Here is a little taste from the section on Gender Identity in my new Sexual Mindfulness Program….
In this section of the program you’ll explore your thoughts, feelings, self-talk, and mental images about your gender identity using fun, easy to complete exercises.
Your gender identity is part of your sexual identity. It is the internal picture of what it means to you to be a boy, girl, man, woman, both, neither.In most cases a person’s gender identity matches their biological sex. In other words, most biological men identify as men and most biological woman identify as women.
Sex research has found that your initial gender identity is formed by the age of three. Go ask any 3 year old girl what it means to be a girl and she will tell you. The same for boys. Young transgender children can recollect that from an early age they felt trapped in the wrong body because their gender identities did not match their biological sex.
There are many factors that impact your gender starting with how you were greeted at birth.
Many people call those initial reactions by your parents, caregivers, attending nurses and physicians etc your assigned gender. I prefer to call it your assigned gender identity because I do not like lumping the three components of gender (biological gender, gender identity, gender role) together.
If you were born with female genitalia at birth you were probably referred to at birth as a little girl and from that day on treated differently than your little brother who at birth was called a boy because he had a penis and testicles.
This assignment of gender identity is not necessarily a bad thing, it merely the traditional start of child rearing patterns that are strongly influenced by your biological sex. As a result of your assigned gender identity there are expectations that others have for you. Parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, caregivers, teachers etc all expect you to look and act a certain way based on your assigned gender identity.
Many adults carry around gender expectations that others have for them that do not match how they see themselves as sexual creatures in the present moment. This mismatch is often the source of much personal anguish and seriously inhibits personal and relationship sexual satisfaction.
I do not take any position on how your biological sex and gender identity should match up or how you should see yourself. That is for you to decide.
I am only concerned about how your thoughts, feelings, self talk, and mental images about your gender identity influence your personal and relationship sexual satisfaction.
In this section of my program I’ll give you exercises and activities to help you explore your thoughts, feelings, self-talk, and mental images related to this and how this has influenced your sexuality over the years.
Sound interesting?
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