender, sex and sexual phenomena. In lectures and seminars on the psychology of sexuality, it takes me a lot of time and energy to separate the “warm” from the “soft”, debunk myths and eliminate confusion.

In this article, I do not set myself the goal of fully illuminating all the diversity of gender and sexual problems, as well as numerous scientific theories about their genesis. Let's just figure out in the most general terms which is which.

So, let's begin. Misconception number one: gender is gender.

No, this is not the same thing. Sex (sex) is the biological sex of a person (also, by the way, the thing is ambiguous - there is chromosomal, gonadal, morphological, hormonal - if you are curious, look for information in textbooks). Gender is, as they say, “social gender”. This is a whole range of personal qualities, social roles and personal characteristics attributed to one sex or another. But here, too, everything is not so simple: there are also gender roles and gender identity. Gender identity is the answer to the question of what gender a person considers himself to be, and this is exclusively a matter of personal self-determination. Gender role is a set of functions and masks traditionally associated with belonging to a particular gender. For example, being a caring wife, doing household chores and wearing elegant dresses are attributes of a woman's gender role. A woman may not follow them, while not abandoning her female gender identity - that is, continuing to consider herself a woman. The same is true in the opposite direction: you can have a gender identity that does not correspond to the biological sex, but at the same time not abandon the characteristic attributes of a female or male role. So not every "feminine" guy actually considers himself a woman, not every "kid" is actually a transgender man.

The second common mistake is to confuse gender identity with orientation.

If you do not go into complex reasoning and dictionary definitions (all of them are easily "googled", by the way), you can explain it on the fingers. Gender identity is who a person considers himself to be. Sexual orientation is what his libido is directed at. Watch your hands. You can have a male biological sex (that is, all the physiological characteristics of a male body, including a set of chromosomes and genitals), a female gender identity and at the same time have a sexual desire for women (then a person identifies himself as a homosexual trans woman). By the way, transgender is the general name for all the phenomena of non-coincidence of the biological sex and the gender of a person. You can have a female body, identify yourself as a man, while experiencing sexual attraction to both men and women (bisexual transman). At the same time, a person can fully accept his gender, identify himself in accordance with the gender role prescribed by his gender, and at the same time experience sexual attraction to persons of the same sex. Try to choose other options yourself, keeping in mind the main thing: the combination of biological sex, gender identity and sexual orientation can be anything. These are three independent variables that can be combined with each other in any way you like.

Misconception number three: there are two types of gender identity, male and female.

And again, everything is more complicated. There are also agenders, bigenders - that is, people who choose "no" gender, or both.

Misconception number four. Transgender is a mental illness. Here is a rather subtle point: yes, gender identity disorders are included in the International Classification of Diseases, and just in the section on mental disorders. At least because people whose biological sex and gender identity do not coincide with each other experience suffering, primarily mental. But this is not "crazy", as one might think - when making a diagnosis, a differentiation is made between gender identity disorders and other mental disorders, including psychotic ones. Roughly speaking, it is important for doctors to understand whether a person's gender does not correspond to gender, or whether we are talking about psychosis with delusion. People who are diagnosed with gender identity disorder are guaranteed to have passed a sanity test, and all other causes of their suffering have already been rejected by doctors - so they are certainly not "crazy", in common everyday language. And yes, such people may really need medical help, not in order to "cure them of transgenderness" by returning to gender normality, but in order to help them cope with the subjective suffering caused by their condition (for example, through psychotherapy, sometimes - antidepressants and tranquilizers), including by bringing their biological characteristics to match their gender identity (hormonal therapy, sex reassignment surgery, and so on).

Well, in the end - a whole group of delusions associated with the problems of child and adolescent self-identification. The time of puberty is a time of self-determination, when a person is looking for his identity - and not only in the field of the sexual. And during this period, any throwing, experiments and contradictions are possible. Therefore, if a boy measures women's dresses (a textbook image), this does not mean absolutely nothing. There is no need to run to a psychologist, look for what his parents missed in upbringing, punish him or encourage him - just leave the child alone. This experimentation can end in anything. Well, if a teenager really suffers from the so-called "gender dysphoria" (a severe mental state associated with the inability to accept his biological gender, characterized by depression, anger, depression, self-loathing, and so on) - he needs understanding, acceptance, support, compassion and, perhaps, help in accepting their identity, and not at all a cure for "bad inclinations".