Sexual identity

About: Sexual identity is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 6207 publications have been published within this topic receiving 162284 citations. The topic is also known as: sexual orientation identity.

Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance — United States, 2017

Abstract: Problem Health-risk behaviors contribute to the leading causes of morbidity and mortality among youth and adults in the United States. In addition, significant health disparities exist among demographic subgroups of youth defined by sex, race/ethnicity, and grade in school and between sexual minority and nonsexual minority youth. Population-based data on the most important health-related behaviors at the national, state, and local levels can be used to help monitor the effectiveness of public health interventions designed to protect and promote the health of youth at the national, state, and local levels. Reporting period covered September 2016-December 2017. Description of the system The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) monitors six categories of priority health-related behaviors among youth and young adults: 1) behaviors that contribute to unintentional injuries and violence; 2) tobacco use; 3) alcohol and other drug use; 4) sexual behaviors related to unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection; 5) unhealthy dietary behaviors; and 6) physical inactivity. In addition, YRBSS monitors the prevalence of other health-related behaviors, obesity, and asthma. YRBSS includes a national school-based Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) conducted by CDC and state and large urban school district school-based YRBSs conducted by state and local education and health agencies. Starting with the 2015 YRBSS cycle, a question to ascertain sexual identity and a question to ascertain sex of sexual contacts were added to the national YRBS questionnaire and to the standard YRBS questionnaire used by the states and large urban school districts as a starting point for their questionnaires. This report summarizes results from the 2017 national YRBS for 121 health-related behaviors and for obesity, overweight, and asthma by demographic subgroups defined by sex, race/ethnicity, and grade in school and by sexual minority status; updates the numbers of sexual minority students nationwide; and describes overall trends in health-related behaviors during 1991-2017. This reports also summarizes results from 39 state and 21 large urban school district surveys with weighted data for the 2017 YRBSS cycle by sex and sexual minority status (where available). Results Results from the 2017 national YRBS indicated that many high school students are engaged in health-risk behaviors associated with the leading causes of death among persons aged 10-24 years in the United States. During the 30 days before the survey, 39.2% of high school students nationwide (among the 62.8% who drove a car or other vehicle during the 30 days before the survey) had texted or e-mailed while driving, 29.8% reported current alcohol use, and 19.8% reported current marijuana use. In addition, 14.0% of students had taken prescription pain medicine without a doctor's prescription or differently than how a doctor told them to use it one or more times during their life. During the 12 months before the survey, 19.0% had been bullied on school property and 7.4% had attempted suicide. Many high school students are engaged in sexual risk behaviors that relate to unintended pregnancies and STIs, including HIV infection. Nationwide, 39.5% of students had ever had sexual intercourse and 9.7% had had sexual intercourse with four or more persons during their life. Among currently sexually active students, 53.8% reported that either they or their partner had used a condom during their last sexual intercourse. Results from the 2017 national YRBS also indicated many high school students are engaged in behaviors associated with chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes. Nationwide, 8.8% of high school students had smoked cigarettes and 13.2% had used an electronic vapor product on at least 1 day during the 30 days before the survey. Forty-three percent played video or computer games or used a computer for 3 or more hours per day on an average school day for something that was not school work and 15.4% had not been physically active for a total of at least 60 minutes on at least 1 day during the 7 days before the survey. Further, 14.8% had obesity and 15.6% were overweight. The prevalence of most health-related behaviors varies by sex, race/ethnicity, and, particularly, sexual identity and sex of sexual contacts. Specifically, the prevalence of many health-risk behaviors is significantly higher among sexual minority students compared with nonsexual minority students. Nonetheless, analysis of long-term temporal trends indicates that the overall prevalence of most health-risk behaviors has moved in the desired direction. Interpretation Most high school students cope with the transition from childhood through adolescence to adulthood successfully and become healthy and productive adults. However, this report documents that some subgroups of students defined by sex, race/ethnicity, grade in school, and especially sexual minority status have a higher prevalence of many health-risk behaviors that might place them at risk for unnecessary or premature mortality, morbidity, and social problems (e.g., academic failure, poverty, and crime). Public health action YRBSS data are used widely to compare the prevalence of health-related behaviors among subpopulations of students; assess trends in health-related behaviors over time; monitor progress toward achieving 21 national health objectives; provide comparable state and large urban school district data; and take public health actions to decrease health-risk behaviors and improve health outcomes among youth. Using this and other reports based on scientifically sound data is important for raising awareness about the prevalence of health-related behaviors among students in grades 9-12, especially sexual minority students, among decision makers, the public, and a wide variety of agencies and organizations that work with youth. These agencies and organizations, including schools and youth-friendly health care providers, can help facilitate access to critically important education, health care, and high-impact, evidence-based interventions.

Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality

Abstract: Why do some people prefer heterosexual love while others fancy the same sex? Is sexual identity biologically determined or a product of convention? In this brilliant and provocative book, the acclaimed author of Myths of Gender argues that even the most fundamental knowledge about sex is shaped by the culture in which scientific knowledge is produced.Drawing on astonishing real-life cases and a probing analysis of centuries of scientific research, Fausto-Sterling demonstrates how scientists have historically politicized the body. In lively and impassioned prose, she breaks down three key dualisms - sex/gender, nature/nurture, and real/constructed - and asserts that individuals born as mixtures of male and female exist as one of five natural human variants and, as such, should not be forced to compromise their differences to fit a flawed societal definition of normality.

Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics? ≤

Abstract: In many instances, instead of destabilizing the assumed categories and binaries of sexual identity, queer politics has served to reinforce simple dichotomies between heterosexual and everything “queer.” An understanding of the ways in which power informs and constitutes privileged and marginalized subjects on both sides of this dichotomy has been left unexamined. Theorists and activists alike generally agree that it was in the early 1990s that we began to see, with any regularity, the use of the term “queer.” This term would come to denote not only an emerging politics, but also a new cohort of academics working in programs primarily in the humanities centered around social and cultural criticism. Only by recognizing the link between the ideological, social, political, and economic marginalization of punks, bulldaggers, and welfare queens can we begin to develop political analyses and political strategies effective in confronting the linked yet varied sites of power in this country.

Childhood sex-typed behavior and sexual orientation: A conceptual analysis and quantitative review.

Abstract: This article reviewed research examining the association between childhood sex-typed behavior and sexual orientation. Prospective studies suggest that childhood cross-sex-typed behavior is strongly predictive of adult homosexual orientation for men; analogous studies for women have not been performed. Though methodologically more problematic, retrospective studies are useful in determining how many homosexual individuals displayed cross-sex behavior in childhood. The relatively large body of retrospective studies comparing childhood sex-typed behavior in homosexual and heterosexual men and women was reviewed quantitatively. Effect sizes were large for both men and women, with men's significantly larger. Future research should elaborate the causes of the association between childhood sex-typed behavior and sexual orientation and to identify correlates of within-orientation differences in childhood sex-typed behavior. Psychosexual differentiation has been a topic of long-standing interest in developmental psychology. Both classical psychoanalytic theory and learning theory were particularly influential in guiding the first wave of empirical research conducted by developmentalists (see, e.g., ). Sexologists have also made seminal theoretical and empirical contributions. For example, introduced the term to refer to “all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself or herself as having the status of boy or man, girl or woman, respectively. It includes, but is not restricted to, sexuality in the sense of eroticism” (p. 254). Mischel, 1966 Money (1955) gender role Over the next two decades, gender role was decomposed into three conceptually distinct parts (see, e.g., ). First, was distinguished from gender role. For example, , p. 453) used the slightly different term to describe a young child's developing “fundamental sense of belonging to one sex.” Cognitive–developmental psychologists (e.g., ) have used the term gender identity to indicate primarily that a child can accurately discriminate male from female individuals and identify correctly his or her own gender—a task considered by some to be the first stage in gender constancy development. Fagot & Leinbach, 1985 gender identity Stoller (1964 core gender identity Kohlberg, 1966 Compared with original definition, the term gender role is now defined more narrowly. Many scholars have used the term to refer to behaviors, attitudes, and personality traits that a society designates as masculine or feminine, that is, more “appropriate” or typical for the male or female social role (cf. ; ). In young children, the measurement of gender role behavior includes several easily observable phenomena, including affiliative preference for same versus opposite sex peers, interest in rough-and-tumble play, fantasy roles, toy interests, and dress-up play (see ). In this article, we use the term to refer to those behaviors that have been typically studied as markers of childhood gender identity and gender role. Money's (1955) Huston, 1983 Unger, 1979 Zucker, 1985 sex-typed 5/14/03 7:25 AM Ovid: Bailey: Dev Psychol, Volume 31(1).January 1995.43–55 Page 2 of 23 https://snap.it.northwestern.edu/p/p.cgi/ovidcom/gateway1:80/ovidweb.cgi The third, erotic, component of original definition of gender role has also been operationalized more narrowly, most commonly under the rubric of the term . In contemporary sexology, sexual orientation refers to whether a person is more strongly aroused sexually by members of his or her own sex, the opposite sex, or both sexes (homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual, respectively). Money's (1955) sexual orientation The behavioral markers of gender identity and gender role emerge early, typically by ages 2–4 years, and become “consolidated” thereafter (e.g., ; ). In contrast, sexual orientation appears to be more readily assessed after puberty, as a person's sexual interests and desires become more salient (cf. ). At least three models have been proposed about the relation between childhood sex-typed behavior and later sexual orientation. One model hypothesizes a developmental sequence in which gender identity develops before gender role, which, in turn, develops before sexual orientation (e.g., ; ). In this model, adult sexual orientation is conceptualized as an of psychosexual differentiation, analogous, for example, to as an end state of cognitive development. Another model reverses this developmental sequence, positing that sexual orientation is apparent early enough in development to influence the expression of sex-typed behavior (e.g., ). A third model gives less attention to the temporal sequence between these two variables and instead emphasizes the possibility that sex-typed behavior and sexual orientation are both influenced by the same factors, such as prenatal sex hormones (see ; , pp. 12–15). Fagot, 1985 Huston, 1983 Meyer-Bahlburg, 1980 Green, 1974, 1987 Meyer-Bahlburg, 1980 end state formal operations