Gender Identity

There are a few types of gender identity and sexual preferences.   Many people believe that sexual preference is a choice.   People who are homosexual and transsexual believe they are who they are not because they choose to be, but because it is who they were born to be.   In more recent times it is becoming more socially acceptable to express whether someone is heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or transsexual.   Even just 50 years ago people believed that anyone who was anything other than heterosexual had some sort of mental disease and that it was not normal.   Sexual preference and gender identity is based on biological factors, such as nature and nurture, and is still a very controversial topic.
There are two biological factors that may affect a person’s gender identity and sexual orientation, nature and nurture.   Nature includes things such as: prenatal hormones, adrenal maturation, gonadal maturation, and hormones such as testosterone and estrogen.   Some nurturing factors could be: broken home, being raised by a single parent, bad parenting, and parents putting too much pressure on the child.   From the time of conception until adulthood, a child goes through many transformations.   As many people may not know, at time of conception every baby starts off as female.   From there until about six weeks, things such as prenatal hormones, estrogen, and testosterone causes changes of the development of the sex of the child.   For males, there is the development of the sry protein that causes the medulla of each primordial gonad to grow and develop into testes (Pinel, 2009).   After the development of the gender of the child and the child is born, there are many other factors that account for sexual orientation.   The nature side of the sexual orientation development takes place again at puberty when the hormones are kicked into overdrive.   Nurture is a huge factor from time of birth until adulthood.   Nature does not play into it much after birth.   The nurture side has to...