Psyvh

• Androgyny


  Individuals that embody qualities that are considered both masculine and feminine
• Cis


  Prefix that designates someone whose gender identity is consistent with what society considers appropriate for the sex assigned at birth
• Communication


  A dynamic, systemic process in which meanings are created and reflected in and through humans' interactions with symbols
• Content level of meaning


  The literal meaning of communication. Content-level meanings are the formal, or denotative, meanings of messages
• Critical research methods


  Modes of study that are informed by political commitments to interrogating power dynamics
• Culture


  The structures and practices, especially those relating to communication, through which a particular social order is produced and reproduced by legitimizing certain values, expectations, meanings, and patterns of behavior
• Essentializing


  The reduction of a phenomenon to its essential characteristics, which are generally presumed to be innate or unchangeable
• Gender


  A social, symbolic construction that includes an internal sense of identity, the external communication of that identity, as well as the cultural expectations assigned to biological sex
• Gender expression


  The external communication of one's gender identity through clothing, hairstyles, behavior, and voice
• Gender identity


  A person's private sense of, and subjective experience of, his/her/their own gender
• Gender role


  The cultural expectations assigned to one's sex
• Intersex people


  Used to describe various circumstances in which individuals are born with anatomical features that do not neatly conform to typical male or female sex classification
• Mixed research methods


  Scholarship that combines quantitative, qualitative, and critical methods of doing research
• Patriarchal


  Of or pertaining to patriarchy, "rule by the fathers." The term patriarchy generally refers to systems of ideology, social structures, and practices created by men, which reflect the values, priorities, and views of men as a group
• Qualitative research methods


  Aim to understand the nature or meaning of experiences, which cannot be quantified into numbers
• Quantitative research methods


  Way of gathering data that can be quantified and analyzing the data to draw conclusions
• Relationship level of meaning


  The nonliteral meaning of communication. Expresses how a speaker sees the relationship between self and other. May provide cues about how to interpret the literal meaning of a message, for instance, as a joke
• Sex


  A personal quality determined by biological and genetic characteristics. Male, female, man, and woman indicate sex
• Sexual orientation


  A person's preferences for romantic and sexual partners
• Transgender


  Someone who's biologically assigned sex and its accompanying gendered expectations do not match their gender identity
• Biological theory


  The theory that biological characteristics of the sexes are the basis of differences in women's and men's thinking, communicating, feeling, and other functions
• Cognitive development theory


  A developmental theory according to which children participate in defining their genders by acting on internal motivations to be competent, which in turn lead them to seek out gender models that help them to sculpt their own femininity or masculinity
• Gender binary


  The division of humans into two sexes and two corresponding genders that are presumed to be opposite, distinct, natural, and enduring. The gender binary assumes that a person's sex, gender, and sexuality align in socially prescribed ways
• Gender constancy


  A person's understanding that his/her/their assigned sex is stable or permanent and that it is accompanied by gendered expectations
• Gender schema


  An internal mental framework that organizes perceptions and directs behavior related to gender
• Gender schema theory


  Claims that cognitive processes are central to our learning what gender means in our culture and to learning how to perform our gender competently. Related to cognitive development theory
• Heteronormativity


  A view that promotes heterosexuality as natural and preferred and assumes all other sexual identities are abnormal
• Performative theory


  Claims that identity, including gender, is not something individuals have, but rather something they do through performance or expression
• Psychodynamic theories


  The theory that family relationships, especially between mother and child during the formative years of life, have a pivotal and continuing impact on the development of self, particularly gender identity
• Queer performative theory


  Integration of queer and performative theories into a perspective on performances as means of challenging and destabilizing conventional cultural categories and the values attached to them
• Queer theory


  Critique of conventional categories of identity and cultural views of "normal" and "abnormal," particularly in relation to sexuality. Queer theory argues identities are not fixed but fluid
• Role


  Social definitions of expected behaviors and the values associated with them; typically internalized by individuals in the process of socialization
• Social learning theory


  Theory that individuals learn to be masculine and feminine (among other things) by observing and imitating others and by reacting to the rewards and punishments others give in response to imitative behaviors
• Standpoint theory


  A theory that focuses on the influence of gender, race, class, and other social categories on circumstances of people's lives, especially their social positions and the kinds of experiences fostered within those positions. According to standpoint theory, political consciousness about social location can generate a standpoint that affects perspective and action
• Symbolic interactionism


  The theory that individuals develop self-identity and an understanding of social life, values, and codes of conduct through communicative interactions with others in a society
• Theory


  A way to describe, explain, and predict relationships among phenomena