Gender: Genetics,Genitality, Generosity (Grace), Gentility

After acknowledging that gender is defined at many levels and that definitions may not be concordant across all of these layers of human development, this essay illuminates how these threads intertwine with one another to produce a final product that we call a person. Gene expression, gender identity, sexual orientation, and anatomic structures are not always coterminus. Arbitrarily assigning an infant child with maldefined genitalia to a socially defined gender role on the basis of surgical convenience may (should) be perceived as an act of violence, and an untruth. A further intent of this article is to help in pastoral settings to respond to events which raise points of anxiety and concern, among persons of faith, which are sometimes associated with instances of discrepancy.     

Cognitive Analytic Therapy: time and process

Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT) is an increasingly popular brief therapeutic approach for use with a variety of types of clinical problem. This paper outlines the key components of CAT and demonstrates its use by case examples. The history of CAT is traced, particularly the concept of Reciprocal Roles which was developed from Object Relations Theory. It is suggested that CAT has considerable potential as a collaborative, active therapy, with particular application to difficult patients such as those with borderline personality disorder. Some of the differences from other psychodynamic therapies are described, and an assessment of its future role is provided.     

Transgender Primary Medical Care

SUMMARY

Transgender medical care involves addressing general medical conditions and those related specifically to transgender issues. This article summarizes existing research in transgender medicine and provides guidance for family physicians and nurses in adapting standard primary care protocols relating to health maintenance, acute illness, and chronic disease management to address trans-specific clinical oncerns. Trans-specific issues in physical examination, health history, interpretation of laboratory tests, vaccination, screening, and treatment are explored, and the role of the primary care provider in caring for patients undergoing hormonal or surgical change is discussed.     

Social skills and sex‐role functioning in borderline personality disorder: relationship to self‐mutilating behavior

This study compared the social skills functioning and sex role affiliation of female inpatients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder who engaged in self‐mutilating behavior (n?=?30) with female patients with borderline personality disorder who did not engage in such behavior (n?=?18). Patients with borderline personality disorder who engaged in self‐mutilating behavior were found to have relatively poorer skills in communicating non‐verbal emotional information to others and in receiving and interpreting such information from others. In terms of sex role orientation, patients who engaged in self‐mutilating behavior were significantly more likely than non‐mutilators to be typed as undifferentiated using the Bem Sex Role Inventory. These participants were less likely to identify with either masculine or feminine sex roles. Patients who did not self‐mutilate were found to be significantly more likely than those who did self‐mutilate to identify with the masculine sex role.     

Do You See What I See? The Influence of Gender Stereotypes on Student and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Perceptions of Violent Same-Sex and Opposite-Sex Relationships

ABSTRACT

Forty-one men and 67 women undergraduate students, as well as 35 men and 27 women Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers, rated the abusiveness of intimate partner violence (IPV) vignettes portraying each possible gender combination of victim and perpetrator (Harris &; Cook, 1994 Harris, R. J. and Cook, C. A. 1994. Attributions about spouse abuse: It matters who the batterers and victims are. Sex Roles, 30: 553–565. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Rating differences according to victim and perpetrator gender, occupation (student or RCMP officer), and participant gender were anticipated. Analyses found that student and RCMP ratings of abuse severity were both highest for the male-female scenario. However, the RCMP considered the female-male, male-male, and female-female scenarios to be more abusive than did the students. Our findings suggest that, while the RCMP appeared to be more sensitive to male and same-sex victims than students, both groups remain somewhat biased.     

Advent: Theological Reflections on IVF

Abstract

This article is a theological reflection upon the experience of undergoing a treatment cycle to conceive a child through IVF. It sets the techniques and medical procedures associated with the new reproductive technologies in the context of wider social, cultural and theological conversations rather than isolating them as specialist medical concerns or abstract ethical dilemmas.     

Theology of Desire

Abstract

A white-hair asks, as a man, when I meet a woman, what do I sense? This is answered as a single young man, a married father, a divorced man, and as an elder. From a pre-Sixties youth where sex was religiously defined in terms of marriage and women as mothers-to-be, through the Free Sex movement as a young adult, to experiences of prison sex as a religious radical, into married, divorced and finally elder sexuality, the search is to understand the play of sexuality and intimacy. "Slap the bitch!" prison sex makes clear the source functionality of the mythic Adam's Rib account in determining the currently dominant global view of sexuality and intimacy in the digital age. A vision of coupled presence is presented wherein ritual practices are referenced that enable men and women to embody the fullness of their sexuality and intimacy.     

“Never reflected anywhere”: Body image among ethnoracialized gay and bisexual men

A growing body of literature has highlighted the increased prevalence of body image concerns and associations with health outcomes among gay and bisexual men (GBM). Little research, however, has examined the link between body image and social oppression for ethnoracialized GBM. Using an intersectionality lens and qualitative inductive analysis, data were collected through focus groups and interviews with GBM (n = 61) who identify with one of four ethnoracial groups (Black, East/Southeast Asian, South Asian, Latino/Brazilian). Three main themes emerged: (1) body image idealization in gay/bisexual male culture, (2) negotiating a racialized body image, and (3) negotiating the impact of body image on relationship with self and others. The study results highlighted how multiple forms of oppression (e.g., racism, sexism) intersected with one another to impact the body image and overall well-being among ethnoracialized GBM.     

The relationship between sentence meaning and word order: Evidence from structural priming in German

Most theories of human language production assume that generating a sentence involves several stages, including an initial stage where the prelinguistic message is determined and a subsequent stage of grammatical encoding. However, it is contentious whether grammatical encoding involves separate stages of grammatical-function assignment and linearization. To address this question, we examined the mapping between the message level and grammatical encoding in two structural priming experiments in which German speakers choose between three different structures expressing ditransitive events. Although speakers showed a tendency to repeat the order of constituents (noun phrase–prepositional phrase, NP–PP, vs. NP–NP), they were additionally primed to repeat the order of thematic roles when constituent structure was constant (NP_RECIPIENT–NP_THEME vs. NP_THEME–NP_RECIPIENT). Experiment 2 found that the latter effect could not be due to persistence of the order of phrases referring to animate and inanimate entities. These results suggest a direct mapping of thematic roles to word order, consistent with a model in which the message is mapped onto syntactic structure in a single stage.