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.
