Sex, gender, and sexuality have become talked about more over the previous years. The field of psychology gives us a good understanding due to the foundation being behavior. In this paper, the effect of stigmas will be represented as well as how psychology comes into play. Stigmas present in our society include religious and societal stigmas as well as social stigmas. The basis of this paper is to discover the differences between sex and gender and determine the implications of stigmas through a psychological perspective
Biology of Sex and Gender
From a biological perspective, sex is defined as the biological aspect of maleness or femaleness. This includes sex chromosomes, glands, secondary sex characteristics, and primary sex characteristics. Whereas gender refers to the psychological, social, behavioral, and cultural aspects of being a male or female. A University of Michigan empirical/quantitative study concluded that there is variety in how well people’s conceptions of gender/sex categories match the natural attitude toward gender (i.e., seeing gender/sex as unchanging and defined by genitals). This is consistent with previous popular and scholarly narratives of the rise of emergent, non-essentialist gender/sex understandings. The research contributes to a better understanding of the scope and significance of contemporary variability in gender/sex language understandings. The same study also concluded that depending on their individual gender identities and sexual orientations, people created these categories with varying substance and levels of complexity. The field of psychology can help understand these varying differences in gender identities and sexual orientations. More rapid progress in understanding the role of gender in psychological processes: social science theories that connect the individual and social levels of analysis; constructs (such as identity) that connect the social and individual levels.
Stigmas Toward Sex and Gender
A culture’s social norms create stigmas towards sex and gender. A social norm is an informal rule that governs behaviors in societies. Explain how social norms within a culture create stigmas toward sex and gender. For example, they can impact how people dress for a wedding, stand in line when purchasing something, shake hands when meeting someone, say bless you when someone sneezes, give their bus seat to someone elderly or speak quietly at the library, to name a few instances. You can include definitions of what social norms are and what a stigma is. Even though much of the work on gender norms has focused on promoting women’s rights and well-being, work on men and masculinity has likely contributed to the rise in interest in gender norms as a construct, with new scholarship focusing on how dominant masculinity norms can harm both men and women. The social norms and stigmas against sex and gender can be detrimental to one’s health.
Religious and Societal Stigmas
Christianity is one of the most influential religions in the world. It also plays a big role in societal stigmas due to their spiritual beliefs. Religion, spiritual beliefs, or a Christian worldview plays a role in societal stigmas regarding sex, gender, sexuality, and health. Psychological studies have found that in adult homosexual and lesbian populations, there were links between religious conflict and psychological discomfort. This study also found discovered that internalized negative self-messages, as well as higher obstacles in developing and embracing one’s sexual identity, are linked to involvement with religious or spiritual belief systems that cast rejecting or condemning messages about sexual minorities. Beyond this impact of other sorts of pressures that LGB youth confront as well as these religious stigmas, religious conflict and a lack of strength and support from those beliefs have appeared to be key contributors to LGB identity difficulties. This further demonstrates the damaging effects on one’s mental health due to these stigmas.
Social Stigmas and Mental Health
This section should focus on the social stigmas related to gender and sexuality and the how they impact mental health and wellbeing. Transgender stigma hinders opportunities and access to resources in a variety of crucial fields (e.g., work, healthcare), having a long-term impact on transgender people’s physical and mental health. The applied social ecology model used here reveals that transgender stigma has an impact on health at various levels (individual, interpersonal, and structural). Stigma prevention and coping strategies have the potential to reduce stigma and its negative health consequences in transgender people.
To conclude, in modern times, sex, gender, and sexuality have become more widely discussed. Because conduct is the foundation of psychology, we can have good knowledge. The impact of stigmas were depicted in this paper, as well as how psychology plays a significant role. Religious and societal stigmas, as well as social stigmas, are all present in modern culture. It is important to become educated on the differences between gender and sex in order to develop an understanding of others. Overall, with psychology, society is a step closer to comprehending sex, gender, and sexuality.