Gender Roles

• In this section, we continue to pick apart ideas about how sexual/affectional orientation relate and interact with gender.

• We’ve been talking about sex, which is whether someone is physically male or female.

• Let’s define gender role as: – a person’s conformity with a society’s rules

about what a male or female is “supposed to be or act like”

– These rules are known as gender norms.

Gender Roles

• Let’s also define two more terms:

– Gender identity: a person’s fundamental sense of belonging to one sex

And– Sex-typed behavior: observable

behaviors typically studied and associated with gender role and identity (affiliation for same vs. opposite sex peers, interest in rough and tumble play, fantasy roles, toy interests, and dress-up play)

Gender Roles: Questions

• Do heterosexuals automatically assume gender roles (males take male roles and females take female roles)?

• Do gay men assume female gender roles and lesbians male gender roles?

• Do boys who play with dolls and “tomboy” girls grow up to be gay and lesbian?

• What about bi folks?• And why the hell does cross-gender

behavior upset people so much?• Which reminds me…

What does the Research Say?

• The article by Bailey & Zucker (1995) reviews many different studies about sex-typed behavior and sexual orientation, and analyzes them.

• It looks at two types of studies: – Prospective studies look at children and

wonder how they’ll “turn out”– Retrospective studies look at adults

and have them recall their childhoods

Prospective Studies

• Most studied male children who already displayed significant cross-gender behaviors

• 63-80% of them turned out to be gay or bi in adolescence or young adulthood

Prospective Studies

• While this seems to show a strong correllation, keep in mind that:– The studies did not involve girls– The samples were drawn from kids already

at clinics, and therefore may represent kids who show more extreme cross-gender behavior to begin with

– They’re freakin’ expensive studies (due to having to follow around each child for years asking “are you gay yet?” every few weeks until adolescence--at least!) so there aren’t very many of them.

Retrospective Studies

• Studies asking women and men, both straight and lesbian/gay, to recall their childhoods have found:– More atypical sex-typed behavior

among gays and lesbians– With great consistency

Retrospective Studies

• However, there are some problems:– Sampling bias (nonrepresentative samples)– It’s not a “perfect correlation”--some gay

men and lesbians don’t recall any cross-gender behaviors in childhood

– Recall is not perfect!• Memory distortion: Did I really have this

experience in childhood, or might the memory be influenced by my internalizing of stereotypes?

• Selective recall: Am I more likely to remember my cross-gender experiences because I’m gay, or less because I’m straight?

• Childhood amnesia: Am I really able to remember?

What did the research look like?

• Bailey and Zucker analyzed 48 studies (41 published and 7 unpublished), most between 1960 and 1995 (Kinsey’s 1948-1953)

• Sample sizes ranged from 34 to 8,751 (median=189)

• Culturally, most samples were drawn from Western industrialized countries (2 studies from Brazil, Guatemala, Peru, and the Phillipines)

So does being a tomboy mean I’m gonna be a lesbian

or what?

• They found:– 6% of girls who are tomboys (or display

other types of cross-gender behavior) will become lesbians and

– 51% of boys who display atypical sex-type behavior will become gay

– Cross-gender behavior is thus more predictive for boys than girls

And um, why?

• Biological explanation: – Neural structures that involve both sex and orientation

are influenced prenatally by hormones– One neural structure involving sex is influenced

prenatally by hormones, and then affects another structure involving orienation

– Neither of these are validated.

• Psychosocial explanation: – Identification with opposite-sex parent/distant same-sex

parent– Parental socialization--parents more tolerant (not

validated, and doesn’t explain why cross-sex behavior relates to sexual orientation

– Neither of these are validated. There are also other unvalidated ideas too. But I’m not listing them ‘cause I don’t want to. So there.

And what about…

• “Within-orientation differences”: Lesbians and gay men who didn’t have cross-gender behaviors in childhood?– Biology:

• One brain structure controls sex-type behavior and another controls orientation, or

• one structure for both develops each at different times.

• Again, not validated. So why am I teaching this stuff?

– Biology may only account for children who displayed atypical sex-type behaviors and also became homosexual adults; other explanations may account for children with typical sex-type behaviors who become homosexual adults.

And bi the way…

• Okay, that’s an awful pun.• Men becoming bi (or at least straight with

gay interest) has some correlation with childhood sex-type behavior, and

• Women becoming bi involves less “childhood gender nonconformity” than women becoming lesbians.

• In studies, men with childhood atypical sex-type behavior may show lower self-esteem, higher rates of depression and anxiety, and higher suicidality. Why d’ya think?