The term "gender role" appeared in
print first in 1955. The term "gender identity" was used in a press
release, November 21, 1966, to announce the new clinic for transsexuals at The
Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was disseminated in the media worldwide, and soon
entered the vernacular.
The definitions of gender and gender identity
vary on a doctrinal basis. In popularized and scientifically debased usage,
sex is what you are biologically; gender is what you become socially; gender
identity is your own sense or conviction of maleness or femaleness; and gender
role is the cultural stereotype of what is masculine and feminine.
Causality with respect to gender identity
disorder is subdivisible into genetic, prenatal hormonal, postnatal social,
and postpubertal hormonal determinants, but there is, as yet, no comprehensive
and detailed theory of causality.
Gender coding in the brain is bipolar. In
gender identity disorder, there is discordancy between the natal sex of one's
external genitalia and the brain coding of one's gender as masculine or
feminine.
Citation:
J Sex Marital Ther 1994 Fall;20(3):163-77
