Sex and gender

Sex identity vs gender identity

• Sex is a biological term....hormones and chromosomes dictate this.
• Sex is male or female.
• Gender is a psychological term....attitudes and behaviour dictate this.
• Gender is masculine or feminine.
• For most people this matches.
• Sex identity is the same in all cultures.
• Gender identity changes across cultures
• Gender identity disorder describes people who have strong feelings of being born with the wrong gender.

Psychodynamic theory of gender development

• Free association was used by Freud to explore the unconscious mind
• Saying the first word you think of after hearing another word helps unlock the mind
• He felt development was in 5 stages; Oral, Genital, Phallic, Latent and ?
• In the Phallic stage the Oedipus and Electra complex occurs and links to gender development
• This involves a process called identification.

Freud

• He used a case study known as Little Hans.
• His aim was to investigate his phobia.
• The father of Hans wrote to tell Freud about Hans development.
• At 4 Hans developed a phobia of horses.
• He was very frightened of white horses with black mouths and feared they might bite him or fall down.
• Freud linked this to the Oedipus complex.
• He sexually desired his mother, feared his father as a rival and feared castration.
• He had displaced the fear onto horses.
• The black mouth represented his fathers black beard, the biting castration and falling down was the desire to see his father dead.

Electra complex

• The girl is unconsciously attracted to her father, worries her mother will realise and cannot fear castration because that has already occurred.
• She fears losing her mothers love which is in conflict with her feelings for her father.
• To resolve this she identifies with her mother and behaves like her.

Gender development (lone parent)

• Single parents bring up children with a disturbed or poorly developed gender identity.
• This is due to the lack of Oedipus/Electra.
• A boy without a father will not develop masculine traits and Freud said the boy would become homosexual.
• Gender identity will be a problem.
• Gender disturbance is not developing the gender identity associated with ones sex.

Carl

• Rekers (1974) describe Carl who was 8 and had a gender identity problem.
• He had a feminine voice and liked dresses, cosmetics and babies as topics.
• He played with girls by choice and also his sister.
• He would fall ill (or pretend to be) when asked to play with boys.
• Carl lived with his mother.

Rekers and Moray

• Aim: Is there a link between gender disturbance and family background?
• Method: 46 boys with gender disturbance were rated on gender behaviour and gender identity. Their family was also investigated.
• Results: 75% of the most severely disturbed had neither a biological father or substitute living with them.
• Conclusion: Lack of a father figure in childhood can be linked to problems with gender identity.

Evaluation

• Freud ideas are difficult to test.
• Although there has been a rise in single parent families there has not been a corresponding rise in the homosexual population as predicted by Freud.
• Little Hans cannot be generalised and there is no evidence of either the Electra or Oedipus complex.