Initially, when I began this class, I thought that I had been pretty well informed about how my body worked as a woman and quite a bit about how a man’s body works considering I am an adult with 2 children already. I suppose I had thought that this alone was enough for me to be somewhat knowledgeable in regards to human sexuality and, in result, I thought that this class would be just a review for me. As the course progressed, however, I came to find fairly quickly that what I thought I knew a lot about was actually, in reality, very little compared to everything I had learned by the end of the class.
The purpose of my paper is to present the things I already knew prior to this class, what I know now, and the questions that arose …show more content…
I understand that for some it is because it may be uncomfortable or awkward but doesn’t it benefit how much we know about our own bodies? If there wasn’t direct observation, would we know as much as we know in today’s world?
Differentiate gender identity, gender roles, and social influences of gender and stereotypes p 102-120
When I initially thought about what the terms “gender identity” and “gender roles” were prior to reading the definitions in the chapter, they seemed pretty similar to me. I assumed that they both basically meant how you think you should act as a male or female. As I began to learn more about this subject, however, I realized that they are actually very different.
Gender identity is basically our own consciousness of being a man or woman. Beginning even as a child, there are many people who struggle with their sexuality and identifying with either a male or female. This is called gender identity disorder which in short means an individual is born a male or female but doesn’t feel like that gender. (Rosenthal, 2012) This can be a very confusing time, especially for young adolescents because some face the struggles of being bullied by classmates and also because of the pressures from friends or even family