Human Sexuality Flashcards
Physicians attitudes and knowledge - biases in healthcare
18.7% sometimes or often uncomfortable providing care to gay patients, 23% reported that same sex relationships were always/almost always wrong and 9% were sometimes wrong. Physicians are less comfortable talking about sex with opposite-sex patients and with patients <18 or >65
A survey of the American Public - biases in healthcare
30.4% will change provider if they were gay/lesbian and 35% would change practices if they found out gay/lesbian providers worked there.
Guiding assumptions
Everyone has a sexual orientation, a gender identity, and a gender expression. Everyone falls on a scale of somewhere between purely heterosexual and purely homosexual, but where they fall might change over time. People’s gender identity and expression might also change over time.
Understanding sexual orientation
Includes sexual identity, attraction, and behavior
Identity
How a person self defines or labels their sexuality. Languages change over time. As people go through the process of understanding their sexuality over time, they may change how they identify
Traditional labels of identity
Gay, lesbian, bisexual, straight, homosexual, heterosexual, and asexual
Other terms to describe sexual identity
Queer, same-gender loving, polyamorous, pansexual,
Behavior
Generally refers to the gender of a person’s sexual and romantic partners. Sexual identity might not always align with sexual behavior. Understanding behavior also involved learning about specific sexual behaviors that individuals engage in with their partners (not just oral, vaginal, or anal sex)
Attraction
Refers to the gender(s) a person is attracted to, does not always align with behavior or identity. There is variability across life course; desire to be with same gender may never be acted on, some do not discover attractions until later in life.
Gender identity
A person’s internal sense of being a man/male, woman/female, both, neither, or another gender
Gender expression
Manner in which a person represents or expresses their gender identity
Cisgender
When a person’s gender identity corresponds with their assigned sex at birth
Transgender
Umbrella term for people whose gender identity, expression or behavior is different from those typically associated with their assigned sex at birth.
Transitioning
A term used to describe the period during which a transgender person begins to express their gender identity
Transgender individuals may alter their physical appearance
Through hormonal therapy and/or surgery, in order to affirm their gender identity, though some choose not to do so at all