Butch–femme identity and empathizing–systemizing cognitive traits in Chinese lesbians and bisexual women

Previous studies documented that butches showed a masculine profile and femmes showed a feminine profile in gender roles. This study examines the association between butch or femme lesbian identity and empathizing–systemizing (E–S) cognitive styles among 588 lesbian and bisexual women from multiple cities in China. Empathizing and systemizing were assessed using two different abbreviated 8-item scales drawn from longer original scales. There were significant differences in systemizing among butch–femme identity, with butches scoring higher than femmes, but no significant differences in empathizing. The discrepancy in empathizing–systemizing scores reflects individual differences in dispositional cognitive style. A higher proportion of femmes exhibited an E > S cognitive profile, while a higher proportion of butches exhibited an S > E cognitive profile. Sexual stereotyping based on masculinity/femininity, or biology, may be related to butch–femme difference in cognitive style. In studies on sexual orientation, researchers should pay more attention to butch–femme subgroup differences among lesbians.     

The Influence of Gender Identities on Body Image and Breast Health among Sexual Minority Women in Taiwan: Implications for Healthcare Practices

The present paper presents constructions of gender roles among Taiwanese sexual minority women with different gender identities (i.e., butch and femme, known as T and Po, respectively, in Taiwan) and associations between their views toward their own breasts and breast healthcare intentions and behaviour. A total of 37 face-to-face interviews were conducted among women aged 20 years or older who self-identified as lesbians or women who partnered with other women in four areas of Taiwan between August 2012 and October 2012. The majority of the T –identity lesbians held negative views toward their own breasts. The T-identified lesbians’ negative intentions toward breast cancer screenings were associated with their negative views toward their own breasts and body construction process. All Po-identified lesbians reported positive views toward their own breasts; these views facilitated positive breast healthcare intentions and behaviour. The study findings can be used to help healthcare providers in understanding the importance of providing competent cultural care to sexual minority women and to help policymakers in formulating suitable policy to meet women’s healthcare needs.     

Masculinity,Femininity, and Reported Paranormal Beliefs

Previous research has found that women are more likely than men to report belief in nonmaterial paranormal phenomena (e.g., psychics). There are inconsistent findings about whether men are more likely than women to report belief in material paranormal phenomena (e.g., bigfoot/sasquatch), and no prior survey research has examined gender expression (as masculine or feminine) as it relates to paranormal beliefs. This paper asks: How do gender identity and gender expression relate to reported paranormal beliefs? It answers this question using a large sample (n = 2504) of Canadians. Femininity helps explain differences between cisgender women and men on reported beliefs about foreseeing the future and telekinesis, but less so about reported belief in ghosts. Intriguingly, reported gender atypicality is associated with reported belief in all paranormal phenomena among cisgender women and among cisgender men. The results highlight the importance of measuring gender expression for beliefs that science cannot verify.     

Subjective Well-Being in Mexican and Mexican American Women: The Role of Acculturation,Ethnic Identity,Gender Roles,and Perceived Social Support

Latinas experience multiple oppressions and poorer mental health due to their often triple minority status as poor, female, women of color. The present study examined whether identifying with both Mexican culture and the dominant culture (bicultural), having high ethnic identity, identifying with both feminine and masculine behavior (androgynous gender role), and perceiving greater family social support predicted life satisfaction and positive affect in low socioeconomic status, Mexican and Mexican American women (n = 194). Results indicated that greater ethnic identity and greater perceived family social support significantly predicted Mexican and Mexican American women’s life satisfaction. Greater ethnic identity, greater feminine gender identity, greater androgynous gender identity, and greater perceived family social support were significant predictors of positive affect. Furthermore, as expected, social support from family was the most significant predictor for both life satisfaction and positive affect. Implications of the results and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Child Sexual Abuse History and Feminine Gender-Role Identity

The association between child sexual abuse (CSA) and feminine gender-role identity was examined among 75 women with and 107 without a history of CSA. Undergraduates and hospital employees from a university in the Southern United States completed questionnaires on the internet. Three aspects of feminine identity were assessed, including how much participants identified with feminine versus masculine traits, endorsed stereotypes about women, and viewed themselves as meeting feminine self-standards. Participants with a history of CSA reported greater feminine self-discrepancy and endorsed more derogatory stereotypes about women than the comparison group. CSA was also linked to identifying with more feminine than masculine traits, but only among hospital employees. Results suggest that feminine identity is a meaningful construct to consider in the adjustment of CSA survivors.     

Predictors of Sexual Consent Attitudes,Beliefs, and Behaviors Among Sexual Minority Cisgender and Nonbinary Young Adults

Sexual assault is a major public health concern in the United States that disproportionately affects sexual minority cisgender and nonbinary young adults. Although sexual assault is influenced by a myriad of societal and interpersonal factors, misunderstandings during the communication and interpretation of sexual consent signals likely contribute to this public health crisis. Unfortunately, research on sexual consent miscommunication has been heavily informed by heteronormative theories and conducted primarily with cisgender heterosexual men and women. The present study attempted to help address this gap in the literature by exploring factors that contribute to sexual consent attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors in a sample of 251 cisgender and nonbinary sexual minority young adults. Nonbinary participants reported more proactive sexual consent attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors than cisgender participants. Sexual assertiveness was also a robust and unique predictor of adaptive sexual consent, particularly among those who identified as more traditionally masculine. Findings from the current study may help guide the development of more inclusive, research-informed sexual consent and sexual violence prevention programs.

     

Tomboyism or Lesbianism? Beyond Sex/Gender/Sexual Conflation

To illuminate questions of sex/gender/sexual conflation the researcher focused on the relationship between reported tomboyism and lesbianism. Narratives of childhood and adolescence were collected from 32 women who were grouped into four gender/sexual status combinations: “lesbian/bisexual butch,” “straight butch,” “lesbian/bisexual femme,” and “straight femme.” The effects of participants’ sexual and gendered statuses on their retrospective accounts of two aspects of tomboyism—“choosing masculinity” and “rejecting femininity”—were examined. Chi square and qualitative analyses suggest that stage in the life cycle, gender, and sexual status influence distinct mergings and separations of sex, gender, and sexuality in women’s retrospective reports. The researcher concludes that attention to sex, gender, and sexuality as both distinct and connected clarifies the relationship between tomboyism and lesbianism.Part of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Atlanta, Georgia in 2003. Interview data for this study were originally collected for an unpublished dissertation (Carr, 2002).     

Lesbian erotic role identification: behavioral, morphological, and hormonal correlates.

Lesbian scholars hotly debate the validity of "butch" and "femme" erotic roles. Although some dismiss them as social constructs, others maintain they are natural expressions of lesbian sexuality. The authors compared self-described butch and femme lesbians on gender-discriminating behavioral, morphological, and hormonal measures. Butch and femme lesbians did not differ from heterosexual women on sex role personality traits, depressive symptomology, eating disorders, or body dissatisfaction. Butch lesbians, however, recalled more childhood gender-atypical behavior and had higher waist-to-hip ratios, higher saliva testosterone levels, and less desire to give birth. These findings support the validity of butch-femme classification and suggest that butch lesbians are more male-typical compared to femme lesbians. The butch-femme classification may reflect a within-group difference caused by differential exposure to prenatal androgens.     

Social class as a correlate of gender identity among lesbian women

Traditionally, researchers have portrayed butch and femme identities among lesbian women as gender roles. To complicate matters, rather than ask lesbian women to define butch and femme within the context of their own culture, researchers defined the terms themselves. This study adds to the literature in two ways: (1) lesbian women are asked to define butch and femme on their own terms and (2) social class is considered as a correlate to the formation of butch and femme gender identities. A snowball sample of 235 women participated in the study. Ninety-three percent of the participants are white, 7% are women of color. Social classes, as measured by income and education, are diverse within the sample. Findings indicate that lesbian women define butch and femme differently than have researchers, and that social class is a significant determinant of whether or not a lesbian woman defines herself as butch or femme.Part of this paper was presented at the American Sociological Association 1995 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. I thank Dr. Leonard Beeghley and two anonymousSex Roles reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts.     

RELATIONSHIP QUALITY AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN WOMEN'S SAME-SEX RELATIONSHIPS: THE ROLE OF MINORITY STRESS

Despite a large body of literature addressing relationship quality and domestic violence in women's same-sex relationships, few studies have empirically examined how stress specific to living as a lesbian or bisexual woman might correlate with these relationship variables. Degree of outness, internalized homophobia, lifetime and recent experiences of discrimination, butch/femme identity, relationship quality, and lifetime and recent experiences of domestic violence were assessed in a sample of 272 predominantly European American lesbian and bisexual women. Lesbian and bisexual women were found to be comparable on most relationship variables. In bivariate analyses, minority stress variables (internalized homophobia and discrimination) were associated with lower relationship quality and both domestic violence perpetration and victimization. Outness and butch/femme identity were largely unrelated to relationship variables. Path analysis revealed that relationship quality fully mediated the relationship between internalized homophobia and recent domestic violence.     

Sex of subject and gender identity as factors in humor appreciation

Appreciation of cartoon humor was examined in male and female college students who had been categorized into one of four gender identity groups (masculine, feminine, androgynous, undifferentiated) on the basis of Bem's Sex Role Inventory. Results indicated that males preferred sexual humor more than absurd humor, while females showed the reverse pattern. Furthermore, gender identity was related to humor appreciation only for females. While feminine females preferred absurd humor more than sexual humor, masculine and androgynous females were more appreciative of sexual humor. Finally, masculine, feminine, and undifferentiated males, as well as masculine and androgynous females, showed greater appreciation of sexual humor which portrayed females, as opposed to males, as the sex object or brunt of the joke.     

Gender traits and identities in a "masculine" organization: the Israeli police force

Gender and occupational identities were examined within the Israeli police force, a stereotypically masculine organization. The principal hypothesis was that women in this organizational setting did not reject their gender identity. Rather, they self-attributed more traditionally masculine traits in addition to their feminine traits. This was especially so among women going through particularly intense occupational and organizational socialization needed for field jobs. The findings only partially confirmed the hypothesis. Most women in the sample considered themselves to be highly feminine, even though they self-attributed masculine traits. Although the women, like their male colleagues, ranked occupational identity higher than gender identity, their feminine identity (usually in contrast with the masculine organizational context) was not repressed and their gender identity was as strong as that of the men.     

Effects of Gendered Language on Gender Stereotyping in Computer‐Mediated Communication: The Moderating Role of Depersonalization and Gender‐Role Orientation

This experiment examined what situational and dispositional features moderate the effects of linguistic gender cues on gender stereotyping in anonymous, text‐based computer‐mediated communication. Participants played a trivia game with an ostensible partner via computer, whose comments represented either prototypically masculine or feminine language styles. Consistent with the social identity model of deindividuation effects, those who did not exchange brief personal profiles with their partner (i.e., depersonalization) were more likely to infer their partner’s gender from the language cues than those who did. Depersonalization, however, facilitated stereotype‐consistent conformity behaviors only among gender‐typed individuals; that is, participants conformed more to their masculine‐ than feminine‐comment partners, and men were less conforming than were women, only when they were both gender‐typed and depersonalized.     

The influence of gender role typing on the expression of depressive symptoms

This study investigated the influence of gender role typing on the expression of depressive symptoms. Previous research (Padesky & Hammen, 1981) has found that men and women differ in their expression of depressive symptoms and has proposed gender role expectations as a possible explanation. This study considered gender role typing as a possible moderating factor of depressive symptoms. Undergraduates (99 men, 360 women) were divided into masculine and feminine groups according to the Bem Sex Role Inventory. Depressive symptoms were measured by the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Gender role typing differences emerged on the BDI with feminine subjects reporting more emotional symptoms than masculine subjects (p<.05) and masculine subjects reporting more withdrawal and somatic symptoms than feminine subjects (p<.05). The results are consistent with the hypothesis that depressive symptoms are influenced by societal expectations. Future research should consider the influence of gender role typing on the expression of depressive symptoms.     

Codependence and conduct disorder: Feminine versus masculine coping responses to abusive parenting practices

This study supported the hypothesis that codependence reflects a stereotypically feminine coping strategy to environmental stressors, while conduct disorder represents an alternate coping response reflecting stereotypically masculine behaviors. High school students (N= 218; 81% Anglo-American, 8% Asian-American, 5% Hispanic-American) completed measures of femininity/masculinity, codependence, conduct disorder, and unhealthy parenting practices. Multiple regression analyses revealed that codependence is related to parental abuse and femininity (R= .50). A marginal relationship between codependence and parental alcoholism was mediated by parental abuse, calling into question the validity of the codependence construct. Conduct disorder was related to parental abuse, masculinity, parental alcoholism, and gender (R= .62). The tendency to label stereotypically feminine coping strategies as pathological, while ignoring a more prevalent and destructive masculine coping strategy is discussed.     

Conflicted Gender Identity, Body Dissatisfaction, and Disordered Eating in Adult Men and Women

The relation between gender identity and body dissatisfaction as well as disordered eating was examined in a population-based sample of Finnish adults aged 18 to 44 years (N?=?1,142). Participants with a conflicted gender identity were compared to controls matched on age and biological sex. Participants with a conflicted gender identity showed higher levels of body dissatisfaction, women with a conflicted gender identity also showed more eating disturbance than controls. Among men with a conflicted gender identity, male–male sexual experience was associated with more body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. Among women with a conflicted gender identity, female–female sexual experience was related to less body dissatisfaction. Possible explanations for these findings and the potential clinical implications are discussed.     

Gender Role and Feminism Revisited: A Follow-Up Study

In this follow-up to our earlier study (Toller, Suter, & Trautman, Gender role identity and attitudes towards feminism, Sex Roles, 51, 85–90, 2004) we examine the interrelationships among gender role, support for feminism, and willingness to self-label as feminist. Ten percent of college students previously surveyed participated in qualitative interviews, which elicited characterizations of feminists, whether students self-identified as feminist, suggestions for garnering support for feminism, and for interpretation of the initial study’s findings. Students were asked to speculate why we found that highly masculine men and highly feminine women were neither likely to self-identify as feminist nor to support the feminist movement and why more feminine men and more masculine women were found to be more willing to self-label as feminist and more likely to support the feminist movement.