Transgender Pride flag by SVG file Dlloyd based on Monica Helms design – Description above retrieved from here from en.wikipedia. The flag was flown from a large public flagpole in San Francisco’s Castro District beginning November 19, 2012 in commemoration of the Transgender Day of Remembrance (“Transgender Flag Flies In San Francisco’s Castro District After Outrage From Activists” by Aaron Sankin, HuffingtonPost, November 20, 2012). On 19 August 2014, Monica Helms donated the original Transgender Pride Flag to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Annotated Links
Advertising: J. Crew Ad Showing Boy With Pink Nail Polish Sparks Debate on Gender Identity The article in Fox News summarizes a recent debate caused by a charming photo it ran in their spring catalog featuring a company executive and her five-year-old son sporting neon pink nail polish. Parents, doctors, and psychologists are weighing in. This summary written by Diane Macedo from April 11, 2011 summarizes the controversy and provides links to commentary from both sides of the issue.
All Mixed Up Madeline H. Wyndzen, Ph. D., a transgendered professor of psychology, discusses her personal experiences with gender dysphoria and critiques the mental illness model of “gender identity disorder” on this page called All mixed up: A transgendered psychology professor’s perspective on life, the psychology of gender, and gender identity disorder. Includes links to background information on transgenderism and the psychology of transgenderism, a revision of her autobiography, essays on living a transgendered life, and a discussion of transgenderism in society.
APA Answers Answers to common questions about transgender individuals and gender identity from the American Psychological Association.
About Gender This extensive web site discusses everything about gender roles, gender variance, and gender identity, including cognitive development, psychoanalysis, genetics and hormones.
Cross-Dressing Girls in Afghanistan: Social Rules and Accommodations The website Sociological Images presents this discussion about how in Afghanistan some families without sons pick a girl-child in the family to dress, act, and pass as a boy. These biological girls cross-dress as social boys to obtain more male privileges. This gives all of the children in the family extra privileges such as the freedom to leave the house, attend school, and even work outside the home. By dressing her a boy, however, they are effectively nodding to the rules, even as they break them… And, because other Afghanis understand, they are willing to look the other way.
Facebook Now Offers Over 50 Gender to Choose From in Your Profile Facebook lets users self-identity using a multitude of terms to customize their gender beyond male and female.
Gender Identity Disorder An overview by PsychNet-UK.
Gender Trouble Summarizes the work of Judith Butler who argues that gender identity is a social construction.
How Changeable Is Gender? Richard A. Friendman, professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College writes about how research in neuroscience suggests that gender identity and how it exists on a continuum in this thought-provoking essay. From The New York Times, August 22, 2015.
Human Rights Campaign: Working for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Equal Rights. As part of the Human Rights Campaign’s mission to education the public, o this website they provide background information on visibility and coming out, a video about understanding transgender issues through the personal story of Donna Rose, information on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and a blog.
Is Baby Male or Female? Germans Offer Third Gender In Germany, newborn babies with ambiguous genitalia will no longer be rigidly labeled male or female on their birth certificates. Parents may indicate “undetermined” or “unspecified”, wait until later in the child’s life to declare a gender, or even never officially declare a gender. From ABC News, August 22, 2013.
Multicultural Pavilion Paul Gorski at the University of Virginia Diversity designed, facilitates and maintains this site which features links on a wide range of topics including sexual orientation, religious diversity, gender, and ethnicity, e-mail forums, and online networking.
She’s Not There Writer Jennifer Finney Boylan writes about her transgender experience with tremendous insight and great candidness in her book “She’s Not There”. Her website includes an excerpt from the book, her National Press Club speech, readers’ responses to the book, an interview and more.
What it Means to Come Out in the Transgender Community Inspired by the recent debut of Caitlyn Jenner on the June 2015 cover of Vanity Fair magazine, Time ran this article explaining that the process of coming out as a transgendered person is not linear; it varies from person to person. From Time, June 2, 2015.
Assignments, Exercises, and Activities
Electronic Texts
Examples and Illustrations
Lecture Notes
Psychosexual Differentiation The Department of Psychology at the University of Plymouth provides study and learning materials online for some of their course. This page, by Paul Kenyon for a course on Psychosexual Differentiation, discusses all aspects of gender development and gender differences.
Slide Presentations
Tests, Measures, and Scales
Multimedia Resources
How Do You Learn to Act Like a Man/Woman? Gender Identity and Gender Scripts. How do we learn to act in what are called “gender appropriate” ways? How did you learn to act like a girl and then a woman? Or like a boy and then like a man? Did you experience either penis envy or womb envy? Did this happen as a result of what Freud would call an oedipal complex or perhaps does our tendency to behave in stereotypical masculine and feminine ways come about more simply as a result of watching other males and females in your family, among your friends and on TV? In this episode of former psychology professor Michael Brit’s, podcast about psychology called The Psych Files [Episode 94, May 18, 2009] he looks at the interesting and complex issue of gender identity.
Human Rights Campaign: Working for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Equal Rights. As part of the Human Rights Campaign’s mission to education the public, o this website they provide background information on visibility and coming out, a video about understanding transgender issues through the personal story of Donna Rose, information on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and a blog.
Sex and Gender: Who Was David Reimer? In 1967, an anonymous baby boy was turned into a girl by doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital. For 25 years, the case of John/Joan was called a medical triumph — proof that a child’s gender identity could be changed — and thousands of “sex reassignments” were performed based on this example. But the case was a failure, the truth never reported. Now the man who grew up as a girl tells the story of his life, and a medical controversy erupts. See also a transcript of the NOVA program Sex: Unknown from October 30, 2001 and the article Being Brenda, and a story about David’s suicide.