Introduction 7whether Gender Identity Disorder should
be pathologized—especially in children. See
Sidebar 1.1 for a discussion of this issue.
Do not confusegender identitywith
sexual orientation, which refers to whether
people prefer to have other-sex or same-sex
persons as partners for love, affection, and
sex.Heterosexualsprefer other-sex part-
ners;homosexualsprefer same-sex partners;
andbisexualsare accepting of other-sex and
same-sex partners.
Sex typing(which really should be re-
ferred to as gender typing) is the process by
which sex-appropriate preferences, behav-
iors, skills, and self-concept are acquired.
How does a girl become feminine? A boy
masculine? We review the different theories
of sex typing in Chapter 5. People who ad-
here to the gender role that society assigned
them are sex-typed. A male who thinks, feels,
and behaves in masculine ways and a female
who thinks, feels, and behaves in feminine
ways are eachsex-typed. A male who acts
feminine and a female who acts masculine
are each said to becross-sex-typed. Some-
one who incorporates both masculine and
feminine qualities is not sex-typed and is
often referred to asandrogynous. Andro-
gyny is discussed in more detail in Chapters
2 and 5.
Thus far, we have been discussing at-
tributes that define a person’s sense of self.
Gender also comes into play when we think
about other people. Our own personal view
about how women and men should behave is
called agender-role attitude. You might be-
lieve women should be caring, be nurturant,
and have primary responsibility for raising
children, whereas men should be indepen-
dent, be assertive, and have primary respon-
sibility for earning money to take care of the
family—regardless of whether you possess
these characteristics. If you hold these beliefs,when referring to the biological categories of
male and female, and to use the termsgender
andgender rolewhen referring to the psycho-
logical attributes and expectations we have
for those categories.
Now we can ask whether people accept
the psychological category that accompa-
nies their biological sex.Gender identityor
gender-role identityis our perception of the
self as psychologically female or male. You
have probably heard of people who are bio-
logically male but feel as if they are female and
wish they were female, or vice versa.Trans-
gendered individualsare people who live with
a gender identity that does not correspond to
their biological sex. That is, their biological sex
is incongruent with their psychological sex. A
transgendered person may be biologically fe-
male but feel psychologically like a male and
choose to live life as a male. This transgen-
dered individual may dress and behave like
a man, that is, take on the male gender role.
Transsexualsalso have a gender identity that
does not correspond to their biological sex
but they have hormonal or surgical treatment
to change their sex to correspond with their
gender identity. There are about two to three
times as many male to female transsexuals as
female to male transsexuals (Lawrence, 2008).
Intersexpersons are those who are born with
ambiguous genitals; these persons typically
have surgery to alter their genitals so that they
can be consistent biologically.
There is a classification of psychopa-
thology in theDiagnostic and Statistical Man-
ual of Mental Disorders(DSM-IV-TR) called
Gender Identity Disorder, which refers to
people who are uncomfortable with the bio-
logical sex to which they have been assigned.
As noted earlier, one treatment option is
to have surgery to change their biological
sex to fit their psychological gender. More
recently, researchers have called into questionM01_HELG0185_04_SE_C01.indd 7 6/21/11 12:17 PM