Essay on Sexual And Gender Identity

Submitted By eman29
Words: 768
Pages: 4

Running Head: Sexual and Gender Identity

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Sexual and Gender Identity
Mayssa Elassaad
Human Sexuality (01)
Professor Laurie Kosek
July 17, 2015

Sexual and Gender Identity
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Sexual and Gender Identity
What makes a person a boy and a girl
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Is it their anatomy, or is it their personal decision?
What are some factors that can contribute to your sexual and gender identity
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religion, society, or family? Does there have to be a specific gender that you are attracted to
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You may see two females attracted to each other, or two males attracted to each other, but does it really matter
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After all, they are humans right. Being able to make a decision about what gender you identify yourself as
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and as to what gender you're attracted to is important
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Your family, environment and society all play a role in what you may identify yourself as
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Gender Identity is “the extent to which one identifies as being either masculine or feminine , and is often shaped early in life” (“Development of Gender Identity”, 2015)
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On the other hand, sexual identity is “the label that people adopt to signify to others who they are as a sexual being” (Grollman
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2010)
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Identifying your gender tends to happen early on in a person’s life . Environment and family plays a role in identifying your identity in a way that it can change your thoughts
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Being raised in an environment where they have certain views about identifying yourself of something else than what is expected is unusual
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To be raised in a strict environment, can affect your attitude and thoughts to those who identify themselves as a female when they were born male or vise versa
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or to someone that is a female and is attracted to a female
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Being raised in an open­minded environment, can allow someone to be exposed to other people that

Sexual and Gender Identity
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may identify themselves as transgender or bisexual
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Society may also play a role in the way you identify yourself in terms of sexuality and gender
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Media has influenced how people look at themselves and others
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The media has a way of changing your opinion to match with what majority may think
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Due to the way media portrays women, people may lose sight of their own uniqueness . When this happens women may try to appear different by changing their gender or sexuality . People teach what they want children to do. If society as a whole feels girls need to be girly and weak, and boys need to be strong and manly then that is what children are going to do
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Growing up, my views were different then they are now
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My family and environment have impacted me the most
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I grew up in a small village in Lebanon, which is a Middle Eastern country. Everyone knew each other, and gossip traveled fast
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Everyone was born and raised in the village and spoke Arabic as their primary language
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Once one graduated from high school, and within their first or second