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The baby has not been born yet, but we, having learned his gender, buy clothes, a stroller, furnish the nursery ... For a boy, we choose blue and blue tones, for a girl - pink. This is how “gender education” begins. Then the boy receives cars as a gift, and the girl receives dolls. We want to see the son as courageous, brave and strong, and the daughter as affectionate, soft and compliant. Doctor and psychologist Igor Dobryakov talks about how our gender expectations affect children.

The word "gender" was coined to separate the social meanings of "masculinity" and "femininity" from biological sex differences. Gender is determined by anatomical and physiological features that make it possible to divide all people into men and women and classify oneself as one of the groups. Sometimes, with a chromosomal failure or as a result of deviations in the development of the embryo, a person is born who combines the sexual characteristics of both men and women (hermaphrodite). But this happens extremely rarely.

One psychologist jokingly said that gender is what is between the legs, and gender is what is between the ears. If a person's gender is determined at birth, then gender identity is formed in the process of upbringing and socialization. Being a woman or a man in society means not just having a certain anatomical structure, but also to have appearance, manners, behavior, habits that meet expectations. These expectations set certain patterns of behavior (gender roles) for men and women, depending on gender stereotypes– what is considered “typically masculine” or “typically feminine” in society.

The emergence of gender identity is closely related to biological development and with the development of self-awareness. At two years old, but they do not fully understand what this means, however, under the influence of the example and expectations of adults, they are already beginning to actively form their gender attitudes, they learn to distinguish the sex of others by clothing, hairstyle, and facial features. By the age of seven, the child is aware of the immutability of his biological sex. In adolescence, the formation of gender identity takes place: a stormy puberty, manifested by changes in the body, romantic experiences, erotic desires, stimulates him. This has the strongest effect on further formation gender identity. There is an active assimilation of forms of behavior and the formation of character in accordance with the ideas of parents, the immediate environment, society as a whole about femininity (from Latin femininus - "female") and masculinity (from Latin masculinus - "male").

Gender equality

Over the past 30 years, the idea of ​​gender equality has become widespread in the world, formed the basis of many international documents, and was reflected in national laws. Gender equality implies equal opportunities, rights and obligations for women and men in all spheres of life, including equal access to education and health care, equal opportunities to work, participate in public administration create a family and raise children. Gender inequality creates fertile ground for gender-based violence. Stereotypes preserved from archaic times attribute to women and men a different scenario of sexual behavior: men are allowed more sexual activity and aggressiveness, women are expected to be passively obedient and subservient to a man, which easily turns her into an object of sexual exploitation.

Equal in difference

And a woman, have always existed, but differed in different eras and different peoples. Moreover, in different families living in the same country and belonging to the same class, ideas about the “real” man and woman can vary significantly.

In the modern countries of Western civilization, the ideas of gender equality between men and women have gradually prevailed, and this gradually equalizes their roles in society and the family. Voting rights for women were legislated quite recently (by historical standards): in the USA in 1920, in Greece in 1975, in Portugal and Spain in 1974 and 1976, and one of the Swiss cantons equalized women and men in voting rights only in 1991. Some states, such as Denmark, have a separate ministry dedicated to gender equality.

At the same time, in countries where the influence of religion and traditions is strong, there are more often views that recognize the right of men to dominate, control women, rule over them (for example, in Saudi Arabia, women were promised the right to vote only from 2015).

Male and female qualities are manifested in the pattern of behavior, in appearance, in the preference for certain hobbies and activities. There are also differences in values. It is believed that women value human relationships, love, family more, while men value social success and independence. However, in real life the people around us demonstrate a combination of both feminine and masculine personality traits, the values ​​that are significant to them can vary significantly. In addition, masculine or feminine traits that are clearly manifested in some situations may be invisible in others. Such observations led the Austrian scientist Otto Weininger to the idea that each normal woman and every normal man has features of both his own and the opposite sex, the individuality of a person is determined by the predominance of male over female, or vice versa *. He used the term "androgyny" (Greek ανδρεία - male; Greek γυνής - woman) to refer to the combination of male and female traits. The Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev called Weininger's ideas "brilliant intuitions"**. Shortly after the publication of Weininger's Sex and Character, male and female sex hormones were discovered. In the body of a man, along with male sex hormones, female hormones are produced, and in the female body, along with female hormones, male hormones are also produced. Their combination and concentration affect appearance and sexual behavior of a person, form his hormonal sex.

Therefore, in life we ​​meet with such a variety of manifestations of male and female. In some men and women, respectively, masculine and feminine qualities predominate, in others there is a balance of both. Psychologists believe that androgynous personalities, who combine high performance and masculinity and femininity, have greater flexibility of behavior, and therefore are the most adaptive and psychologically well-being. Therefore, raising children in the rigid framework of traditional gender roles can do them a disservice.

Igor Dobryakov- candidate medical sciences, Associate Professor, Department of Child Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Medical Psychology, Northwestern State medical university them. I. I. Mechnikov. Member of the editorial boards of the journals "Perinatal Psychology", "Questions mental health children and adolescents", "Children's Medicine of the North-West". Author of dozens scientific works, as well as co-author of the books "Development of the Child's Personality from Birth to a Year" (Rama Publishing, 2010), "Child Psychiatry" (Peter, 2005), "Psychology of Health".

Trapped in stereotypes

Most people believe that a woman has such properties as sensitivity, tenderness, caring, sensitivity, tolerance, modesty, compliance, gullibility, etc. Girls are taught to be obedient, accurate, responsive.

Hereby masculine qualities courage, perseverance, reliability, responsibility, etc. are considered. Boys are taught to rely on own forces, get your way, be independent. The penalties for misdemeanors for boys tend to be more severe than for girls.

Many parents encourage their children to behave and play traditionally for their gender, and get very upset when they notice the opposite. Buying cars and pistols for boys, and dolls and strollers for girls, parents, often without realizing it, strive to educate strong men- earners and defenders, and real women - keepers of the hearth. But there is nothing wrong with the fact that a boy cooks dinner on a toy stove and feeds a teddy bear, and a girl assembles a designer and plays chess, there is nothing wrong. Such activities contribute to the multilateral development of the child, form important traits in him (caring in a boy, logical thinking- in a girl), prepare for life in modern society where women and men have long been equally successful in mastering the same professions and in many respects playing the same social roles.

Saying to a boy: “Hit back, you’re a boy” or “Don’t cry, you’re not a girl”, parents reproduce gender and unwittingly, or even consciously, lay the foundation for the future aggressive behavior boy and a sense of superiority over girls. When adults or friends condemn "veal tenderness", they thereby forbid the boy, and then the man, to show attention, care, affection. Phrases like “Don’t get dirty, you’re a girl”, “Don’t fight, only boys fight” form a girl’s sense of superiority over the dirty and fighters, and the call “Be quieter, be more modest, you’re a girl” orients to play secondary roles, yielding palm to men.

Myths about boys and girls

Which widely held beliefs are based on hard facts, and which are not based on solid experimental evidence?

In 1974, Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin dispelled many myths by showing that people of different sexes have more similarities than differences. To find out how close your stereotypes are to the truth, consider which of the following statements are true.

1. Girls are more sociable than boys.

2. Self-esteem in boys is more developed than in girls.

3. Girls better than boys perform simple, routine tasks.

4. Boys have more pronounced mathematical abilities and spatial thinking than girls.

5. Boys have a more analytical mind than girls.

6. Girls have better speech than boys.

7. Boys are more motivated to succeed.

8. Girls are not as aggressive as boys.

9. Girls are easier to persuade than boys.

10. Girls are more sensitive to sound stimuli, while boys are more sensitive to visual stimuli.

The answers emerging from Maccoby and Jacklyn's study are surprising.

1. There is no reason to believe that girls are more sociable than boys. In early childhood, both of them are equally often united in groups for joint play. Neither boys nor girls discover heightened desire play alone. Boys do not prefer playing with inanimate objects over playing with peers. At a certain age, boys spend even more time playing together than girls.

2. Results psychological tests indicate that boys and girls in childhood and adolescence do not differ significantly in the level of self-esteem, however, they indicate different areas of life in which they feel more confident than in others. Girls consider themselves more competent in the field of mutual communication, and boys are proud of their strength.

3 and 4. Boys and girls equally effectively cope with simple, typical tasks. Mathematical abilities in boys appear around the age of 12, when they quickly develop spatial thinking. In particular, they can more easily depict the invisible side of an object. Since the difference in spatial thinking abilities becomes noticeable only in adolescence, the reason for this should be sought either in surrounding the child environment (probably, boys are more likely to be given the opportunity to improve this skill), or in the features of his hormonal status.

5. Analytical abilities in boys and girls are the same. Boys and girls discover the ability to separate the important from the unimportant, to recognize the most important in the flow of information.

6. Speech in girls develops faster than in boys. Before adolescence children of both sexes do not differ in this indicator, however, in the upper grades, girls begin to outstrip boys. They perform better on language comprehension tests, are more fluent in figurative speech, and write more literate and better in terms of style. As in the case of boys' mathematical abilities, girls' increased verbal abilities may be the result of socialization that motivates them to improve their language skills.

7. Girls are less aggressive than boys, and this difference is noticeable already at the age of two, when children begin to take part in group games. Increased aggressiveness of boys is manifested as physical activities, and in demonstrating readiness to join the fight or in the form of verbal threats. Usually aggressiveness is directed at other boys and less often at girls. There is no evidence that parents encourage boys to be more aggressive than girls; rather, they do not encourage manifestations of aggressiveness in either one or the other.

8. Boys and girls are equally amenable to persuasion and imitate the behavior of adults equally often. Both are under the influence of social factors and understand the need to follow generally accepted norms of behavior. The only significant difference is that girls adapt their judgments somewhat more easily to the judgments of others, while boys can accept the values ​​of a given peer group without compromising their own views, even if there is not the slightest similarity between the two.

9. In infancy, boys and girls react the same way to different objects. environment perceived through hearing and vision. Both those and others distinguish speech features of others, different sounds, the shape of objects and the distance between them. This similarity persists in adults of different sexes.

The most objective approach to identifying differences between the sexes is to study the brain. Electroencephalography can be used to evaluate the brain's response to various kinds stimulation. Such studies make it possible to avoid the dependence of the results obtained on the personal opinions or predilections of the experimenter, since the interpretation of the observed behavior in this case is based on objective indicators. It turned out that women have a sharper sense of taste, touch and hearing. In particular, their long-wave hearing is so sharper than that of men that a sound with a power of 85 decibels seems to them twice as loud. Women have higher mobility of hands and fingers and finer coordination of movements, they are more interested in the people around them, and in infancy they listen with great attention to various sounds. With the accumulation of data on the anatomical and physiological features of the male and female brain, the need for new neuropsychological studies that could dispel existing myths or confirm their reality.

* Fragments from the book by W. Masters, W. Johnson, R. Collodny "Fundamentals of Sexology" (Mir, 1998).

How is social gender formed?

The formation of gender identity begins at an early age and is manifested by a subjective sense of belonging to boys or girls. Already at the age of three, boys prefer to play with boys, and girls prefer to play with girls. Joint games are also present, and they are very important for acquiring the skills to communicate with each other. Preschoolers try to comply with the ideas about the “correct” behavior for a boy and a girl that are “transmitted” to them by educators and the children's team. But the main authority in all matters, including gender, for young children are parents. For girls, the image of not only a woman is very important, the main example of which is the mother, but also the image of a man, just as for boys, models of both male and female are important. female behavior. And of course, parents give their children the first example of the relationship between a man and a woman, which largely determines their behavior when communicating with people of the opposite sex, their ideas about relationships in a couple.

Up to 9-10 years of age, children are especially susceptible to external influences. Close communication with peers of the opposite sex at school and in other activities helps the child learn the behavioral gender stereotypes accepted in society. Role-playing games, which began in kindergarten, become more and more difficult over time. Participation in them is very important for children: they have the opportunity to choose the gender of the character in accordance with their own, learn to match their gender role. Depicting men or women, they first of all reflect the stereotypes of gender behavior accepted in the family and at school, show those qualities that are considered feminine or masculine in their environment.

It is interesting how differently parents and teachers react to the departure from stereotypes. A tomboy girl who loves to play "war" with boys is usually not blamed by both adults and peers. But a boy who plays with dolls is teased, called a “girl” or “sissy”. Obviously, there is a difference in the volume of requirements for the “proper” behavior of boys and girls. It is hard to imagine that any activity that is uncharacteristic for a girl (laser battles, car racing, football) will cause as strong condemnation as, for example, a boy’s love of toy dishes, sewing and clothes (this is well shown in the 2000 film directed by Stephen Daldry "Billy Elliot"). Thus, in modern society there are practically no purely male occupations and hobbies, but there are still typically female ones.

In children's communities, feminine boys are ridiculed, they are called "weaklings", "slobbers". Often, ridicule is accompanied by physical violence. In such situations, the timely intervention of teachers is necessary, the moral support of the child from the parents is needed.

In the prepubertal period (approximately 7 to 12 years), children with a variety of personality traits tend to unite in social groups, while avoiding members of the opposite sex. Research by the Belarusian psychologist Yakov Kolominsky*** showed that if it is necessary to give preference to three classmates, boys choose boys, and girls choose girls. However, our experiment convincingly proved that if children are sure that their choice will remain a secret, then many of them choose persons of the opposite sex ****. This indicates the importance of the gender stereotypes learned by the child: he fears that friendship or even communication with a representative of the opposite sex can make others doubt the correct assimilation of his gender role.

During puberty, adolescents, as a rule, try to emphasize their gender qualities, the list of which begins to include communication with the opposite sex. A teenage boy, trying to show his masculinity, not only goes in for sports, shows determination, strength, but also actively demonstrates interest in girls and sex issues. If he avoids this and notices "girlish" qualities in him, then he inevitably becomes a target for ridicule. Girls during this period worry about how attractive they are to the opposite sex. At the same time, under the influence of traditional ones, they notice that their “weakness” and “helplessness” attract boys who want to show their skills and strength, to act as a protector and patron.

During this period, the authority of adults is no longer as high as in childhood. Adolescents begin to focus on the stereotypes of behavior accepted in their environment and actively promoted by mass culture. The ideal girl can be a strong, successful and independent woman. Less and less dominance of men in love, in the family and in the team is perceived as the norm. Heterosexual normativity, that is, the “correctness” and admissibility of attraction only to a representative of the opposite sex, is questioned. “Non-standard” gender self-identification finds more and more understanding. Today's teenagers and young adults are more liberal in their views on sexuality and sexual relationships.

The assimilation of gender roles and the formation of gender identification occurs as a result of a complex interaction of natural inclinations, individual characteristics the child and his environment, micro- and macrosociety. If parents, knowing the laws of this process, do not impose their stereotypes on the child, but help him to reveal his individuality, then in adolescence and older he will have less problems associated with puberty, awareness and acceptance of one's sex and gender.

No double standards

Double standards manifest themselves in the most different areas life. When we are talking about men and women, they primarily concern sexual behavior. Traditionally, a man is recognized as having a right to sexual experience before marriage, and a woman is required to have it before marriage. With the formal requirement of mutual fidelity of both spouses, extramarital affairs of a man are not condemned as strictly as infidelity of a woman. The double standard assigns a man the role of an experienced and leading partner in sexual relations, and for a woman - a passive, driven side.

If we want to raise a child in the spirit of gender equality, it is necessary to set an example for him to treat people equally regardless of their gender. In conversations with a child, do not associate this or that occupation or housework or profession with gender - dad can wash the dishes, and mom can drive a car for groceries; There are female engineers and male chefs. Do not allow double standards in relation to men and women and be intolerant of any violence, no matter who it comes from: a girl bullying a boy deserves the same reprimand as a boy taking a toy from her. Gender equality does not abolish sexual and gender differences and does not identify women and men, girls and boys, but allows each person to find their own way of self-realization, to determine their own life choice regardless of the usual gender stereotypes.

* O. Weinenger "Gender and Character" (Latard, 1997).

** N. Berdyaev "The Meaning of Creativity" (AST, 2007).

*** Ya. Kolominsky "Psychology children's team. The system of personal relationships” (Narodnaya Asveta, 1984).

**** I. Dobryakov "Experience in the Study of Heterosexual Relations in Prepubertal Children" (in the book "Psyche and Gender in Children and Adolescents in Health and Pathology", LPMI, 1986).

Possible options

Do not make a “real man” out of a boy, sociologist and sexologist Igor Kon* advises parents.

All real men are different, the only fake men are those who pretend to be "real". Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov bears as little resemblance to Arnold Schwarzenegger as Carmen does to the heroine's mother. Help the boy choose the option of masculinity that is closer to him and in which he will be more successful, so that he can accept himself and not regret missed, most often only imaginary, opportunities.

Do not bring up militancy in him.

Historical fates modern world are resolved not on the battlefields, but in the field of scientific, technological and cultural achievements. If your boy grows up to be a worthy person and a citizen who knows how to defend his rights and fulfill the duties associated with them, he will also cope with the defense of the Fatherland. If he gets used to seeing enemies around and resolving all disputes from a position of strength, nothing but trouble will shine in his life.

Don't teach a boy to treat a woman from a position of power.

Being a knight is beautiful, but if your boy finds himself in a relationship with a woman who is not the leader, but the follower, this will become a trauma for him. It is more reasonable to see in “a woman in general” an equal partner and potential friend, and to build relationships with specific girls and women individually, depending on their and their own roles and characteristics.

Do not try to shape children in your own image and likeness.

For a parent who does not suffer from delusions of grandeur, a much more important task is to help the child become himself.

Do not try to impose a certain occupation and profession on your child.

By the time he makes his responsible choice, your preferences may be morally and socially obsolete. The only way is with early childhood enrich the interests of the child so that he has the most wide selection options and possibilities.

Do not force children to realize your unfulfilled dreams and illusions.

You do not know what kind of devils guard the path from which you once turned, and whether it exists at all. The only thing in your power is to help the child choose the best development option for him, but the choice belongs to him.

Do not try to pretend to be a strict father or affectionate mother if these traits are not characteristic of you.

First, it is impossible to deceive a child. Secondly, it is not an abstract “sex-role model” that influences it, but the individual properties of the parent, his moral example and the way he treats the child.

Do not believe that disabled children grow up in incomplete families.

This statement is factually false, but acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy. “Incomplete families” are not those in which there is no father or mother, but those where there is a lack of parental love. The mother family has its own additional problems and difficulties, but it is better than a family with an alcoholic father or where the parents live like cat and dog.

Do not try to replace the child's peer society,

avoid confrontation with their environment, even if you don't like it. The only thing you can and should do is to mitigate the inevitable trauma and hardship associated with it. Against "bad comrades" the trusting atmosphere in the family helps best of all.

Do not abuse the prohibitions and, if possible, avoid confrontation with the child.

If strength is on your side, then time is on his side. A short-term gain can easily turn into a long-term loss. And if you break his will, both sides will lose out.

Never use corporal punishment.

The one who beats the child does not demonstrate strength, but weakness. The apparent pedagogical effect is completely offset by long-term alienation and hostility.

Do not rely too much on the experience of the ancestors.

We do not know the real history of everyday life well, normative prescriptions and pedagogical practices have never and nowhere coincided. In addition, living conditions have changed a lot, and some methods of education that were considered useful before (the same spanking) are unacceptable and ineffective today.

The information and materials contained in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of UNESCO. The authors are responsible for the information provided.

The book introduces the reader to modern ideas about sexual selection, its role in the formation modern species animals and humans. Sex and gender in human society are presented as a complex biosocial phenomenon. The differences between male and female body, features of physiology and genetics, mental activity and sexual and parenting strategies. The book shows the specifics of male and female behavior in traditional societies, demonstrated the relationship of reproductive success with social status and economic well-being. The reasons for the stability of a number of gender stereotypes in modern society are discussed. It is told in detail about the universal and culturally specific ideals of beauty and methods of their research.

The book is intended for anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, historians, political scientists, social workers, a wide range of readers interested in the relationship between the sexes.

Book:

2.2. Hormonal disorders and gender

The discrepancy between the genetic and external morphological sex can also occur for other reasons. A typical case of this kind is known as the androgynous insensitivity syndrome. This anomaly is associated with insensitivity to testosterone at the cellular level. As a result, in an embryo with a normal male XY genotype and with developed testes, female external genitalia are formed. Such an individual not only outwardly looks like a woman, but also behaves like a woman. Available full-fledged testicles do not have any effect on the life and activity of the child. Before the onset of the maturation period, both the parents and the child himself do not experience the slightest discomfort. However, during the puberty, the girl does not have her period, the parents begin to sound the alarm and go to the doctor. If a experienced doctor establishes the true cause of this anomaly, then a surgical operation is performed - the testicles are removed, and in the future the girl continues to lead a normal lifestyle characteristic of her sex, without experiencing problems with gender identity. Unfortunately, such a woman is infertile. According to Money and Earhart, 80% of individuals with androgynous insensitivity syndrome are exclusively heterosexual and none have demonstrated lesbian predispositions in adulthood. Thus, despite the male XY genotype, males develop into females. They show sensitivity to the feminizing influence of estrogens secreted by the testes during puberty, whereby such men develop breasts and feminine body shapes.

Even more rare and extremely curious genetic anomaly, in line with our reasoning about the role of nature and nurture, is called a deficiency of 5-alpha reductase. It was this case that we had in mind above when we argued that the external morphological sex of a person in rare cases can spontaneously change to the opposite under the influence of internal hormonal activity.

The anomaly has been described for only a few families of relatives living in the Dominican Republic (18 cases) and Papua New Guinea (several cases). The mutation appears only in males and only if the individual inherits two copies of the recessive gene, which leads to disruption of normal testosterone metabolism. As a result, the fetus does not convert primary testosterone to dihydrotestosterone. Although the testicles develop, they do not descend into the scrotum, but remain inside the body. The external genital organs of such a newborn child are more reminiscent of women. It is not surprising, therefore, that parents and others see him as a girl and bring him up accordingly. True, such girls behave in an inappropriate way, from the point of view of gender stereotypes. They almost always grow up as tomboys, strive for increased physical activity, power play and competition, are rarely interested in playing with dolls and daughter-mothers and prefer to play with boys, despite the persuasion and prohibitions of upset parents.

During puberty, dihydrotestosterone loses its leading significance as a sex hormone, and testosterone takes its place. And its effect on the cells of the body in persons with this syndrome proceeds completely in a normal way. Therefore, in the body of the "girl" begin to undergo violent restructuring: the penis grows, the testicles move down into the formed scrotum, growth occurs hairline on male type, the voice becomes lower, the shoulders expand, the nature of fat deposition changes. It is curious that in the future the young man does not experience any problems not only with sexual, but also with gender identity. He starts a family and can have healthy children.

If we consider gender identity entirely as a product of socialization and upbringing, then it seems completely incomprehensible why in cases this syndrome the individual is able to easily and painlessly change his identity to the opposite. If we turn to another version proposed by biologists, then similar phenomenon turns out to be more understandable. Sex hormones probably influence the formation of gender identity (testosterone has an irreversible effect on the fetal brain in the womb and contributes to the final choice of gender identity during puberty).

Certain morphological disorders in the severity of external sexual characteristics were recorded when a number of medications were taken by pregnant women. Laboratory experiments in rhesus monkeys have shown that high doses in the body of the mother of a substance called testosterone propionate in the female fetus, a pronounced masculinization of the body structure occurs. Female cubs are born with developed penises.

Thus, the considered examples clearly prove that appearance can be deceptive: a person may look like a man or a woman, but from the point of view of D. Mani's classification, he may not be one or the other. Of course, his gender can be quite unambiguous: male or female (more on this in one of the following chapters). In addition, in modern society, such an individual may consider himself a third gender.

The bodies and minds of people surprise and frighten with their diversity. When we are born, the first thing parents worry about is who was born, a boy or a girl, and the nurses look under the diaper. In fact, the question of gender is much more complicated.

The child knows himself

The physiological attributes of sex are formed during fetal development. A person is born with a set of organs, he produces hormones that determine the features of the body.

• By 18 months, he understands that people and children are of different sexes, depending on this, behaving differently, and relates himself to one or another group.
• At the age of three, gender identity is consolidated, the “peak of rigidity” sets in, the child determines for himself a place in the world in terms of gender.
• When a solid system of self-understanding is built, he begins to be more loyal to the issue of social role.

Adult relatives play a role social model in the child's self-determination. The child learns through observation the manner of speech, the usual activities for people, the ways of dressing and grooming themselves, the acceptable manifestations of emotions. American scientist Hilary Halpern argues that children adopt the basic model of behavior from their mother.

In simple words, we can say that gender is the assignment of a person to one of two sexes: a man or a woman.

Human self-identification

In the Western tradition, professionals and scientists distinguish three groups of features that describe identification.

The belonging of a person according to primary or secondary characteristics indicates his biological affiliation. Gender identity (in the literature it is also called mental sex) describes how a person perceives himself from the inside. In order to separate physical experiences and self-perception, scientists have introduced the term gender (from the English "gender"). The last term on the list includes following norms. social roles associated with masculinity or femininity (masculinity and femininity), style, behavior with other people, sexual orientation.

The described components may not correlate with each other. Sometimes a person living in the body of a woman feels like a man, demonstrates masculine behavior (among other things, working in managerial positions), and at the same time feels a craving for people of the same gender behavior.

Psychological and medical research on gender identity

At the end of the XIX century. in the medical literature, the term “shifter” was introduced, which was used to describe a woman who did not follow the rules of behavior, but was fond of scientific research and self-education. Up to the middle of the 20th century. physicians subjected patients with deviations to aggressive therapy.

Freud considered bisexuality to be the original version of the norm, which turns into heterosexuality at the phallic stage of growing up. The human embryo goes through a stage in which it has male and female characteristics and is a hermaphrodite. At 3-5 years old, the child shows an intimate interest in one parent, a boy in his mother, a girl in his father, and ambivalent emotions in the other. Freud and Jung called this phenomenon Oedipus and Electra complex.

Psychoanalyst Robert Stoller summarized the findings Medical Center UCLA on the topic of intersex, i.e. deviations in the physiology of sexual characteristics, and transgender, i.e. mismatch of biological and mental sex, and also introduced the term "gender identity" at the International Congress of Psychoanalysis in Stockholm in 1953.

Behaviorist John Money argued that children are neutral at birth, and that sexual preferences and appropriate roles are social constructs.

Attitude in society to self-identity by gender

A society in which people relate themselves to two traditional roles is called bigender. As is the case with dividing according to some criterion (such as race), people who show a different line of action often become outcasts. It is known that homosexuality was considered a disease until the second half of the 20th century. The LGBT community has won its right to live in Europe and the US in the last decade.

In 2006, a team of experts wrote the Yogyakarta Principles, which outline a range of human rights perspectives in general and apply them to the realm of sexual identity.

Countries and peoples with more than two genders

Along with the bigender system adopted in most European countries, some states and nationalities recognize the presence of people in society " third gender ».

1. Polynesia, Samoa. Faafafine literally translates as "like a woman." These are the men who do the housework, take care of the children, the sick and the elderly. Society refers them to the “third sex”, perceives them on an equal footing with classical childbirth. According to CBS, the number of fa'afafine reached 3,000 in 2013.
2. South Asia. Hijras live in India, Pakistan, include groups of untouchable men who do not want or have lost the ability to perform traditional duties, but wear women's clothing. Religious beliefs castes describe the transformation of the energy of love into spiritual power. At the same time, hijras often work as prostitutes, rarely get married, and such unions are not advertised publicly.
3. Oman. Transsexuals are called "Hanites", often have an androgynous appearance and demonstrate feminine sexual behavior. At the same time, the laws of the state perceive them precisely as males.
4. Indians of North America. American tribes revere relatives - "double souls" who perform sacred rituals by dressing in dresses of the opposite sex. These people can fulfill any role in society, their detachment is not related to their behavior or sexuality.

Gender is a serious question that everyone asks themselves in one way or another. Someone happily accepts the given from nature, someone rushes about inside, suffering from a mismatch of form and content. Universities have been studying the mind and the flesh for more than a century to find out what drives people when choosing an occupation, elements of appearance and a partner, and many discoveries lie ahead of them.

Video about the gender apocalypse

In this video, Michael Robinson will tell you how Europe deliberately blurs the lines between the gender differences of children: