External Influences On Gender Identity

My story isn't quite special really, although I have lived under some unique circumstances. My mother was a single parent raising my little sister and I until she married my Stepdad in 2007. I was five at the time and had no father figure until then. From that time on he became my dad. Our new family moved twice before living in a small city where we stayed for 6 years. This is where I made close friends, achieved academic excellence, went to church regularly, life was great or so I thought. What seemed to be our perfect life was turned upside down as hard times fell upon us. I was now the oldest of five younger siblings, my mom wasn't healthy, and my dad had to struggle to keep things going.

After completing my observations, I noticed that there is a lot to be learned about someone by just examining their personal belongings. By how they treat their personal objects often reflect what their actual life is like. Think about how you treat your personal items. It may be with lots of care or you may use an item for its intended purpose and not care if it breaks during the process. This says a lot about the person. So, by examining someone’s car, which is a highly valuable item to a person, it is as if we get a small glimpse into their life style.

My gender identity has had a large impact on the behaviors and attitudes that I exhibit today. They are continuously changing with each new piece of information and perspective that I take in. From the media to college courses, they are many different angles from which I add or subtract from my gender identity. The strongest influences have come from my childhood with my family. I had a mix of masculine and feminine identities from the start, and they continued to evolve as I have aged. Both of parents affected my gender identity in different ways and helped create the identity I have today.

My initial racial attitudes and beliefs were passed down from my parents. However, becoming educated has been the best way to inform me of my racial attitudes and beliefs. My attitudes and beliefs of other races and ethnicities drastically changed around the age of 19. One cannot always feed off of others and assume that what they believe is always accurate. While I will not generalize all white people as racist or all blacks are violent, I do take much caution when interacting with others. It’s crazy, but I can

My parents have always taught me that everyone is equal doesn't matter the race, gender, or economic class. Unfortunely stereotyping is among us we cannot avoid it, we can only try our best to make a difference between millions in the world. At a early age we start to doing it without noticing just having groups at school, the cool kids, the nerds and the popular kids. When I was about nine years old we had to move to a different city, I was sad because that meant a new school and friends. The neighborhood we moved into most of the population was African American and Asians this was a new experience for me and my family. My perspective of African American was that they were bad, untrustworthy and criminals. Sometimes

Growing up I had two step moms that didn’t stay permanently; to me my father was all I had. My dad was my role model and my hero, and once he went to prison I was left very confused on how this could happen. At this point in my life I felt alone and like there was no one who wanted me. I was left devastated and received counseling for months. Eventually I started to come to terms with my situation.

A significant point in Bems’ (1993) chapter in Lens of Gender on gender identity was the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes to the treatment and development of young boys and girls in society. The first point discussed is how the ‘maternal instinct’ is not so biological as much it is women being confined to the private sphere, in turn having the most interaction with children. This point stood out as I was reading because I have known from a young age I did not want children. Many told me that my opinion would change when I grew older, and when you have your own child being a mother comes naturally. As I reflected I was reminded of the point later made by Bem (1993) that “adults in the child’s community

In addition to socioeconomic status, my gender identity also plays a huge role in who I am. I identify myself as a female. To me, that means I can wear a wide variety of clothing: skirts, dresses, blouses, pants, short shorts, etc. I also wear makeup, and enjoy putting it on. I have always been told, “You don’t need to wear makeup! You look beautiful without it!”. Let me set the record straight, I KNOW. I know that I am beautiful, I am secure enough with myself to know that. I chose to wear makeup sometimes because it’s fun. I like to paint my eyes different colors; I like to put on crazy shades of lipstick.

Gender identity is the personal conception of being a man or a woman and the society creates standards and comes up with gender roles basing them on existing norms and traditions which will in turn influence gender identity. For instance, most societies associate strength and dominance to be masculine roles while caring and assisting or subordination known to be feminine roles. This clearly makes gender identity be bred within the society. One’s identity is important as it influences his or her life through events like life experiences, how one is being taken or treated, how to do one associate or socialize with others, the type of job one will have to do and also opportunities that may come up favoring a certain type of gender identity. One is also likely to face obstacles or discrimination due to his or her identity.

Libby Lorenz APLAC Mrs. Janice 26 February 2017 How Does Gender Influence Identity? Gender has influenced identity since the beginning of time, or from a more religious perspective since Adam and Eve. To better understand how gender influences identity we first need to know what identity means. Identity is what makes you, you. It’s what you project about yourself to society, and each living soul perceives identity in different ways.

Gender Identity and Gender Oppression has many opinions that have varied throughout the years. The awkwardness of seeing gay or lesbian characters in movies or tv shows have been decreasing throughout the years, or has it? Seeing movies display different genders than just male and female has introduced a diverse reaction from many people. Despite the setting of the book being in this dystopian futuristic world, gender identity and gender equality is subliminally present and plays a key role in the book. Gender Identity is restricted to just straight male and females in both schools and a group called Sixers, who wishes to gain power. In addition, gender oppression can be seen through influential characters.

Gender identity is defined typically as one’s concept of oneself as male or female. In our modern society, however, there are many people who are outside of the gender binary. One’s gender identity may not match their assigned birth gender, as shown with transgender people. Another example of a group existing outside of the gender binary are intersex people, who represent seventeen out of every thousand. Despite the diversity in gender identities, most cultures revolve around a exact male and female binary with no exceptions. This socially constructed gender binarism can be potentially dangerous for gender nonconforming people. They could face discrimination, violence, harassment, and marginalization for no other reason except for being themselves.

The construction of a self-identity can be a very complex process that every individual is identity is developed through the lenses of cultural influences and how it is expected to given at birth. Through this given identity we are expected to think, speak, and behave in a certain way that fits the mold of societal norms. This paper aims to explain how gender perform gender roles according these cultural values. I intend to analyze the process in which individuals learned and internalized their respective gender identities, through their cultural background. I will be conducting a set of interviews with the intention to compare my experience as a self-identified male of Mexican descent, to the experience of another male character of Japanese heritage in order to understand how we come to self-identify as masculine in diverged cultures. In this paper, I argue that the construction of gender identities is a direct consequence of societal influential factors such as family values; values that reflect the individual’s culture. This analysis will not only utilize evidence from these identity formations, but also in explaining why and how these self-identities were constructed using both theoretical sources and empirical studies as a framework.

Throughout generations, both genders contain specific expectations and qualifications on how to be an official male or female. Nowadays, there are many advertisements, commercials, and music videos that display gender conformity just to make a profit. Gender conformity would be defined as a set standard for both males and females on how they should appear and behave like. This is a negative thing because many people believe that they have to fit a certain role to be accepted by society. For example, in modern society it is very common for women to be attracted to a man that is taller than them, good looking, and manly. In comparison, for men, we tend to be attracted to a woman with lady-like manners, big breasts, and a firm behind. These advertisements, commercials, and music videos that display gender conformity are what brainwashes the children of younger generations into believing that a male or female should look and act a certain way. This advertisement reflects sex in their ad which is pornographic because it dehumanizes people of both genders; and gender conformity is occurring here because it portrays men as a sex object.

As evident from the generalized patterns found in differences in behaviour and outlook observed between the sexes, it may be tempting, as has been done in the past, to conclude that gender is an unavoidable aspect of human existence as determined purely from one 's genes. Indeed, human physiology is subject to sexual dimorphism; statistically significant differences in brain size and rate of maturation of specific substructures in the brain exist between males and females (Giedd, Castellanos, Rajapakese, Vaituzis, & Rapoport, 1997), yet these physical differences fail to explain how individuals form their concept of their own gender, and why they tend to conform to their perceived gender roles as defined by the society in which they live, when these roles are ever-changing. Thus, it is important to differentiate between the physical and nonphysical traits, and how the labels of femininity and masculinity should not confuse the two aspects. As defined by Unger (1979), “sex” would be used to refer to the biological differences in males and females, while “gender” describes socioculturally determined, nonphysiological traits which are arbitrarily designated as being appropriate for either females or males. With more recent awareness and interest in matters of gender nonconformity and individual gender identity, new research now explains how these concepts of gender are shaped by social influences (Perry