Measurement of Psychosexual Differentiation

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, there has been a surge in interest in the study of infants, children, adolescents, and adults with physical intersex conditions or other congenital conditions that affect, among other things, the configuration of the external genitalia. Regarding psychologic evaluation, an important aspect of both short-term and long-term outcome concerns gender differentiation. This article provides an overview of various measures pertaining to gender identity, gender role, and sexual orientation that have been used in assessment studies of samples of either children and adults with gender identity disorder and/or children and adults with various physical intersex conditions. All of the measures have good psychometric quality although some have been studied more systematically than others. It is hoped that this overview will provide a template for the new generation of studies that are looking at both gender development and sexual orientation in people born with physical intersex conditions.

Sexual orientation, handedness, sex ratio and fetomaternal tolerance-rejection

“…Are bisexuals homosexual? Orientation has been ascertained not always in concordant instances: fantasies, coital-behavior, and non-coital-behavior, attraction, falling in love, oneiric representations, associated personality traits, and others (Remafedi et al, 1992;Traen et al, 2002;Narring et al, 2003;Zucker, 2005;Sandfort, 2005;Lippa, 2005). Is a person with homosexual fantasies, but heterosexual coital-behavior, homosexual, normal or psychotic?…”

Gender Dysphoria and Gender Change in Androgen Insensitivity or Micropenis

“…An improvement in future studies would be incorporation of measures that appreciate the multidimensional nature of both gender identity (Egan & Perry, 2001) and gender dysphoria. Measures are presently in construction that appreciate the complex nature of these two constructs and demonstrate the psychometric properties of reliability and validity (Zucker, 2005).…”

Utopías dicotómicas sobre los cuerpos sexuados

“…Las investigaciones previas al 2006 que divagan sobre la identidad de género futura de personas con condiciones intersexuales, ofrecen recomendaciones muy generales (Money, 1975(Money, , 1976Herdt, 1990;Martínez-Mora, 1994;Diamond y Sigmundson, 1997a, 1997bWilson y Reiner, 1998;Meyer-Bahlburg, 1996Zucker, 1999Zucker, , 2005Gracia Bouthelier, 2002;Bradley, et al, 1998;Hines, 2004;Cohen-Kettenis, 2005;Mazur, 2005). No es hasta la publicación del conocido "Consenso de Chicago" cuando se estandarizan las respuestas sobre qué identidad de género se desarrollará para cada síndrome concreto (Lee et al, 2006).…”

“…En estos últimos diagnósticos esos terrores de género se relacionan con la potencial influencia incontrolable de los andrógenos sobre el desarrollo de género, es decir, sobre la identidad, el comportamiento y el deseo (Bradley et al, 1998;Hines et al, 2003;Meyer-Bahlburg, 2005;Zucker, 2005, Mazur, 2005Cohen-Kettenis, 2005;Hines, 2011). Los andró-genos se presentan como responsables, tanto de los cambios de sexo como de la homosexualidad en, por ejemplo, niñas con HSC (Dessens et al, 2005;Wong et al, 2011) 19 .…”