Gender and Sexuality 1

Gender and Sexuality

Social & Personality Development of Children

Psychology 3230

Zaryab Maqsood

Final Research Paper

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The environments we grow up in makes a big difference in our understanding of gender

and sexuality. From a very young age we learn about the basics of gender and sexuality. In

history, lives have really been impacted based on their sexuality. Children usually at a young age

process their sexuality so it is very important from them to process this when they are young.

Children tend to identify what they are and are usually told what gender get are and then the

process of understanding begins. Time also plays a big factor on gender and sexuality. Gender is

used to categorize people in many things in our daily life. Many people are dealing with family

problems because of the religions they follow. Most religions do not accept you for being gay or

lesbian according to. “Gender identification and attitudes toward gay people: Gender and

sexuality differences and similarities” By Olga Gulevich. There were experiments done to see

how children process gender and sexuality. There have been differences in gender and race

according to “Is Gender More Important and Meaningful Than Race? An Analysis of Racial and

Gender Identity Among Black, White, and Mixed-Race Children” by Leonarda Rogers and

Andrew Meltzoff. There were studies done to see if people were victimized and suicidal because

of their sexuality in “Psychosocial Concerns of Sexual Minority Youth: Complexity and Caution

in Group Differences” by Brain Koenig. Many people have been victimized and discriminated

against because of what gender they classify themselves as.

Children are growing up in a more diverse society now which is making it normal for

children to not see a difference in race due to the color of their skin. A lot of the time children at

the age of three to five learn their basics of what gender is. A child was asked how important is

being black or white to you? He replied saying it’s not that important because he didn’t face any

difficulties due to the color of his skin because he is growing up in a society where the president

is black. This wasn’t the case fifty years ago because people have been discriminated against

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because of the color of their skin. Race and gender have always been categorized. According to

“Measures of identification are often about classification and category knowledge.”

(Rogers.2016) We as humans love to categorize almost everything to process something better.

There are different bathrooms, clothes, and even different toys. A boy is usually playing with a

truck rather than a girl who is given a baby doll. Studies show that at a young age we are thought

the role of sexuality and gender.

The thing that I disliked about this article is that they did experiments and studies on young

children. The reason for that is that the children are young. I don’t think it is a good idea to ask

them questions like what your gender is and how does it feel like to be a boy or a girl. I think that

this can confuse them, especially where they are supposed to be understanding multiple things.

Also, I think it’s not right to categorize everything we do as we spoke in class about categorizing

and gender roles. In my opinion, this does help us understand who what is, but it also puts

pressure on people to choose a certain gender. When you aren’t a certain gender, it can force you

to choose something that you aren’t comfortable with. In the day and age, I think everyone has

the right to learn and choose what they are for themselves rather than being told you are a certain

gender. There are many social myths about girls not being more social than boys. As well as girls

lack achievement motivation. I think this is false because That doesn’t have anything to do with

gender at all.

People that we call as gender neutral or even label some as gay get discriminated when they

shouldn’t be discriminated. Throughout history, people have been discriminated against if we

can’t label or categorize them according to our own understanding. The Youth have been having

problems expressing their gender and sexuality. So many people get bullied for being lesbian or

gay. When they should be accepted for their sexuality because at the end of the day, we are all

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human. Many people have been suicidal because they aren’t accepted by Society or even because

they are bullied because they are a certain gender. There was a study done to see how many

times these students got victimized in the past thirty days. Also, if they have had suicidal

thoughts and many of them said yes. They did have suicidal thoughts and did get victimized

because of their sexuality. We need to do more research on psychosocial development is

sexuality. Brian Koenig states that we need to do more research on sexuality. Finally, research is

needed to identify factors that promote the healthy psychosocial development of sexual minority

youth” (Koenig,2009).

I think that people need to stop discriminating against people based on their sexuality,

especially when it comes to the youth. Children should not be pressured to be a certain sexuality

or gender. Rather they should be free to choose and do whatever they please. When you are

young, you are still in your learning stages of understanding life. If you are made fun of at a

young age because of your sexuality it can damage children mentally. Which can lead to many

bad things in the future such a suicide.

People that have a hard time categorizing their gender and sexuality have problems

following their religions. In “Gender identification and attitudes toward gay people: Gender and

sexuality differences and similarities” (Koenig, 2020) the main idea focuses on ideologies of

Males and Females and how these beliefs affect their perception of sexual minorities. To start

off, Traditional Masculinity ideology (TMI) reflects the typical stereotypes of the male gender,

for example a man should be strong, self-reliant, dominant, etc. Traditional Femininity ideology

(TFI) reflects the roles of females in society, For example: dependency, caretaking, emotionality,

etc. It was stated that the more a person identifies with a gender in-group, i.e., Male or female,

the more likely said person is to hold negative attitudes towards sexual minorities. One

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hypothesis of the research was that stronger gender identification among men would be

associated with more negative attitudes toward lesbians and gay men than among women.

Another hypothesis was that straight individuals were found to endorse traditional gender

ideologies more than sexual minority individuals. Data for this research was collected using a

questionnaire that was created by the 1KA platform, which is used to create surveys, and was

distributed through social media networks such as Facebook. 851 participants were sampled

from this survey, aged 16 and above who identify as straight or bisexual. Basic demographic

information was obtained from the questionnaire, including age, gender, and sexual orientation.

Along with this the survey measured feelings towards sexual minorities by presenting statements

of support for gay rights and measuring the responses using a 7-point scale ranging from

“strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. The results of the data support the hypotheses which

were, one, Men holds greater negative attitudes towards sexual minorities than women, and two.

Straight individuals hold more negative attitudes than sexual minorities.

The research conducted, while maintaining a large sample size, did not account for

participant error. It’s possible that participants could have just randomized their selections and

rushed through the survey; there was no way to account for that type of error. Furthermore, the

survey does not account for race, culture, or religion, which may hold certain beliefs towards

sexual minorities, for example religion being very opposed to Gays and Lesbians. These are

factors outside of traditional views of gender that affect the way people view sexual minorities.

Overall, I found this research to be very informative in my understanding of societal views

towards people of different sexual orientations. Before reading this paper, I had no idea that

males were more negative and discriminatory towards sexual minorities than females.

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People who classify as gay or lesbian have a hard time facing society and are often

discriminated against. Since we love to categorize everything to understand things better. We

sometimes forget how people can feel due to this. People have been having suicidal thoughts

because they are not accepted by society for being different. Most religions do not accept you for

being this way. That’s why it can be difficult for young children going through multiple things at

once. Race is also another thing which people have been discriminated for. Things have been

better in that sense that now kids are now growing up in more diversely societies, so they don’t

get discriminated against for being a certain skin color. Whether it is white or black. Most of the

kids nowadays don’t know that you weren’t allowed to enter a certain restaurant because you had

mix colored skin. According to studies men hold attitudes towards sexual minorities than

women. I think we need to do more research and find a better understanding on how to approach

children. So, they have all the knowledge they need to know so they don’t get pressured into any

situation. Finally, no one should be judge or discriminated because of their gender or sexuality.

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Citation

Gulevich, O., Krivoshchekov, V., & Sorokina, A. (2021). Gender identification and attitudes

toward gay people: Gender and sexuality differences and similarities. Current

Psychology. doi:10.1007/s12144-021-02050-6

Poteat, V. P., Aragon, S. R., Espelage, D. L., & Koenig, B. W. (2009). Psychosocial concerns of

sexual minority youth: Complexity and caution in group differences. Journal of

Consulting and Clinical Psychology,77(1), 196-201. doi:10.1037/a0014158

Rogers, L. O., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2017). Is gender more important and meaningful than race? An

analysis of racial and gender identity among Black, White, and mixed-race

children. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology,23(3), 323-334.

doi:10.1037/cdp0000125