User:Sgraney/Gender expression

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Adding To Gender Expression Definition

Independent of ones gender identity, biological sex, and sexual orientation, everyone culturally expresses gender. Meaning, gender expression is an integral aspect of how any individual portrays themself. Gender expression is, based on cultural social constructs, "how you demonstrate your gender through the ways you act, dress, behave, and interact". Gender expression does not always fall in line with a persons gender identity. While someone may identify with one gender, they may outwardly express themselves as someone, culturally, of a different gender. Gender expression is distinct from gender identity in this way. For example, while someone may identify as a woman, they may dress in a way that is perceived as masculine by the culture they live in.

In western culture, masculine may be defined as wearing loose fitting clothing and having short hair. Although this person's gender expression would be perceived as manly or masculine, their gender identity may differ. Historically, gender expression is not seen as black and white, or male and female, as it is seen in the present day. In many cultures of the past, gender expression has been celebrated for being fluid and less strict.

Historically, many cultures have recognized that gender expression, like gender identity, is fluid and does not need to conform one way or another. Cultures of the Pacific Islands, Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Native America, have adopted the idea of a third gender in which many people fall. This third gender goes by different names, but generally falls between the extremes of male and female.

Commonly Confused Terms

Gender expression is often confused for ideas that are related, however completely independent such as gender identity, biological sex, and sexual orientation. Gender identity is, in short, what a person thinks about themselves and their self interpreted sense of belonging to gender groups in society. Gender identity is unaffected by the outside world and exclusively self identified. Biological sex is the definition of physical sex characteristics as defined by: sexuality based hormones, chromosomes, and sexual organs. Sexual orientation refers to who or how and individual experiences attraction based on the other person's gender identity, biological sex, and gender expression.. Gender expression, as defined earlier, is distinctly different from these ideas.

The Genderbread Person illustrates the differences between these terms and their associated spectrums. As depicted by the dotted line surrounding The Gingerbread Person, gender expression is its own spectrum and is how they appear to externally fit a gender role.

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Gender Expression Discrimination

Gender expression can lead to discrimination and hardships in life for many. Victims of discrimination often culturally express different genders then their gender identity or biological sex. Sexual orientation resides on another axis. Take two individuals, one that identifies as heterosexual and another that does not. Either can face more gender expression based discrimination than the other. Gender expression can lead to bullying, childhood abuse, sexual assault, discrimination, and various other traumatizing hardships. For example, a man that identifies as homosexual and expresses himself more feminine than masculine may be at higher risk for sexual assault, physical abuse, and discrimination compared to a homosexual man that heavily portrays masculinity. Gender expression is a sizable aspect of how a person views themself, and thus will impact self confidence. When an individual is forced, for personal or societal influences, to portray themselves in a manner they don't personally identify with, confidence can be greatly hindered in turn damaging mental health. For example, studies show that when masculine presenting lesbians are made to dress in a feminine style, their confidence suffers greatly.

Ana Shack PEER REVIEW

You need to format it as not header format (make it paragraph format selected at the top bar of the screen). - Fixed

Change your first sentence to "Gender expression is based on cultural and social constructs, and can be described as..." I also recommend that you reword the end of this sentence to not be a quote since this is not necessary to be a quote and you want to avoid quotes as much as possible.

You can combine the second and third sentences and reword the third sentence since it is a little awkward (mostly the "...as someone, culturally, of a different gender").

You can make a new paragraph starting at the "Historically..." sentence to make it more readable. Also, that sentence should be past tense, not present since you are talking about the past.

Please separate out your stuff into paragraphs based on content and reorganize the order of sentences so similar content is together. Remember we are writing this for a general audience who mostly just wants to find the tidbits of info they are looking for, so readability and organization are really important. - Fixed

What do you mean by the sentence of "For people that do not identify as heterosexual..."? The way you have it worded right now makes it seem like identifying as not straight has a certain gender expression associated with it, which is not true. Please reword this. I think what you meant to say is that the intersexuality between sexuality and gender expression is complex, but most readers may not know that. Also, the sentence that comes afterward is too repetitive of this sentence, so make the example more specific of one kind of discrimination he might face and explain how sexuality and gender expression interact with this. - fixed

Specify that gender identity is how someone identifies based on gender since you also talk about sexuality which is also based on how someone identifies. -Fixe

Your definition of biological sex probably needs to be expanded to include based on physical characteristics (primary and secondary sex characteristics) and chromosomes rather than "science" (this is because there is evidence of gender identity also being based off of brain structure, which is also science and biology) - Fixed

Your definition of sexuality is wrong. Sexuality is how someone identifies based on to who and how they feel sexual attraction. -Fixed

In your last sentence it should be "names" not "name" -Fixed

Make sure that your references/citations are at the end of sentences and not in the middle of them. -Fixed

Thank you for the feedback! I have a lot of revision ideas. - Sean