SOCI220 American Popular Culture

Introduction

Gender identity is considered to be the personal sense of one’s own gender. Person’s gender identity can be the same has their gender upon birth or can also be different from it.  A person may exhibit the traits and characteristics of their gender role but that does not necessarily mean it is their gender identity. The concept of gender identity has been a topic of debate across multiple cultures and regions. The variability of the gender identity has resulted in the formulation of multiple gender term through which people aim to identify themselves. These gender terms have been coined for the segregation and differentiation between gender identities. With the large number of gender terms, most people assume that they have knowledge about such terms (Diamond, 2002). But there still exists a large gap between the scholarly understanding and the pop culture understanding of such gender terms. Through the interviewing of 6 individuals across different ages, the gap between scholarly and pop culture knowledge of gender terms can be better understood (Wang-Jones, et al., 2017).  

Discussion

Sample group

For the understanding of the disparity between pop culture and scholarly understanding of gender identity and gender terms,  a sample group of 6 individuals were taken to take a modest interview about their knowledge about gender identity and gender terms. The sample group consisted of both men and women with the overall age of the group ranging between 18 years to 65 years.

Interview Questions

1) What is the difference between gender and sex?

2) How many gender terms do you know? Name them.

3)  What gender do you identify yourself as?

4) What do you understand as Transsexual?

5) Do you feel comfortable working with a Transgendered person?

Findings 

The above questions were asked to the sample group and their answers and responses were recorded. The questions mainly focused on the acquisition of information about what the general understanding of gender identity is. The interview also aimed in understanding the knowledge base of the public across different ages about the different terms that people use to identify their gender.

Analysis

From the questions, it was found that 4 out of the six individuals did not know the difference between transgender and transsexual. Similarly, 2 out of the six interviewees did not recognise any other sex apart from male and female. The 5 out of six people stated that they were comfortable with working with a transgendered individual. From the when asked about the different gender terms and what they represent, the people showed a highly limited knowledge about the different type of gender identities with the most commonly known term being transgender and non-binary (Drescher, Cohen-Kettenis & Winter, 2012). The data from the sample group showed the pop culture understanding of gender terms and gender identity is extremely broad and vague. People are in general understanding towards people who have diverse gender identity. This is mostly prevalent for the younger generations. Those who are elderly and aged, tend to have a less tolerant attitude to anyone who do not confirm to their binary forma of gender identity.  

Conclusion

In conclusion, it can be said that the disparity between scholarly and pop culture understanding of gender identity and gender terms is a result of ignorance and prejudice that people bare toward the community.  Many people are comfortable with what they already know and do not make much of an effort to understand the diversification of the different types of gender identities. The younger generation appear to be more comfortable and educated towards the topic of gender identity compared to older individuals (Marianne, 2011).

Reference List

Diamond, M. (2002). Sex and gender are different: Sexual identity and gender identity are different. Clinical child psychology and psychiatry, 7(3), 320-334.

Drescher, J., Cohen-Kettenis, P., & Winter, S. (2012). Minding the body: situating gender identity diagnoses in the ICD-11. International Review of Psychiatry, 24(6), 568-577.

Marianne, B. (2011). New perspectives on gender. In Handbook of labor economics (Vol. 4, pp. 1543-1590). Elsevier.

Wang-Jones, T., Alhassoon, O. M., Hattrup, K., Ferdman, B. M., & Lowman, R. L. (2017). Development of gender identity implicit association tests to assess attitudes toward transmen and transwomen. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, 4(2), 169.

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