Gender Identity
Misty Hale
10/12/14
PSY/265
Joanne Evans

Gender identity is something that everyone knows about and is aware of. There are many factors that help in the determination of gender identity. There are many things that come to mind when thinking about how gender identity is determined, some believe that gender identity is determined by either nature, nurture or a little bit of both. Someone’s gender can be determined by the hormones produced during the gestation period. The combination of hormones determines if the sex of a fetus will be male or female.

A person’s knowledge of being either male or female would be defined as “gender identity”. Gender identity can be delayed by hormonal mistakes at some point in the fetus growth period. Additional problems with gender identification may be as “internal conflict” happens between what they see physically and the way that they feel they should be. Most of the time there is no question when we see our physical bodies we know what gender to identify with, but this is not always the case with everyone. We can become aware at around the ages of 18-36 months of age.
There are some cases were individuals are born with both ovarian and testicular tissues which is known as a hermaphrodite. When a child is born a hermaphrodite, the gender at birth is determined by the combination of X and Y chromosomes. The X, X chromosomes combination produces female organs on the inside and external sexual organs that mimic those of a male. Even though the person in such situation has parts of both sex, they usually consider themselves to be the sex that is assigned at birth. This can cause some issues in the future when the person is older and does not feel that the right decision was made. The person may not even have known about the birth decision and that he or she had both parts at one point in time and still have sexual identity problems when they are getting older. A hermaphrodite can be a female based on the chromosome combination, but have a hard time identifying with the female gender because of the external sexual organs. They may even identify with both and feel comfortable with living the life as both a male at times and then a female at times.

Some individuals are considered to be more masculine and feminine than others. Even though society typically looks down on stereotyping, stereotypes have a major part in an individual’s sense of “gender identity”. When someone wants to describe a male usually, they may use words such as powerful, and brave, protective; and then when describing a woman use words such as affectionate, honest, and insightful. When someone uses word that are considered to be describing a womanly attribute such as saying a man is “sensitive” then this can make a man feel uncomfortable or feel like they should be defensive. The same can go for women when they are described with