Gender Dysphoria And Gender Identity Disorder

Gender identity is a fundamental aspect in everyone. In many cases, knowing an unborn baby’s gender before they are named is very common. Before an individual is born, gender stereotypes and norms are already playing a huge factor into the person’s identity and self-awareness. For many, gender identity and biological sex are generally congruent with one another; however, this is not true for everyone. Gender dysphoria, as known as Gender Identity Disorder (GID), means when someone is distressed because their gender identity is not the same as the one assigned from birth. Typically transgender people are the one’s experiencing for this distress (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Blanchard, 1988). The concept of gender, while everyone does it every day, it very complex and controversial topic. For someone to understand the etiology of gender dysphoria, understanding gender and gender identity is the reason for the mental disorder. Gender is …show more content…
The Gender dichotomy categorizes objects, behaviors, thoughts, social settings, events, emotions, careers, college majors, etc. either masculine or feminine according to that society. Depending on the biological sex of the person determines which of these two categorizes the persona falls into. According to the dichotomy, biological men should be masculine, and biological females should be feminine. Also, the two should be mutually exclusive of each other (West & Zimmerman, 1987; Maplas, 2011). A great example is stereotypical 1950s TV shows with the “All American Home.” The mother does the domestic work, and the father goes to work. The father always has the last say and is the head of the house. While the mother does everything in the background of the family. Everything is divided between the genders, and responsibilities are separate (Kliuchko, 2011). However, like most aspect of a person’s life, gender is not a dichotomy, it is a