SexualGender Identity Disorders

1
Sexual/Gender Identity Disorders

• Sociocultural factors influence the distinction
  between normal and abnormal.
• Sexual behavior may be considered abnormal if it
  is self-defeating, harmful to others, or causes
  personal distress.

2
Gender identity disorders

• Definition
• Conflict between anatomic gender and gender
  identity.
• Characteristics
• more prevalent in boys.
• Used to be called transsexualism but DSM-IV has
  one category for all ages.
• People with gender identity disorder who are
  sexually attracted to members of their own
  anatomic gender are unlikely to consider
  themselves to be gay or lesbians.
• They believe that natures gender assignment was
  a mistake trapped in the body of the wrong
  gender.

3
Gender reassignment

• A person must be competent to make a decision,
  take hormone treatments the rest of their life,
  and before surgery live for a year as a member of
  the other gender.

4
Theoretical Perspectives

• Psychodynamic
• parallels homosexuality in terms of the emphasis
  on the extremely close mother son relationships.
• Learning
• Absence of a father
• All in all, researchers suspect that gender
  identity disorders may develop a s the result of
  an interaction in utero between the developing
  brain and the release of sex hormones.

5
Paraphilias

• Sexual arousal to stimuli that are unusual or
  bizarre ie., nonhuman objects, humiliation, or
  children/nonconsenting persons.
• Must last at least six months.
• Some can function sexually without the
  paraphilias others must have the paraphilia.

6
Types of paraphilias

• Exhibitionism
• expose the genitals in order to surprise, shock
  or sexually arouse victim.
• It is indirect hostility towards women.
• Fetishism
• Sexual arousal involving inanimate objects.
• Sex often involves masturbation