Gender expression

A gender expression is a person's behavior, mannerisms, interests, and appearance that are associated with gender in a particular cultural context, specifically with the categories of femininity or masculinity. This also includes gender roles. These categories rely on stereotypes about gender.

Defining gender expression

Gender expression typically reflects a person's gender identity (their internal sense of their own gender), but this is not always the case. Gender expression is separate and independent both from sexual orientation and gender assigned at birth. A type of gender expression that is considered atypical for a person's externally perceived gender may be described as gender non-conforming.

In men and boys, typical or masculine gender expression is often described as manly, while atypical or feminine expression is known as effeminate. In girls and young women, atypically masculine expression is called tomboyish. In lesbian and queer women, masculine and feminine expressions are known as butch and femme respectively. A mixture of typical and atypical expression may be described as androgynous. A type of expression that is perceived as neither typically feminine or masculine can be described as gender-neutral or undifferentiated.

The term gender expression is used in the Yogyakarta Principles, which concern the application of international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics.

Victimization

In terms of gender expression, there are various studies have researched and examined the relationship between gender expression and childhood. Simply put, if one’s gender expression is seen as ‘gender non conforming’, it has been related with being bullied, such as childhood harassment, and parental physical abuse among sexual minority men in both the US and Austria. Furthermore, gender nonconformity in adulthood among gay and bisexual men has been associated with parental, maternal, and peer rejection in childhood. Not only males, but in a study that included both male and female youth, LGBs who were gender nonconforming reported more victimization experiences – it is possible that a similar association with adverse childhood experiences holds for sexual minority women who are gender non conforming. Although this issue has not yet been fully examined and researched, a few studies have suggested that gender non conformity among women may be positively associated with their victimization as children. In a survey administered to the U.S. army soldiers, current masculinity among women – seen as macho traits such as arrogance and boastfulness – was significantly associated with both childhood physical and emotional abuse, but childhood sexual abuse was associated with traditionally ‘feminine’ current characteristics.

However, not only sexual minorities are experiencing sexual orientation and gender expression (SOGE) – based victimization, but also heterosexuals as well. SOGE – based victimization is associated with a range of health and academic concerns such as greater depressive and anxiety symptoms, substance use, lower school belonging, and greater truancy. So, SOGE – based victimization highlights the importance of incorporating both individual and contextual factors related to bias and discrimination that contribute to school truancy for sexual minority and heterosexual students; students indirectly related truancy, which gives them to feeling more unsafe at school. Furthermore, over and above student’s own direct experiences of SOGE based victimization, their perceptions of a negative SOGE – based school climate accounted for even higher rates of truancy and associated with bivariate level. Conspicuously, the size of this association did not differ for heterosexual and sexual minority youth. Even though the majority of prior research on SOGE based victimization has been conducted among sexual minority students, more recent studies have shown that heterosexual students also experience this type of victimization, such as bullying or harassment based on students’ actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender expression (SOGE) – and with similar consequences.

Epidemiological data suggest that gay men are at particular risk for such crime, comprising over 53 percent of those targeted in bias – motivated offenses. However, it is notable that of those men victimized by the most extreme forms of crime, anti – gay homicide, it has been estimated that 8 percent of this population were heterosexual men who likely deviated from gender role norms of behavior and were targeted on the basis of perpetrator assumptions about their sexual orientation - statistics clearly establish the deviation from heterosexual norms in both gay and heterosexual men as a risk factor for victimization. The ultimate reason that the statistics have been established such a significant victimization between heterosexual men and homosexual men is because of the theory of ‘Exclusively Masculine Identity’. It posits that men strive to achieve and maintain an ideal self that marked by masculine characteristics, and that this masculinized ideal self is accompanied by a strong avoidance of an undesired self, which marked by feminine characteristics. It is true that researchers have long included anti – femininity as a necessary component of the traditional masculine role, which predicts the social expression of masculinity on behavior that reduce any stimuli perceived as feminine. It follows the possession of a masculinized ideal self, and a feminized undesired self, as a part and parcel of traditional or exclusive masculine identity, may largely explain widespread misogynistic and heterosexist attitudes. There are several empirical studies conducted under laboratory condition – in the United States – and shown that the violations of exclusive masculine identity are introduced through the depictions two men kissing (male – male physical and sexual intimacy), which aggression has been measured in terms of shocks administered to ostensible opponents under the guise of a reaction time component. These studies have consistently yielded evidence for men’s increased aggression toward gay men, especially when men’s increased aggression toward gay men and endorse negative attitudes toward male homosexuality. Furthermore, women’s non conforming gender expression communicates gender through behavioral and other over cues, such as attire, hair style, body posture, mannerisms, increase risk of aggressive victimization – either showing less feminine or more feminine would cause the severity of victimization at different level. These data suggest that gender expression may also play an important role in the perpetration of bias motivated aggression against men, an effect that may be overlooked when examined from an anti gay framework.

See also

• Bem Sex-Role Inventory

Bibliography

• Serano, Julia (2016). Whipping Girl: A transsexual woman on sexism and the scapegoating of femininity (2nd ed.), Berkeley, CA: Seal Press.

External links

• Separating Out Gender Identity from Gender Expression at Everyday Feminism