Gender Identity Essay: Sex, Gender, Femininity, and Masculinity
Sex is the anatomical differences between males and females along with the biological differences that come along determined during the process of conception and the development process through childhood. The males possess the X and Y chromosomes while the females have two x chromosomes which tend to dictate the fundamental genetic differences.
During the inception period, the first change occurs with the appearance of the genitals for both the boys and girls, something that can be detected with the use of ultrasound (García Vega et al., 2019). Therefore, the genitalia is referred to as the primary sex characteristics, which is later follows by the secondary sex characteristics which are influences by hormonal differences.
Gender on the other hand is a social construct, which tends to vary from one society to another, based on their biological sex. This is closely related to the concept of gender roles that are based on the attitudes and expectations of people. It, therefore, dictates whether the individual thinks of themselves as male or female, something that is well represented by the concepts of masculinity and femininity respectively.
Gender differences are based on cultural expectations and are acquired through socialization (García Vega et al., 2019). The way males and females think and behave is dictated first by their biological traits and the expectations imposed on them by other members of society, based on these traits.
Gender Identity Essay: The Status of Women around the World Today
Women are often disproportionately affected by poverty, which affects about 1.4 billion people, with women representing seventy percent of this population. Therefore the women are more likely to be affected by poverty than men, in addition to other forms of desperation such as diseases and malnutrition.
Maternal mortality affects women with over five hundred thousand women dying annually resulting in disease and illness, the inadequacy of prenatal nutrition, along with the inferiority of obstetrical care. In well-developed countries, the maternal mortality rate is estimated at 14 for every one hundred thousand births, a novel that is significantly higher in less developed countries, at 590 for every one hundred thousand births.
Therefore women in less developed countries forthy two times more likely to die due to complications related to childbirth. Therefore the socioeconomic status of a woman is likely to determine their health and thus their likelihood to die during childbirth. Additionally, the women in less developed countries are more likely to live a poor quality of life, relative to their male counterparts.
They also tend to have lower educational attainment and labour force participation relative to men a situation that tends to worsen during times of poverty. Women also fall prey to sex traffickers something more prevalent in countries like Thailand, Nepal, India, and Cambodia.
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Gender Identity Essay: The Extent of Gender Inequality in Income and the Workplace in the United States
In the United States, gender inequality is evident, something that can be well illustrated by the gender pay gap in income. Out of economic necessity, the proportion of women has increased significantly, something that can be attributed to their high sense of self-worth. It is important to note that although the gender pay gap illustrates gender iniquity, their participation in the labour force, a figure that has increased from 46.8 percent to 74.7 percent, in 1970 and 2010 respectively.
Sexual segregation in the workplace affects about forty-two percent, where women are assigned fewer roles in their organization that often tend to possess less remuneration relative to their male counterparts. In addition to this, women often encounter many forms of difficulties in the workplace.
People tend to be assigned jobs depending on their sex, something that is often denied by the employers with the women often chooses to partake in less demanding roles that often involve less risk-taking, thus leading the poor remuneration relative to their male counterparts within the same organization.
Women are often less likely to be promoted relative to their male counterparts, a phenomenon known as the glass ceiling (Blondeel et al., 2019). Men on the other hand tend to ride a “glass escalator” a phenomenon that is represented by their likelihood to be promoted at a faster rate despite the presence of a similar level of competence at work.
Gender Identity Essay: The Extent of Rape and Sexual Assault
Sexual harassment involves an inappropriate request for sexual favours, physical conduct that facilitates intimidation to leverage sexual favours. Men are often sexually harassed; at work something that can be attributed to structural and cultural reasons. This is something that can be attributed to the depiction of women in the media thus leading to gender socialization and are often depicted as sexual objects used for the sexual pleasure of men.
Men often tend to be sexually assertive, something that is evident in both physical and verbal advances something that is attributed to sexual harassment in the workplace. Most victims of sexual harassment are often women, something that is more structural.
The gendered nature of the educational system and workplace, something that can be attributed to the fact that men leverage their positions of power. This makes it harder for sexual harassment to be eliminated from the workplace because the men continue to leverage their privilege to silence the victim and the victim being too intimidated to report their harasser.
The women fear that they might be fired for reporting their harassers, something that has both emotional and mental consequences. Sexual harassment trauma syndrome is a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, that lead to women feeling powerless.
Gender Identity Essay: Benefits and Costs of Being Male
Due to the patriarchal nature of society, today has led to male privileged representing the advantages of being a man. Men are often more secure and can walk to the bar without the fear of being sexually harassed. Additionally, they can operate in the workplace without the fear of being sexually harassed, and they can navigate the streets, without having to deal with crude remarks involving their sexual behaviour and even appearance. This male privilege has exacerbated the disproportionate nature of the patriarchal society.
On the other hand, there are costs associated with being male, which include the fact that men are more likely to be affected by emotional problems since they cannot express their emotions limiting their ability to resolve personal problems.
This leads to emotional disorders, attention deficit disorder, and even learning disorders. Since men are often tough aggressive, and assertive, they are more likely to put themselves in danger leading to the high rate of victimization of the male members of society. The violent nature of the depiction of masculinity in the media has continued to exacerbate the cost of masculinity something that is evident with the high numbers of incarceration and the involvement in social ills.
Gender Identity Essay: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
Sexual orientation is the individual’s preference partners of the same sex being referred to as homosexuality and heterosexuality involving people of different sex and bisexuality involving the members of both sexes. Sexual orientation is represented with the term LGBT with and heterosexual people being referred to as straights. Transgender individuals, on the other hand, have the gender identity, behaviour and appearance that parts from conventional norms transgender women are born male and later become women.
Gay are homosexual males while lesbians are homosexual women. Members of the LGBT community often face the challenge of disclosing their sexual orientation to society, something that leads to mental health problems, something that can be attributed to the heteronomative nature as most members of the society are exclusively heterosexual.
Thirteen percent of females and 37 percent of males have engaged in the same-sex experience, and 10 percent of men and six percent of women engage in predominantly homosexual experiences. These figures may be overestimated as were individuals tend to be homosexual either by experienced or attraction, something that can be confirmed by the 1.4 percent of women and 2.8 percent of men in the University of Chicago who identified as homosexual.
The number of Americans who self-identify as homosexual is small, with 10 percent of the men having same-sex experience and 25 being attracted to members of the same sex.
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Gender Identity Essay: The History of Sexual Orientation
Homosexuality is a phenomenon that has existed in society since ancient times, for example, he specified it as a relationship between a man and a teenager both in the ancient city of Athens in Greece. The Athenian society had normalized the strong homosexual emotion making it normal.
The affinity for homosexuality in ancient Greek is something that is well depicted in the art for example the homoerotic scenes, and the celebration of love for boys and the evidence of affairs. Homosexuality was used in society to maintain a tight intellectual elite, something that was vital to the Greek culture.
Male homosexuality was normal sexuality in Rome however it was discouraged between a man and a freeborn male youth. However, masters could engage in sexual activity with their male slaves. This was very common due to the high number of slaves in the society, ranging up to 40 percent of the population. Homosexuality was condemned in Europe and considered a sin something that led to being outlawed (Xu et al., 2019).
The penalty for homosexuality was execution with the offenders being stoned to death., being beheaded, or being hanged. This persecution continued in Europe until Nazi Germany when Hitler ordered the persecution of gay men. The homosexual relationship was common in China and Japan with the unconscious acceptance of sexual orientation.
Gender Identity Essay: Possible Reasons For Sexual Orientation Variance
It may be difficult for one to determine the population of members of the LGDT community and even determine why this individual may be having an attraction towards members of the same sex. Homosexuality is therefore not an abstract concept but is rooted in the biology of men, and thus not a personal choice.
The origin of homosexuality, may not be genetic in the sense that two identical twins may end up gay and the other being straight (Breedlove, 2017). Additionally, some research studies have found differences in the structure and size of the hypothalamus, which tend to control the individual’s bodily functions.
Hormonal imbalance when the foetus is in the womb is speculated to increase the levels of androgen, which facilitates the formulation of sexual orientation. Homosexuality may be more influenced by how the individual is socialized rather than their behaviour. This is because human beings are perceived to be born tabula rasa (Breedlove, 2017). According to conventional sociology sexual orientation is something that can be attributed to the immediate social environment, culture, and society.
The Behavioral, Psychological, and Health Effects of Bullying and Another Mistreatment of the LGBT Community
Violence and bullying against adults among adults and adolescents is the basis of inequality based on sexual orientation. Hate crimes against the with 25 percent of homosexual males being subject to bullying and physical violence. Any young person perceived to be gay is often subjected to bullying and violence.
Antigay slurs are often used to bully, taunt and physically assault young gay people with 61 percent of gay students feeling that school is not safe enough for them. Mistreatments in the form of bullying and violence have a mental and educational impact on the individual. This has led to gay students having to skip school and eventually drop out of school.
LGBT teens are more likely to be homeless especially due to the homophobia of their parents, something that is well depicted in their school performance and their overall psychological wellbeing. The mental health of gay people suffers a lot due to their frequent encounters with both physical and verbal harassment (Poole et al., 2018).
This physiological stress has an impact on their overall health due to the compromise of their immune system. Members of the LGBT community would be discharged from the United States military, something that was ended by President Bill Clinton in 1992.
Gender Identity Essay: Three Examples of Heterosexual Privilege
Heterosexual privilege refers to the advantages experienced when by straight people and things they do not have to worry about but are a constant hindrance to their overall wellbeing. One of the examples of heterosexual privilege is the heteronomative nature of society, which assumes that it is only acceptable for one to be exclusively heterosexual. Heterosexual people do not face anxiety related to school and workplace stress (Poole et al., 2018).
They are also allowed to marry anywhere in the world, while most countries in the world have banned gay sex. Therefore, heterosexual people are more likely to have a better social interaction than homosexual people and do not have to constantly consider their sexuality in the everyday life, because it is perceived to be normal.
Gender Identity Essay: References
- Blondeel, K., De Vasconcelos, S., García-Moreno, C., Stephenson, R., Temmerman, M., & Toskin, I. (2018). Violence motivated by perception of sexual orientation and Gender Identity Essay: a systematic review. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 96(1), 29.
- Breedlove, S. M. (2017). Prenatal influences on human sexual orientation: Expectations versus data. Archives of sexual behavior, 46(6), 1583-1592.
- García Vega, E., Rico Fernández, R. A., & Fernández García, P. (2017). Sex, gender roles and sexual attitudes in university students. Psicothema.
- Poole, S. M., Williams, S. L., Banks, C. J., Stallings, J. A., Balgobin, K. R., & Moore, D. P. (2018). Racial color-blindness and privilege awareness in relation to interest in social justice among college students. JCSCORE, 4(2), 38-63.
- Xu, Y., Norton, S., & Rahman, Q. (2019). Early life conditions and adolescent sexual orientation: A prospective birth cohort study. Developmental Psychology, 55(6), 1226.
