Ich wurde auf diese Studie aufmerksam, weil auf Twitter eine Diskussion darüber vorhanden war, wie Creepy sie ist. Die körperliche Attraktivität von Grundschülerinnen bzw 6-jährigen Mädchen bewerten? Ernsthaft? Und natürlich der Gedanke, dass es gegenüber den Mädchen reichlich unfair ist etc.
Ich finde sie dennoch vom Grundansatz interessant für eine Besprechung:
University students, masked to group status, judged the physical attractiveness of girls with gender identity disorder and clinical and normal control girls, whose photographs were taken at the time of assessment (X¯X¯ age, 6.6 years). Each student made ratings for all girls for five traits: attractive, beautiful, cute, pretty, and ugly. A multivariate analysis of variance showed a significant group effect. Multiple comparisons of the significant univariate effects showed that the girls with gender identity disorder had significantly less attractive ratings than the normal control girls for the traits attractive, beautiful, and pretty who, in turn, had less attractive ratings than the clinical control girls. Girls with gender identity disorder and the normal controls also had less attractive ratings than the clinical controls for the trait cute. Correlational analyses showed that age was substantially negatively related to the attractiveness ratings in the group of girls with gender identity disorder, but was considerably less so in the two control groups. The extent to which the group differences in attractiveness were due to objective, structural differences in facial attractiveness vs. socially created, or subjective, processes is discussed.
Quelle: Physical attractiveness of girls with gender identity disorder
Die Studie hat schon den Nachteil einer sehr kleinen Teilnehmergruppe:
There were 12 girls with a DSM-III-R diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood (n = 11) or Gender Identity Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (n = 1) (APA, 1987). These girls had been referred by either their parents or a professional to a clinic specializing in gender identity problems in children and adolescents; the clinic is housed within the child psychiatry service of a psychiatric research institute.
The clinical control girls (n = 12) were obtained from two sources.
One girl had participated as a control for one of the girls with gender
identity disorder in a previous study concerned primarily with the assessment of sex-typed behavior and general psychosocial functioning in children with gender identity disorder. The remaining 11 were taken from a pool of girls referred to a child protection agency because they had been either sexually abused (n = 2) or had experienced physical abuse or emotional neglect (n = 9) and who participated in a study by Maing (1991).
The normal control girls (n = 10) were also obtained from two sources.
Two girls were taken from a pool of female siblings of boys with gender
identity disorder. The remaining 8 were taken from a pool of normal control girls also studied by Maing (1991).
Also
- Mädchen mit Geschlechteridentitätsstörungen
- Mädchen mit Mißbrauch- oder Vernachlässigungserlebnissen
- „Normale Mädchen“
Schon eine bizarre Zusammenstellung.
Da liegen die Daten teilweise sehr eng beieinander. Mir ist auch etwas unwohl bei der Abgrenzung „Attraktiv“ und „Hübsch“.
Interessanterweise sind die „Geschlechtsauffälligen“ und die „Mißbrauchten“ beide bei „Ugly“ bei 0,56, bei „attraktiv“ bei 0,74 bzw 0,79 und bei „Hübsch“ bei 0,87 bzw bei 0,86
Irgendwie macht die Auswertung aus meiner Sicht da irgendwie keinen Sinn.
Die Effektstärkentabelle:
Und noch die weitere Tabelle:
Dennoch würde ich die grundsätzliche Frage wissenschaftlich interessant finden, ob man bei Kindern mit Geschlechteridentitätdisorder im Schnitt schon gewisse körperliche Auffälligkeiten vorfindet, was ja zu den Theorien über pränatale Hormone passen würde. Ich denke dazu müsste man die Studie aber ganz anders konzipieren.
Aus der Besprechung:
The purpose of the present study was to assess the physical attractiveness of girls with gender identity disorder and age-matched clinical and normal control girls. Unlike previous clinical and research work (Green et a/., 1982; Stoller, 1972, 1975), which relied on either concurrent or retrospective parental appraisals, our study examined physical attractiveness objectively. The results show that university student raters, masked to group status, perceived girls with gender identity disorder to be significantly less attractive than both the clinical and normal control girls
It should be noted that two of the five adjectives (pretty and beautiful) were intended to be at least somewhat stereotyped in a feminine direction. 6 The effect sizes were the greatest for these two adjectives. Nevertheless, significant between-groups effects were also observed for the traits attractive and cute. It would be useful to test whether the girls with gender identity disorder would have more favorable attractiveness ratings if stereotypical masculine adjectives are employed (e.g., handsome, rugged). Although the normative literature implicates objective facial features in attractiveness ratings (cf. Hildebrandt and Fitzgerald, 1979a), our data do not allow us to determine the extent to which the between-groups difference was due to objective factors, subjective factors, or some proportional combination of both. It is conceivable that a structural analysis of the girls‘ faces would yield differences along the lines suggested by Hildebrandt and Fitzgerald (1979b) to be associated with cuteness during infancy. It appears warranted to analyze infant photographs of girls with gender identity disorder to see if similar properties could be identified. This would be particularly intriguing from a psychosexual perspective, since some studies have implicated objective properties of infant faces, even newborns, that are correlated with accurate predictions of biological sex (e.g., Gewirtz and Hernandez, 1984, 1985, Gewirtz et aL, 1990; for studies of the sex-correlated features of adult faces, see Brown and Perrett, 1993; Bruce et al., 1993; Burton et al., 1993). Hildebrandt and Fitzgerald (1977, 1979b) found that perceived facial „cuteness“ predicted college students‘ judgments that infants were female. Perhaps premasculine infant girls have facial properties more commonly associated with infant boys. In many studies of physical attractiveness, social cues likely affect rater impressions. In studies of children, including the present one, hairstyle and clothing style are probably particularly salient. Clinically, it has been observed that girls with gender identity disorder often show a strong aversion toward wearing culturally normative feminine clothing (e.g., dresses or „frilly“ tops), prefer clothing more typically worn by boys, and insist on having very short hair (Green, 1974; Stoller, 1975; Zucker, 1982). These social cues often result in these girls being misidentified as boys. Based on our clinical notes, 6 of the 12 gender-referred girls in the present study were systematically misidentified by peers or strangers as boys at the time of the assessment. For example, one girl (age 12 years) registered herself at a new school as a boy without difficulty. Another girl (age 6) began spelling her name as „Tony“ instead of „Toni.“ Coupled with her gender-ambiguous physical appearance, she quickly lost her previous popularity among the female peer group, and her friends began to query the teacher if Toni was really a boy. A third girl (age 4), upon entry into junior kindergarten, was thought to be a boy, and her teacher was convinced, based on her appearance, that her parents had erred in identifying her on the school registration form as a girl. Because this girl came from a nonWestern culture, her teacher was unable to determine her actual sex based on her given name. She was unable to ask the girl about her sex because she did not speak English. The teacher reported that she took this little girl to the washroom and pulled down her blue jeans „to check.“ Another girl (age 6) who, for her fifth birthday, had only one request for a present–a penis–was unequivocally assumed to be a boy by the peer group and her teachers. The socially masculine physical appearance of some girls with gender identity disorder can be viewed, therefore, simply as a sign of the underlying cross-gender identification. The extent to which their physical appearance „drives“ the cross-gender identification is unclear. From a transactional perspective, however, one could argue that the masculine appearance of at least some of these girls would have a marked effect on their social interactions and self-representations and thus contribute to the consolidation of a masculine gender identity. As noted earlier, our correlational analyses show that older girls with gender identity disorder are perceived to be substantially less attractive. Clinically, it has been our impression that the parents of these older girls eventually chose to allow their daughters to adopt a more masculine appearance vis-a-vis clothing and hairstyle. Their daughters‘ marked insistence on shaping their appearance in this way was often experienced by their parents as extremely stressful. Parents often reported that their daughters would have severe temper tantrums if not allowed to wear masculine clothing or to have their hair cut short. It is likely that with some of the younger girls their parents felt that they still had some degree of influence regarding their daughter’s appearance. It would be interesting, therefore, to monitor over time the younger girls with gender identity disorder whose physical appearance was more conventional to see if it was maintained or shifted to a more masculine style. Alternatively, it is possible that the younger girls were less gender-dysphoric than were the older girls and that this was reflected, in part, by the apparent differences in physical attractiveness. With a larger sample, it would be possible to examine whether there is an association between physical appearance and measures of actual sex-typed behavior. The correlational analyses also showed a negative relation between attractiveness and maternal report of behavioral problems, which was observed in both the girls with gender identity disorder and the controls, even with age partialled out. In adults, links between attractiveness and clinical symptomatology have been demonstrated (e.g., Archer and Cash, 1985; Farina et al., 1977) and similar findings have been observed for children (e.g., Barocas and Black, 1974; Cavior and Howard, 1973; Johnstone et al., 1992; Kennedy, 1990; Salvia et al., 1975). The nature of this relation is, however, unclear. On the one hand, relative attractiveness may elicit more favorable responses from significant others, which protects against the development of behavioral problems. On the other hand, it is possible that a youngster with behavioral problems may pay less attention to her physical appearance or receive less attention from caregivers, which may also have an impact on one’s attractiveness. Whatever the explanation, the relation between attractiveness and behavior problems in the present study shows a similar pattern in the gender-referred girls and the controls. Retrospective studies have clearly documented that childhood masculinity is strongly associated in adult females with gender identity disorder (transsexualism) or a homosexual sexual orientation (Bailey and Zucker, 1995; Blanchard and Freund, 1983). A socially phenotypic masculine appearance is extremely common among adult females with gender identity disorder (Stoller, 1972) and is characteristic of some homosexual women (Rothblum, 1994; see also Dew, 1985; Dunkle and Francis, 1990; Laner and Laner, 1980; Unger et al., 1982). To date, the number of girls with gender identity disorder who have been followed prospectively into their adolescence or adulthood is too small to verify the retrospective data. However, the results of the present study suggest that a socially phenotypic masculine appearance characteristic of adult females with gender identity disorder and some homosexual women likely has its origin in childhood.
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Alles Evolution 