1. Gender Roles, Female Sexuality, and Male Sexuality
Chapter 14
Gender Roles, Female Sexuality, and Male Sexuality
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2. Gender Roles and Stereotypes
Gender role - set of norms, or culturally defined expectations, that define how people of one gender ought to behave
Stereotype - a generalization about a group of people that distinguishes them from others
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3. Gender Roles and Ethnicity
Gender-role stereotypes vary among various ethnic groups of the United States
African Americans
Latinos
Asian Americans
American Indians
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4. Gender Schema Theory
Sandra Bern’s theory about a set of ideas that we associate with males and females
Socialization - refers to the ways in which society conveys to the individual its norms or expectations for his or her behavior
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5. Male-Female Psychological Differences
Males and females differ in aggressiveness
Males are generally more aggressive than females
Males and females differ in their style of communicating, both verbally and nonverbally
There are gender differences in self-disclosure
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6. Male-Female Differences in Sexuality
Masturbation - men are more likely to have masturbated than women
Attitudes about casual sex - men are more approving of casual sex
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7. Male-Female Differences in Sexuality
Arousal to erotica - men are more aroused by erotic materials
Orgasm consistency - men are more consistent than women at having orgasms during sex
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8. Why the Differences? Biological factors Cultural factors Anatomy
Hormones
Cultural factors
Double standard
Gender roles
Marital and family roles
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9. Why the Differences? Other factors Women get pregnant and men do not
Ineffective techniques of stimulating the woman
Fewer women masturbate than men
Gender differences in orgasm consistency
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10. Beyond the Young Adults
Person-centered sex - sexual expression in which the emphasis is on the relationship and emotions between the two people
Body-centered sex - sexual in which the emphasis is on the body and physical pleasure
Adolescent male sexuality is body-centered, and the person-centered aspect is not added until later
Adolescent female sexuality is person-centered, and body-centered sex comes later
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11. Transsexualism
Transsexual - is a person who believes he or she is trapped in the body of the other gender; also known as a transgender person
Gender dysphoria - unhappiness with one’s gender; another term for transsexualism
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12. Transsexualism
Sex-change operations - the surgery done on transsexuals to change their anatomy to the other gender
Male-to-female transsexual - a person who is born with a male body but who has a female identity and wishes to become a female biologically in order to match her identity
Female-to-male transsexual - those with female bodies who think they are males
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13. The Sex-Change Operation
Gender reassignment is complex and proceeds in several stages:
Counseling
Hormone therapy
Real life test
Surgery
What causes transsexualism - no definite causes are known
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14. Other Issues
Buccal smear - a test of genetic sex, in which a small scraping of cells is taken from the inside of the mouth, stained, and examined under a microscope
Barr body - a small, black dot appearing in the cells of genetic females; it represents an inactivated X chromosome
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15. Criticisms of Sex-Change Surgery
Meyer found no significant differences in adjustment of transsexuals who received surgery and those who did not
Other studies found Meyer’s scale “peculiar”
Approximately 7% of the cases have tragic outcomes
suicide
requests for re-reversal
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