Gender Identity Research Paper

Superior Essays
Identity develops throughout our lifetime and continually changes as we go through different experiences. A lot of our identity in our youth is shaped by those around us; they define certain identities for us and teach us how to interpret our experiences. Sometimes, people who influence us go the extent of telling us what our identity should be, even if we don’t necessarily agree. As we age, we learn different perspectives from others and go through experiences that begin to shape our own ideas of how we identify and what that identity means to us. One type of experience that can greatly impact more fundamental parts of one’s identity is a sexual encounter. Sexual experiences can greatly impact how one’s gender identity and sexual orientation …show more content…
Max was born with ambiguous genitalia, so his family and doctors decided to start procedures to transition him into a girl; her name was Judy. As a child, Max felt his gender identity was that of a tomboy. As he got older, that became less acceptable. Max never knew why he always had so many procedures done. He was told he was “an ‘unfinished girl’” and that led him to feel extremely disconnected from his body at the time. While his peers were experiencing puberty and relationships in middle school, he felt excluded because of how uncomfortable he was with his body. At this point, Beck defines his gender identity as being born of all of the medical procedures he endured. Needless to say, Max always felt different and not normal. One of Max’s first sexual experiences gave him a glimmer of hope for finding out what was so abnormal about him. After running away, Max found himself in bed with a woman and, in spite of noticing the vast differences between their anatomies, realized he was a lesbian. This identity did not last long because soon after Max came across medical records that revealed to him what his parents and doctors had striven to keep hidden. After dealing with the difficulty of discovering that he had been born with a “deformed penis,” Max had a sexual …show more content…
Califia begins by establishing her identity as a “militant lesbian” who had kept a “spotless record” for eight years (92). She acknowledges that identifying as a lesbian is confusing in her case because she has “sex with faggots” (92). This all began when Califia joined a support group of women who enjoyed S/M, where she met her lover (92). This lover introduced Pat to a community of gay men who enjoyed hand-balling, which is when someone sticks their arm into someone else’s anal cavity, also referred to as fisting (93). Califia tried this once and she was hooked. She was turned on by the sensations that she and her partner experienced in that intimate moment (93). For someone who identifies as lesbian, this can be confusing because claiming that identity usually means that one is primarily sexually attracted to women, so being turned on while hand-balling a man conflicted with that understanding of the lesbian identity. This did cause her to question her sexual orientation, but instead of giving herself a different label, Califia analyzed her experience and her definition of lesbianism. She discovered that, even though she did enjoy engaging in sexual activity with men, she was still primarily attracted to women and was not interested in sex with straight men; she was only interested in the men that

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