About this srcd poster session

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Panel information
Panel 19. Sex, Gender

Abstract

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As an increasing number of transgender and gender diverse (TGD) youth are expressing their authentic selves, it is important to understand their unique relationship to gendered constructs and knowledge. Transgender and gender diverse youth confront issues of concordance between their gender assigned at birth and their current gender identity, which requires a knowledge of how gender functions in their environments. As a result, they may possess greater expertise on the topic of gender than their cisgender peers. Additionally, they may have greater experience navigating differences between their own perspective on gender and the perspectives of American society at large. This study sought to understand how TGD youth conceptualize gender, and investigated whether TGD identification was associated with an understanding of gender essentialism, the social construction of gender, stereotyping, and perspective taking. Participants in the current study included 65 9-14-year-olds (Mage= 11.32 years SD= 1.76) from a Midwest metropolitan area. The majority of participants identified as White (90.8%), and also included Asian participants (6.2%) and two participants indicating that they were Multiracial (3.1%). Of the analyzed sample of 48 participants, twenty-six participants were cisgender, and twenty-two were TGD. The interview consisted of 14 open-ended questions about gender and was coded by a researcher blind to cisgender/TGD status. Preliminary results show that instances of stereotyping were nearly equal between cisgender (62 mentions) and TGD participants (66 mentions). When TGD youth shared stereotypes, however, they were more often discussing attitudes on a societal scale, rather than personally endorsing them. Considering gender essentialist statements, or statements that assert that gendered characteristics are innate or biological, cisgender youth made 15 essentialist statements, while TGD youth shared similar ideas only 7 times. Conversely, cisgender youth discussed gender as a social construct 5 times, compared to 12 times in TGD youth. This suggests that TGD youth may be more knowledgeable than their cisgender peers on topics related to gender. Further analysis also showed that TGD youth were more likely to discuss gender from a societal perspective, rather than solely their own opinions. Additionally, differences in perspective-taking between cisgender and TGD participants emerged with nearly double the instances among TGD (24) compared to cisgender (14) participants. Taken as a whole, these results suggest that young TGD people may have more developed thinking around the complexities of gender and show increased perspective-taking when discussing gender compared to their cisgender peers. Considering their experience navigating gender throughout their lives and understanding that others have different perspectives, these findings have important implications for understanding TGD gender development and perspective taking abilities.

Author information

Author	Role
Catherine Schaefer, University of Minnesota	Presenting author
Jenifer McGuire, University of Minnesota	Non-presenting author
Stacey Horn, University of Minnesota	Non-presenting author

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