Gender Identity, Gender Expression, & Gender Traits

[Sheri 4242]

Your post is very slanted towards you, your major in college notwithstanding. In fact, because of your slant, I think you are being somewhat vitriolic and hope you will consider another academic viewpoint -- from the other side of the podium, so to speak . . . just note before reading further that, "I come in peace, regardless if we agree or disagree."

A transgendered person is one whose gender identity is, to some greater or lesser degree, inconsistent with their sexual anatomy so that one's sense of gender is somewhere between feminine and masculine, male and female, by current standards. An androgynous personality incorporates positive qualities of both.

There has been a lot of discussion in this forum lately about gender and identity. A lot of people seem to think that gender is a one-dimensional spectrum (100% woman to 100% man). Others think that gender is just a meaningless social construct, or that gender "identity" doesn't really exist at all. A select few have offered strongly worded opinions that we are whatever sex and gender we were born too, and implied that any of us that think otherwise are guilty of faulty mental processes (i.e. delusional).

The discussion has been on-going for quite some time -- as long as I have been here, and from researching old threads, for a whole lot longer.

I don't know of anyone here who sees gender and gender identity as being on a strictly 100% female versus 100% male spectrum -- that's Anatomy 101. I also don't know anyone here who sees any of this as one-dimensional. Just about everyone who participates on this forum seems, IMO, to readily understand that gender identity exists, and that it goes well beyond socialization!!!!!!! Acceptance may be muddled for a few, but understanding that "it does exist" is clear. To go a step further, many who who post here know this instinctively, sans formal studies -- and are quite passionate and articulate!!!

Rather than continue to debate these various concepts in threads started for other purposes, I thought it would be better to start a new thread for the purpose of continuing this discussion.

Why? It isn't all that complex or mysterious!!! With all due respect -- and I truly mean no disrespect at all -- you write like you swallowed a survey textbook and highly selected abstracts. It is one thing to swallow a survey text or certain selected readings, it is quite different to analytically use comprehensive knowledge gained from years of comparative study, real-life experinces, etc.

IMO (b/c I do not presume to speak for them) this is why great sisters like Toyah and Karren, et al, get understandably tired of attempts to "over analyze, box and tag it."

In the main, the common modern academic, medical, and psychologic definition of trangendered is one with a cross gender identification that, on one end of the scale, is expressed as a need or desire to crossdress, from an inactive desire, to partially dressing (from a single article of clothing) to fully, with or without the goal of achieving sexual arousal, to those who desire to pass as the other sex, to those with a stated desire to be the other sex (desiring to live or be treated as the other sex). On the TS side of the scale there is usually persistent discomfort with one's sense of their gender and their actual anatomical sex.

Transgender identification and behaviors absolutely fall on a continuum between that which is currently held to be traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine. It is sort of like the gray scale, which is why a single, broad brush appoach is confusing and conter-productive.

What i am curious about, is whether you are reflecting the mainstream view of Gender psychology.

IMO, she is representing her particular interest and slant, which is rooted, in no small part, in feminism. The world of academia cannot, itself, be painted with one brush. (This is my opinion from having been on both sides of the podium for a great number of years.)

I have always had a bee in my bonnet about the way people with some gender dysphoria have been treated by the medical establishment.

So, too, have many of us. That said, as I have noted many times in the past, current medical literature on diagnosis and therapy suggests "accomodation and acceptance" as the current best course. This is slowly becoming the benchmark although it isn't yet universal among mental and general health care professionals

Anyway, I was pretty much paraphrasing from peer-reviewed studies and current psychology text books when I wrote about gender differences (including what I said about sex drive and masturbation). If you have links to studies that prove otherwise, I'd love to see them.

It shows -- and the acid test is asking for another to prove themself with their sources when you have provided none. This isn't to put you down -- in fact, I hope you are open-minded enough to see that when you make such a broad, sweeping assessment as you originally did, and do so as if it is indisputable fact, it makes some look extra hard for the cracks in your statement's very foundation.

I really dont feel this obseffive need to define myself or my gender (Male if ya must know) I am me and happy as I can be with that :D

As many times as we have "happily" been around the block on this subject ( :D ), things change when the objective meets the subjective by additional dynamics, such as, in this case, throwing feminism into the mix.

As it happens, I'm a psych major AND a lesbian feminist - so the "why" and the details of "what" and "how" matter a great deal to me.

That's great -- but don't presume your audience's demographics, or hold yourself out as superior in education, research and study -- there are a number of highly educated people who participate on this forum -- and there are those who, with or without post grad education, have spent decades pragmatically studying every bit of available research, every possible hypothesis, and many research studies.

Testosterone has a known significant effect on sex drive for men and women, and men have significantly more testosterone in their bodies than women. That alone would be enough to produce a significant difference between men and women.

Had yours measured lately? Seriously! Hormonal balances potentially play a significant role in transgenderism -- a medical area that is in its infancy.