Psychology of Women - PSYC 300 Exam 2

Vocabulary flashcards covering developmental gender roles, adolescent identity, human sexuality, sexual physiology, and reproductive health from Texas A&M PSYC 300 (Psychology of Women).

Gender identity

An individual's personal sense of being female or male, which typically develops around 2 to 3 years of age.

Socialization

The process by which each generation passes along to children the knowledge, beliefs, and skills that constitute the culture of the social group.

David Reimer

A Canadian man born male but raised as a girl following medical intervention after his penis was severely injured in a botched circumcision in infancy, documented in the book As Nature Made Him.

John Money

A sexologist who asserted that nurture rather than nature determines gender identity.

Menarche

The developmental onset or beginning of menstruation.

Adolescence

The transition period of development between childhood and adulthood.

Identity

The psychological process and outcome of deciding who we are and what we want to make of our lives.

Feminist identity

The adoption of a feminist social identity beyond mere support of ideas, influenced by factors such as feminist knowledge, being female, and holding nontraditional views.

Gender intensification

An increasing divergence in gender-related behaviors and attitudes between girls and boys that emerges during adolescence.

Kelli Peterson

A lesbian high school student who founded the Gay Straight Alliance in 1996, prompting the local school board to ban all campus clubs before a Utah law permitted rental access; featured in the PBS documentary Out of the Past.

Frigidity

A historical label defined by Freud as a failure of women to achieve vaginal orgasms, colloquially used to blame a woman for lacking sexual desire or being indifferent; currently holds no medical meaning.

Alfred Kinsey

An American biologist and sexologist who founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University in 1947 and published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953).

Kinsey scale

Also called the Heterosexual/Homosexual Rating Scale, a scale ranging from 0 (exclusively heterosexual) to 6 (exclusively homosexual) used to describe sexual orientation based on experience or response.

Masters & Johnson

A husband-and-wife research team who investigated the human sexual response from 1957 to the early 1990s through direct observation of subjects engaging in sexual activity.

Shere Hite

A sex researcher who found that women are more likely to achieve orgasms through masturbation than penile thrusting, and who criticized Masters and Johnson for adopting cultural biases in their research.

Vulva

The collective anatomical term for external female sex organs, including the mons pubis, labia majora, labia minora, clitoris, and urethra.

CUVA

An anatomical ordering representing female external genital and pelvic structures from top to bottom: Clitoris, Urethra, Vaginal canal, and Anus (with the anus not being part of the vulva).

Sexual response cycle

The sequence of physiological responses of women and men to sexual stimulation, comprising the excitement phase, plateau phase, orgasmic phase, and resolution phase.

Sexual double standard

The social standard under which sexually active men are characterized as 'studs' (or aggressors) while sexually active women are stigmatized as 'sluts' (or gatekeepers).

Sexual plasticity

The degree to which an individual's sex drive or sexual preference can be modified by cultural, social, and situational factors.

Dyspareunia

A female sexual problem defined by recurrent or persistent genital pain associated with sexual intercourse, reported by approximately 7% of women.

Female orgasmic disorder

A sexual dysfunction characterized by persistent difficulty, delay, or absence of experiencing orgasm, affecting almost 25% of women.

Heterosexism

The societal view and institutionalized belief that heterosexuality is the only normal orientation and that homosexuality is abnormal.

Homophobia

Negative reactions, prejudice, and irrational fear directed toward homosexuality and homosexual individuals.

Katrina Dalton

A researcher who argued that premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is fundamentally biological in origin.

Joan Chrisler

A psychologist who posited that premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is largely a myth and a socially constructed phenomenon.

Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD)

A severe form of premenstrual syndrome experienced by 3% to 9% of women, cataloged in the DSM under depressive disorders not otherwise specified.

Medicalization of childbirth

The institutional view and management of labor and birth as medical procedures taking place in hospitals, marked in the U.S. by Cesarean delivery in approximately 30% of births and induction in about 25%.

Andrea Yates

An American woman who confessed to drowning her five children in a bathtub on June 20, 2001, having suffered from postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, and schizophrenia.