14 Gender Identity

We often begin life with gendered identities. When newborns arrive, they may be greeted with clothes in either blue or pink. To establish a gender identity for a baby, visitors may ask if it’s a boy or a girl. But gender is not the same as biological sex. This distinction is important in understanding how our views on biological sex influence gender identities. We communicate our gender identity, and popular culture tells us what it means to be a man or a woman. For example, some activities are considered more masculine or more feminine. Similarly, the programs that people watch on television – soap operas, football games, and so on – affect how they socialize with others and come to understand what it means to be a man or a woman. Our expression of gender identity not only communicates who we think we are but also constructs a sense of who we want to be. We learn what masculinity and femininity mean in our culture, and we negotiate how we communicate our gender identity to others. As an example, think about the recent controversy over whether certain actresses are too thin. The female models appearing in magazine advertisements and TV commercials are very thin – leading young girls to feel ashamed of anybody fat. It was not always so. In the mid-1700s, a robust woman was considered attractive. And in many societies today, in the Middle East and in Africa, full-figured women are much more desirable than thin women. This shows how the idea of gender identity is both dynamic and closely connected to culture.

There are implications for intercultural communication as well. Gender means different things in different cultures. For example, single women cannot travel freely in many Muslim countries. And gender identity for many Muslim women means that the sphere of activity and power is primarily in the home and not in public.

15 Age Identity

Gender identity is a person's private sense, and subjective experience, of their own gender. This is generally described as one's private sense of being a man or a woman, consisting primarily of the acceptance of membership into a category of people: male or female. All societies have a set of gender categories that can serve as the basis of the formation of a social identity in relation to other members of society. In most societies, there is a basic division between gender attributes assigned to males and females. In all societies, however, some individuals do not identify with some (or all) of the aspects of gender that are assigned to their biological sex

As we age, we tap into cultural notions of how someone our age should act, look, and behave, that is we establish an age identity. And even as we communicate how we feel about our age to others, we receive messages from the media telling us how we should feel. Thus, as we grow older, we sometimes feel that we are either too old or too young for a certain “look”. These feelings stem from an understanding of what age means and how we identify with that age. Some people feel old at 30; others feel young at 40. Our notions of age and youth are all based on cultural conventions and they change as we grow older. When we are quite young, a college student seems old. But when we are in college, we do not feel so old. Different generations often have different philosophies, values, and ways of speaking.