Peter Glick- Department of Psychology, Lawrence University, Appleton, WI, United States
This inaugural article considers two types of challenges – scientific and cultural – facing researchers who study gender, sexualities, and relationships. For the scientific challenges, I focus on the tension between constructing parsimonious theories while simultaneously accounting for the complexity of gender, sexuality, and relationships. I focus on ambivalent sexism theory as an example that illustrates both the advantages and disadvantages of parsimonious theories before turning to a topic for which achieving parsimony has been elusive: gender identity. Finally, I address the current, highly politicized cultural environment, addressing attempts to suppress gender and sexual diversity, as well as to silence teaching and research on these topics.
Gender, sexuality, and relationships: reflections on scientific and cultural challenges
This new journal, Frontiers in Social Psychology, represents a timely – indeed, past due – addition. In the past few decades, research on gender, sexuality, and relationships has expanded in frequency, reach, and sophistication. From both a scientific and cultural standpoint, the interest in and social impact these topics create cannot be underestimated. I am honored to contribute the inaugural article to this new section. What follows represents my idiosyncratic opinions, which should not be mistaken for prescriptive edicts or editorial opinion or policy. I begin by offering some thoughts on the challenges researchers in these areas face from a scientific perspective, focusing on the tension between constructing parsimonious theories while simultaneously accounting for the complexity of gender, sexuality, and relationships. I use ambivalent sexism theory to consider both the advantages and disadvantages of parsimonious theorizing. The next section considers whether the field can achieve parsimony with respect to the complexities of gender identity. Finally, as a bookend to the scientific challenges, I address the political elephant in the room: how an increasingly polarized political environment threatens the enterprise this new Frontiers section represents.
Although there has been perennial tension between change and resistance to change with respect to gender, sexuality and relationships, recent attacks on academia threaten independent scholarship. For example, in the U.S., state governors and legislatures have passed laws that seek to prohibit teaching about or researching sex or gender discrimination (as well as systemic racism) in schools, colleges, and universities (Sachs, 2021). Similar efforts have occurred in Europe and South America (Apperly, 2019). Given the current political polarization surrounding sexuality and gender identity, launching this new section has greater meaning beyond acknowledging the need for more journal space on gender, sexuality, and relationship research: it affirms and preserves scientific inquiry on culturally contested topics.
Can parsimonious theories handle the complexity?
Gender, sexuality, and relationships represent fertile topics for developing theories and conducting research. At the same time, these topics present formidable scientific challenges as theorists and researchers attempt to grapple with their inherent complexity. Arguably, cultural developments, such as greater awareness of non-binary gender identities or the notion that gender can be fluid and malleable, have outpaced psychological theories that generally treat male and female as broad, binary, and stable constructs.
The traditional preferences in psychological science for parsimonious theories and experimental research designs may seem ill-suited to capturing or explaining variation in gender identity (e.g., non-binary and intersectional identities), sexuality, and relationships. For example, as researchers engaged in experimental work on the intersections between gender and other identities know, experiments quickly become costly and unwieldy as each additional identity the researcher includes at least doubles the research design. And theorists who seek to move beyond binary gender risk becoming lost in seemingly endless possibilities that can devolve into intractable taxonomies. According to one website, the current count for gender identities stands at 107, with room for expansion (Sexual Diversity, 2023). Blumberg et al. (2023) provide fewer categories, but add the caveat that the number of gender identities will likely grow and should not be considered finite.
How can theorists and researchers include and honor such complexity while remaining committed to constructing parsimonious theories tested via experimental designs? Or should valuing parsimony and pinpointing causal relationships be dethroned as scientific values? It's a conundrum. Without parsimony, a field risks becoming a confusing welter of facts and observations that lose coherence. How does research possibly account for 107 distinct genders or keep pace with an ever-changing list? At the same time, at what point does the preference for parsimony do violence to the complexity of human behavior and psychology?
There are no easy answers and where one lands on these issues may be viewed as a matter of taste. Ultimately, definitive answers cannot be dictated for a field as a whole. Openness to a broad methodological toolkit and descriptive as well as experimental research represent key strengths of psychological science. That said, here are some thoughts on the matter.
As an exercise in thinking through the trade-offs between parsimony's costs and benefits, I focus on the work I know best, my collaboration with Susan Fiske to develop ambivalent sexism theory (AST; Glick and Fiske, 1996, 2001). The theory can be stated quite simply: in conventional (binary) gender relations men hold greater power and status, leading to hostile sexism, yet heterosexual men and women typically have intimately interdependent relationships, resulting in benevolent sexism. In short, unlike other intergroup relations, people often characterize relations with the other (binary) gender as adhering to the adage “can't live with them, can't live without them.” Thus, women are both oppressed and adored by men, and men are both resented yet admired (as protectors and providers) by women (Glick et al., 2000, 2004). Note that this odd combination – power disparity along with intimate interdependence – likely created ambivalence long before the feminist movement or any glimmer of contemporary gender politics. Gendered interdependence theoretically traces back to the heterosexual reproductive biology and the advent of patriarchy in human history. In other words, from the start Fiske and I viewed sexist ambivalence as an ancient rather than contemporary development.
Ambivalent sexism theory's strength and its potential weaknesses stem from its parsimony, in which two variables (power disparity, intimate interdependence) create two aspects of sexist ideology (hostile sexism, benevolent sexism). Indeed, the simplicity of the theory led two of four reviewers to characterize the original 1996 paper that introduced the theory and the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI) as a scale-development paper with insufficient theoretical implications for acceptance in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The underlying variables (power, interdependence) had little novelty. Both have rich and, for psychology, long histories with respect to understanding group relations (e.g., Deutsch, 1949; Sherif and Sherif, 1953). AST's innovative insight (see also Jackman, 1994) was to consider these two variables as co-occurring in gender relations, rather than viewing power disparities and interdependence as mutually exclusive or negatively related.
Ambivalent sexism theory's relatively simple insight about how power disparity + intimate interdependence shape gender ideologies and gender relations illustrate the power of parsimony. As a classroom exercise, I ask students to imagine an extra-terrestrial society comprising two sentient, alien groups. First, I introduce power disparity (one group is bigger, stronger, and dominates their joint society's leadership) and ask students how the groups likely interact with, feel about, and stereotype each other. Students reliably generate the various ills and resentments associated with dominance and subordination: hostility, segregation, and brutal exploitation or even genocide.
I then introduce intimate interdependence, stating that subordinate group members produce a pheromone that, when absorbed by skin-to-skin contact, produces a sought-after high craved by the dominant group (an imperfect and one-sided analog to heterosexual sex). Students immediately appreciate that this new fact has critical implications for intergroup relations. A new energy and buzz animate the small group discussions as students wrap their heads around the idea that dominance and subordinance remain, yet subordinated group members have become valuable to the dominant group, perhaps as a kind of property. Students quickly develop ideas analogous to gender relationships, such as patronizing benevolence, and speculate that dominant group members might offer provision to subordinated group members in exchange for the desired pheromone. They also imagine potential practices ranging from the equivalent of marriage to enslavement, including harems (with the most powerful members of the dominant group “owning” multiple pheromone-producing members of the subordinated group). Discussions turn to questions about the equivalent of sexual assault and coercion, with students asking whether the pheromone must be given willingly. Two simple facts create myriad implications, illustrating how parsimonious theory can have considerable explanatory power.
Research has borne out the utility of the theory and discovered many unanticipated implications. Fiske and I theorized from the start that benevolent and hostile sexism, even if affectively opposite, represented a coordinated system of control aimed at keeping women “in line” (i.e., compliant, subservient, and catering to men's needs). We did not imagine, however, just how strongly the two ideologies would correlate (at almost 0.9!) when using national averages as the unit of analysis (Glick et al., 2000). Nor did we anticipate finding that women endorse benevolent sexism more than men in the nations where men score highest on hostile sexism. This sparked the protection racket hypothesis: men's hostility creates the threat that motivates women to embrace benevolent sexism to secure protection and provision … from men. In nations where women experienced less threat (i.e., men's hostile sexism was relatively low), women had greater freedom to reject benevolent sexism.
Other researchers showed how exposure to benevolent sexism leads women to justify the current, unequal social system (Jost and Kay, 2005) and undermines women's willingness to take collective action to change the status quo (Becker and Wright, 2011). Researchers interested in organizational outcomes showed how benevolent sexism operates in the workplace, leading to “soft” (and therefore less informative) feedback and assigning less challenge to women compared to men (King et al., 2012) or providing dependency-inducing rather than autonomy-oriented help (Shnabel et al., 2016).
Relationship researchers have shown that many heterosexual women show a romantic preference for benevolently sexist, as compared to nonsexist or hostile sexist men (Kilianski and Rudman, 1998; Bohner et al., 2010; Gul and Kupfer, 2019), especially if they have attachment anxiety (Cross and Overall, 2018). Benevolent sexism predicts endorsement of traditional heterosexual dating norms (e.g., that men should pay the bill, initiate dates, and initiate physical intimacy; Viki et al., 2003) as well as mate preferences that reinforce traditional gender roles, such as women seeking a male partner with status and resources (Travaglia et al., 2009) and men seeking partners who will view their own careers as secondary to serving a supporting role (Chen et al., 2009).
Although ambivalent sexism theory illustrates the explanatory power parsimonious principles can generate, it has a critical limitation. The theory and, therefore, the measure associated with it, presume a binary, cisgendered, heterosexual norm. To understand conventional heterosexist attitudes, Fiske and I created a theory about heterosexist assumptions and ideologies, operationalizing these via the ASI. Further, we developed the ASI using predominantly white U.S. samples. Correspondingly, the image of women participants likely conjured in response to scale items likely fell into a white women default. Our aim, of course, was not to endorse conventional views about gender but to offer a way to assess them, enabling researchers to examine their correlates and effects. However, the theory fails directly to address anything outside of those default norms, other than a general hostility to alternative expressions of gender and sexuality. And the measure was built on statements that implicitly rely on binary, cisgender, heterosexual assumptions.
When asked to respond to the ASI, these conventional assumptions may create unease or ambiguity. For example, benevolent sexism items not only refer to binary gender but tend to imply heterosexuality (e.g., “A good woman should be set on a pedestal by her man”). Respondents, especially those who are not cisgender or not heterosexual, may feel uncomfortable with or excluded by the implicit assumptions in these statements. Further, the theory's cisgender, binary, heterosexual assumptions have tended to guide research into some directions at the expense of others. For example, it took about two decades before researchers considered intersectional questions related to ambivalent sexism, such as whether a target's race or ethnicity matters (McMahon and Kahn, 2016; Campbell et al., 2023) or whether non-heterosexual people hold ambivalently sexist attitudes (Cowie et al., 2019; Cross et al., 2021).
The problems noted above may have more to do with the measure than ambivalent sexism theory itself. For the latter, the underlying constructs (power disparity and interdependence) can potentially be leveraged to address previously ignored issues, such as sexual orientation or intersectionality. For example, given the tendency for heterosexuals to engage in homogamy on dimensions such as social class and race/ethnicity (Blackwell and Lichter, 2004), this should theoretically reduce heterosexual men's perceived intimate interdependence toward women whose social class or race/ethnicity do not match their own. Ambivalent sexism theory would predict that men would hold less benevolently sexist attitudes toward women in various outgroups on dimensions such as class, race, or ethnicity. Consistent with this hypothesis, McMahon and Kahn (2016) found that male respondents (who were mostly white) were less likely to endorse benevolent sexism items when the items specifically referred to Black (as compared to white) women.
Or consider how sexual orientation theoretically should affect perceived intimate interdependence and, therefore, benevolent sexism. If benevolent sexism stems from heterosexual interdependence, then gay men and lesbian women should theoretically be less likely to endorse it than heterosexual men and women. Consistent with this reasoning, Cowie et al. (2019) found that heterosexual men had higher benevolent sexism scores than bisexual men, while gay men had the lowest scores on benevolent sexism. Similarly, they found that heterosexual women, who should be more likely to feel they may benefit from benevolent sexism, scored higher than lesbian and bisexual women.
Research by Cross et al. (2021) seems both to confirm ambivalent sexism theory's basic, parsimonious principle, but reveal potential problems in measurement for individuals who have non-heterosexual orientations. Specifically, measurement invariance analyses on a large sample that included heterosexual men and women as well as gay men and lesbian women revealed configural invariance for the ambivalent sexism inventory, but not factor loading or intercept invariance.
Configural invariance indicated that across men and women with heterosexual vs. same-sex sexual orientations, sexist ideologies reliably split into hostile and benevolent components. Supporting ambivalent sexism theory's most basic contention. However, items loadings within the benevolent and hostile sexism subscales varied for respondents with different sexual orientations and intercept invariance showed different “starting points” (degree to which respondents typically tend to agree or disagree with scale items) as well. Given the central role heterosexual intimacy plays in ambivalent sexism theory, the finding that people with heterosexual vs. same-sex orientations interpret or react in different ways to items that assume heterosexuality is not surprising. Yet, as Cross et al. (2021) point out, their findings present a problem for comparing scores from different groups. Excising heterosexual intimacy from the scales seems untenable given the role it has in creating sexist ambivalence as in cultural ideologies, but as Cross et al. (2021) suggest, different measurement tools may be required to more accurately assess sexual minority individuals' sexist attitudes. These findings do not contradict ambivalent sexism's basic tenets, but rather point out the need to consider more fully how sexist attitudes are experienced and expressed among individuals for whom romantic heterosexual intimacy as a central life goal does not apply.
My conviction in the utility of parsimonious theories should not be interpreted as prescriptive or restrictive. Psychological theories and research must be inclusive for ethical reasons, so as not to exclude, ignore or diminish some individuals, as well as to achieve scientific precision. This new journal will ideally create a big tent that includes a broad range of topics, methods (from qualitatively descriptive to rigidly experimental), and levels of analysis. However, creating a diverse yet cohesive science will no doubt remain a difficult task. Below I consider the challenges to achieving parsimony, cohesion, and agreement about a key concept: gender identity.
What is gender identity?
Sandra Bem and Janet Spence represent pioneers who independently developed conceptions and measures that continue to influence the field's approach to and understanding of gender identity. Each richly deserves acknowledgment and gratitude from contemporary researchers. In particular, the measures each developed – the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI; Bem, 1974, 1981) and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ; Spence and Helmreich, 1980) – remain remarkably popular among researchers seeking to assess gender identity (Wood and Eagly, 2015). Operationally, the measures each produced are highly similar, assessing gender-stereotypical personality traits. However, Bem and Spence disagreed on what these scales signified (Spence and Helmreich, 1981; Spence, 1991).
Bem was ahead of her time in challenging the gender binary by introducing psychological androgyny as a categorical alternative to masculinity and femininity. She did so through a 2 × 2 categorization scheme, sorting people based on whether they scored high or low on each of two dimensions assessed by the BSRI – masculine and feminine personality traits. Bem characterized people who scored high on both dimensions as exhibiting psychological androgyny, whereas those who scored low on both dimensions received the unfortunate “undifferentiated” designation. Of course, individuals who scored high on one dimension and low on the other were categorized as either feminine or masculine depending on which dimension they endorsed as self-descriptive. Bem also argued that these individuals were “gender-schematic;” i.e., that they tended to conform to gender norms and to use gender as a lens through which they viewed and evaluated themselves and others.
Bem's 2 × 2 classification scheme waned in influence even as the BSRI became a preferred way among researchers to measure gender identity. The BSRI's popularity as a “gender identity” measure persisted despite the incisive critiques Spence levied against labeling the BSRI as measuring “gender identity” and against using it to classify people as “gender schematic” or “aschematic.” As Spence and Helmreich (1981) put it, “the BSRI measures primarily self-images of instrumental and expressive personality traits… (which) show little or no relationship to global self-images of masculinity and femininity or to unidimensional constructs such as the tendency to utilize gender schemata” (p. 365). Instead, Spence (1991) argued that the BSRI, like Spence's PAQ (Spence and Helmreich, 1980), assessed desirable instrumental and expressive traits. Although Spence believed these traits capture important aspects of gender stereotypes and gendered self-descriptions, she argued that they do not assess gender identity per se. One critical piece of evidence Spence and Helmreich (1980) noted was that self-ratings of masculinity and of femininity correlate only weakly with self-ratings on the BSRI's “masculine” and “feminine” personality trait scales.
In sum, Spence pointed out decades ago that trait measures such as the BSRI and PAQ only modestly relate to self-perceived gender identity (e.g., responses to questions about how strongly one identifies with one's gender). As Wood and Eagly (2015) summarized: “When responding to personality measures such as the BSRI or PAQ, people may not regard the items as having masculine or feminine meaning or indicating anything about their social category membership” (p. 464). Other theorists' critiques focused on associating gender identity exclusively with personality traits and ignoring other components such as activity preferences, values, independent vs. interdependent self-construal, prescriptive gender attitudes, and occupational preferences. More recently, as alternative gender identities (e.g., genderqueer) have become more culturally salient, the BRSI and PAQ seem disconnected from the subjective sense people may hold of their “gender identity.” As Keener (2015) asserts “The current state of the field seems to be that we know we need to consider all the complex and intersecting factors that comprise gender, but the pragmatics of doing so are overwhelming” (p. 488).
In their review, Wood and Eagly (2015) contrast the personality-based approach to gender identity with another popular alternative, the “gender self-categorization approach.” This tradition stems from developmental perspectives (when do children first categorize themselves and others by gender?) and also a social identity theory perspective, which views group identities as an individual's subjective sense that they belong to a group (e.g., “I am a man”), while also considering the importance the individual assigns to the group identity (e.g., “Being male is central to my self-identity”). The social identity perspective represents a more general approach to group-based identities and emphasizes how identity strength can vary individually as well as situationally (Tajfel and Turner, 1979, 2004). In other words, this approach views gender as similar to other collective or social identities. Luthanen and Crocker's (1992) collective self-esteem measure has frequently been used to assess gender identity strength by asking people directly about the centrality of their gender identification, e.g., “Being a (woman/man) is an important reflection of who I am.”
This approach has a strong appeal as an alternative way to assess gender identity. It conceptualizes gender identity within a broader theoretical perspective on social identities, using measures that directly inquire about people's subjective identification with their gender group. However, gender identification may be more complex than most social identities, which can create ambiguity for simple group identification measures. Many gender researchers are interested in assessing whether an individual's gender identity conforms to conventional gender norms (i.e., traditional masculinity or femininity), which may be orthogonal to gender identity strength (Becker and Wagner, 2009).
Another problematic assumption concerns the social identity theory principle that strong identification with one's group enhances in-group favoritism. Social identity theorists recognize that status hierarchies can lead to more positive views toward high status groups being embraced by members of lower status groups due to legitimacy beliefs (Tajfel and Turner, 1979, 2004). Yet gender stereotypes in some ways defy both the general in-group bias principle and legitimacy exception. Due to the traditional interdependence between cisgender, heterosexual men and women, gender does not follow the usual social identity theory patterns. For example, on stereotype measures, both men and women tend to evince more positive stereotyping (from an affective standpoint) toward women than toward men, the group that holds greater status, known as the “women are wonderful” effect (Eagly and Mladinic, 1994). Preference for women also holds true for implicit measures (Rudman and Goodwin, 2004). Women's stereotypically assigned wonderful traits, as ample research shows, focus on their perceived warmth. As a result, these stereotypes function to maintain women's status disadvantage relative to men and to reinforce women's perceived suitability for traditional nurturing and child-rearing roles (see Rudman and Glick, 2021 for a review).
Intergroup bias measures become problematic as a gender identity indicator because societal norms have long characterized men and women not just as opposites, but as complementary halves of a cooperative whole. Are there any other human groups so widely viewed as needing to have intimate relationships with each other? So much so that many people in either binary gender group allegedly need a cross-group, intimate relationship to become “complete” and to achieve a full and happy life (Glick et al., 2000). In sum, the conventional notion that men and women need to be intimately intertwined in a symbiotic relationship complicates how gender identification relates to intergroup bias.
These complications become evident from results using Egan and Perry (2001) social identity approach to assessing gender identity. To address both the concern that prior gender identity measures have been too narrowly personality focused, Egan and Perry developed a multidimensional gender identity measure. Using a social identity perspective, they included four identity aspects: (a) gender typicality or the individuals' subjective sense about how prototypical they are compared to others in their gender category (e.g., being a “typical example” of one's gender), (b) gender contentedness or satisfaction vs. dissatisfaction with one's gender categorization (e.g., happiness with one's gender assignment, rarely wanting to do activities associated with the other sex), (c) felt pressure from close others (e.g., parents, friends) to conform to gendered expectations, and (d) intergroup bias (e.g., attributing positive qualities to own gender and negative qualities to the other).
In their research with 8th grade students (average age about 12 years), Egan and Perry (2001) found that correlations among these four gender identity components were “either modest or non-significant” which they viewed as “confirming the utility of a multidimensional approach to gender identity” (p. 456). These results also confirm, however, the difficulties with any multidimensional approach to gender in which the various identity components cannot be averaged together to form a cohesive overall identity index. One reasonably might conclude that parsimony simply cannot be attained when measuring gender identity. Yet from another perspective, Egan and Perry's approach, like other established approaches to assessing gender identity, fails to be complicated enough by not expressly considering alternatives to binary gender identity (beyond rating oneself as low in gender typicality and/or as lacking gender contentedness). As Keener (2015) pointed out, going beyond the gender binary requires considering not only cisgender, but genderqueer, intersex, and transgender identities. Explicitly considering such alternative gender identities creates another conundrum as inclusivity would seem to create incredible complexity in assessing gender identity.
One solution would be to give up conceptualizing gender identity as an individual trait. An intriguing article by Morgenroth and Ryan (2018) that translates Butler's (1990) approach to gender into a psychological framework suggests a theoretical perspective that dispenses with gender identity entirely. Morgenroth and Ryan (2018) describe Butler's view as characterizing gender as performative rather than an identity, resonating with classic sociological and social-psychological views that characterize social life as largely determined by scripted roles. They note the ways in which Butler's theorizing comfortably intersects with at least some aspects of social role theory (e.g., the influence of social norms) and social identity theory (e.g., how arbitrary group classifications can create behavioral conformity to group norms). However, unlike these social psychological theories, Butler seems to reject the notion that gender identities become internalized and therefore a stable self-attribute.
As Morgenroth and Ryan (2018) suggest, the more pliable, performative aspects of gender conformity deserve more attention. Gender norms possess a strong pull even among those who seemingly reject them. For example, precarious manhood research suggests that even men who rate themselves as egalitarian or even as feminists seem highly susceptible and reactive to masculinity threats (Bosson et al., 2013). Morgenroth and Ryan (2018) contend that Deaux and Major's (1987) interactionist approach to gender – which focuses on situational factors that lead to gendered behavior within daily social interaction – represents the social psychological approach most compatible with Butler. For those interested in moving toward a more situational, interactionist approach to gender, revisiting Deaux and Major's (1987) insightful analysis should be generative, presenting a way to analyze gendered behavior without presuming inherent differences or identity-driven behavior. Deaux and Major's (1987) framework potentially provides a way to connect classic social psychological insights about situational influences with more fluid views about gender.
However, while gender certainly represents a performance that can be highly context dependent, it seems doubtful that research psychologists studying gender would completely give up on the notion that many people possess stable and meaningful gender identities that have considerable effects on their attitudes, behavior, and preferences (e.g., Vandello et al., 2023). Backlash against the perceived blurring of gender identity in contemporary culture (see below) suggests that many people not only hold a strong gender identity but also consider having one as central to being a well-adjusted and moral person. Indeed, when researchers measure gender identity strength (i.e., centrality of gender to self-concept) both women and men report strong identification (e.g., Cameron and Lalonde, 2001; Becker and Wagner, 2009; ratings well above a neutral midpoint). If most people view gender identity as a core component of their identity, it seems important for researchers to take it into account.
What then might be a way forward? I suggest we go back to basics, stripping down the construct “gender identity” to its most direct meaning. Although researchers may not normally seek inspiration in an edugraphic (educational graphic), Keener (2015) made a good case for doing so, reproducing a Genderbread Person illustration from Killermann (2015). The Genderbread Person provides some simple, useful distinctions on which to build. It breaks down gender-related phenomena into multiple conceptual categories: biological sex, sexual and romantic orientations, gender identity, and gender expression. Killerman uses two dimensions – separate “woman-ness” and “man-ness” continua – to describe gender identity. Having separate continua for self-perceived “woman-ness” and “man-ness” provides some leeway for indicating gender identities that do not fit the traditional gender binary (e.g., considering oneself as high in both maleness and femaleness). However, this approach only indirectly allows for alternative gender identities. Partly for this reason, Pan and Moore (2014) offered another version, known as the Gender Unicorn, which increases inclusion by adding a third identity dimension labeled “other genders.”
These educational graphics aim to separate the varied concepts related to gender and sexuality into distinct, understandable categories that can potentially be explained to relatively young children. In other words, they try to honor complexity but to reduce each construct to its most parsimonious definition. Gender identity simply becomes the individual's self-perceived identification on two (Genderbread Person) or three (Rainbow Unicorn) separate continua: maleness, femaleness, and other genders.
Starting with the simplest version – separating self-ratings on maleness and femaleness – while making it clear to respondents that they can rate themselves high on both or low on both has an intriguing resonance with what Bem was trying to accomplish. Although this approach reflects a social identity perspective (in contrast to Bem's personality-based approach), it would harken back to Bem's attempt to bust the gender binary by allowing people to score as “androgynous” or what might now be called “agender” (rather than “undifferentiated”). Of course, like Bem's approach, assessing identification separately with maleness and femaleness would also pick up on traditional, binary gender identity (indicated by a high score on one dimension and low score on the other). Unlike Bem's personality-based approach, however, such a measure would directly focus on the individual's subjective gender self-identification.
What about all the other gendered phenomena that researchers have proposed as aspects of gender identity, such as stereotypical personality traits, activity preferences, values, appearance, gender typicality, gender contentedness, and so on? In the Gender bread Person or Rainbow Unicorn schemes, these qualities would fit into the separate “gender expression” category, distinct from (but no doubt related to) gender identity. Thus, measures such as the BSRI and PAQ would remain useful tools, not as gender identity measures, but as gender expression measures that likely correlate to gender identity.
It seems appealing to come full circle back to Bem's initial attempt to break the hold of binary gender conceptions simply by separating masculine and feminine identification ratings. Having respondents separately rate self-perceived “maleness” and “femaleness,” rather than instrumental vs. expressive (or agentic vs. communal) personality traits better links to current cultural views about gender identity as well as to a social identity approach. Similar to how the BSRI and PAQ have commonly been used by researchers, identification with male-ness and female-ness could each be used to predict other variables, including various gender expressions.
However, another hurdle remains, taking more direct account of alternative gender identities when operationalizing gender identity. Ho and Mussap (2019) provide an answer. They used the Gender Unicorn as inspiration for their Gender Identity Scale (GIS), intended to be an inclusive gender identity measure. Specifically, Ho and Mussap aimed to include identities prevalent among trans and gender diverse adults (whom they recruited for their participants) while directly assessing gender identity rather than gender expression. Their measure features a common stem question “To what extent do you identify with each of the following genders?” and allows respondents to separately rate identity on three continua: (a) female/woman/girl, (b) male/man/boy, and (c) other gender(s). Respondents rate their identification with each on a 0 (not at all) to 100 (very strongly) scale; thus, responses assess strength of identification.
To evaluate the scale's utility at including alternative gender identities, participants also responded to an open-ended question about how they label their gender identity. Latent class analysis of GIS responses identified seven gender identities that corresponded well to terms (e.g., transfemme, agender) that respondents used to describe themselves. One unexpected problem was that some participants appeared to have thought their summed ratings across the three scales had to add to 100, but this can be handled by using different anchors or adding clarifying instructions.
Because Ho and Mussap's (2019) latent class analysis revealed categories based on combined ratings across dimensions that required the “other gender(s)” dimension, they advocate retaining it in the future. Doing so seems prudent to communicate inclusivity, signaling to respondents that the researchers acknowledge alternative gender identities. However, because the “other gender(s)” dimension could have very different referents or meaning for different respondents, it may not systematically predict gender expression variables. Ho and Mussap (2019) focused on whether their measure cohered with the labels people spontaneously use for their gender identity. But most researchers may be more interested in how gender identity measures predict gender expression (e.g., gendered personality, activity preferences, and gender traditional beliefs). In practice, identification with men/maleness and women/femaleness may turn out to have the most utility (though this remains an empirical question). As a relatively new measure, the GIS does not seem to have gained much traction yet in psychological research. In my view, it should. It would be informative to see how male and female identification and the interaction between the two predict various gender expression and other outcome variables.
At the very least, I want to advocate for the view that gender identity represents individuals' subjective identification with either specific gender categories or masculinity and femininity, not their self-ascriptions of instrumental and expressive (or, alternatively, agentic and communal) traits. The latter (personality traits) represent one aspect of gender expression. If so, gender identity potentially becomes a more tractable construct. The distinction between gender identity and gender expression offers a way forward to simplify gender identity as a concept by separating it from some of the past ways it has been assessed.
Masculinity, politics, and the war against gender, sexuality, and relationship science
Woolf (1929/2005) viewed the accelerating rise of European fascism in the 1920s, as well as a related transformation in literature and public mood, as a reactive reassertion of masculinity. Specifically, Woolf sensed that a previously romanticized (though clearly unequal, oppressive, and ambivalent) gloss on gender relations had transformed to a dominative, hostile, egocentric, assertive masculinity. In today's terms, Woolf viewed 1920s European culture and politics as a response to the masculinity threat posed by feared changes in women's roles, status, and power, leading to an aggrieved masculinity and hostile backlash. As she put it,
No age can ever have been as stridently sex-conscious as our own… The Suffrage campaign was no doubt to blame. It must have roused in men an extraordinary desire for self-assertion; it must have made them lay an emphasis upon their own sex and its characteristics which they would not have troubled to think about had they not been challenged. And when one is challenged, even by a few women in black bonnets, one retaliates, if one has never been challenged before, rather excessively. (p. 98)
Today's mood has similarly produced a stridently sex-conscious political moment. Consistent with Woolf's thesis about challenges to traditional gender relations leading to masculine self-assertion in politics, research clearly shows that masculinity has something to do with right-wing extremism. For example, Schermerhorn et al. (2023) have shown that masculine hegemony beliefs substantially account for people's support for male political candidates who have been accused of sexual assault. They measured hegemonic masculinity using items from the Male Role Norms Scale assessing beliefs that men should seek power and status, show emotional and physical toughness, and avoid anything smacking of femininity (e.g., taking on roles or jobs typically done by women). Using similar measures, Vescio and Schermerhorn (2021) showed the overwhelming contribution hegemonic masculinity beliefs play in contemporary support (among women as well as men) for Trump in the U.S. In both convenience and representative U.S. samples, hegemonic masculinity beliefs (i.e., valorizing traditional masculine ideals) predicted support for Trump among both men and women, even after accounting for related variables including distrust in government, sexism, racism, and xenophobia.
The desires to preserve or reinstate traditional gender relations, binary gender conceptions, and male dominance seem evident in policies enacted by current right-wing, authoritarian movements and leaders. In Russia, Putin has long combined careful displays of masculinity with policies aimed at repressing sexual minorities (MacFarquhar and Birger, 2023). In Hungary, Viktor Orban developed a playbook increasingly imitated by right-wing politicians in Western democracies, legislating policies to restrict women's reproductive rights, suppress sexual minorities, and ban LGBT content in schools (Wheaton and Wax, 2023). Leaders such as Trump in the U.S. and Bolsonaro in Brazil perform hegemonic masculine ideals, taking a “masculinity contest” approach to politics (e.g., toughness displays, rhetoric supporting violence, and attacks on rivals as insufficiently manly; Berdahl et al., 2018).
Given that masculine hegemony motives at least partly animate the populist right, it should not be surprising that right-wing politicians and activists have increasingly sought to suppress the academic study of gender and sexuality. Orban's government banned gender studies programs in Hungarian universities, Germany's far-right party has pledged to do the same should they attain power, and politicians have attacked academics and researchers studying gender in Italy, Bulgaria, and Sweden (Apperly, 2019). Similarly, right-wing attempts to ban gender studies (as well as critical race theory) have proliferated, with Florida's governor Ron DeSantis taking the lead in reshaping both early and higher education (e.g., what has become known as the “Don't say gay” law; Jones, 2023).
Florida's New College has been the testing ground in higher education, with a State takeover and hand-picked Board that has proposed eliminating gender studies because they view it as incompatible with a “classical” liberal arts education (Jones, 2023). The justifications have a consistent theme (across Europe and the U.S.), characterizing gender studies as a pernicious ideology, rather than a field of inquiry and attacks have not been confined to gender studies in the humanities; scientific researchers studying gender have also been in the crosshairs (Apperly, 2019).
Research into gender, sexuality, and relationships pokes the wasps' nest of cultural fears about changing gender norms. In addition to perceived threats to men's power and traditional gender roles, the notion that one's sex or gender may be malleable rather than unchanging cuts directly to identity concerns. It seems likely that the desire to preserve traditional, binary gender identities at least partly motivates the intense vitriol in right-wing rhetoric toward trans individuals (e.g., characterizing trans individuals as “grooming” children; Block, 2022). In a similar vein, academics who study (or even simply talk about) gender have been cast as promoting an ideology corrupts young people through “indoctrination” (Otten, 2023). Faculty in public universities in red states who study gender and sexuality are on the front lines of this battle. Temporarily stayed by a federal judge's order, Florida's 2022 Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (W.O.K.E) Act would forbid faculty from discussing systemic racism or sexism. Although it may be the most publicized effort, more than 60 similar or related measures aimed at muzzling teachers and professors had previously been introduced in various states (Sachs, 2021).
These efforts pose an existential threat to the social scientific study of sex and gender. A preliminary report by the AAUP concluded that “Florida is the ‘canary in a coal mine.' Indeed, the threat from authoritarian politicians who use phrases like Stop WOKE,' ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy,' and ‘indoctrination' to limit academic freedom while imposing their worldview upon institutions of higher education cannot be overstated. Neither can the threat of Florida-style legislation spreading across the country” (Kalhan et al., 2023, p. 17).
From a scientific perspective, this debut for the current section on gender, sexuality and relationships is not merely timely but overdue. The field has made tremendous progress in researching these issues, but clearly has only scratched the surface in understanding the psychological dynamics within and between these topics. From a cultural and political perspective, the launch of this new section and the likelihood that it will not merely survive but thrive, becoming inundated with high quality submissions, represents something more: an affirmation of values and resistance to those who would seek to suppress independent, scientific inquiry on gender and sexuality.
Data availability statement
The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.
Author contributions
PG: Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing.
Funding
The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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Keywords: parsimony, gender identity, ambivalent sexism, culture war, sexuality
Citation: Glick P (2023) Social psychological research on gender, sexuality, and relationships: reflections on contemporary scientific and cultural challenges. Front. Soc. Psychol. 1:1331160. doi: 10.3389/frsps.2023.1331160
Received: 31 October 2023; Accepted: 21 November 2023;
Published: 14 December 2023.
Edited by:
Rachel M. Calogero, Western University, CanadaReviewed by:
Nickola Overall, The University of Auckland, New ZealandCopyright © 2023 Glick. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Peter Glick, glickp@lawrence.edu