Title: Overview of Human Geography: Gender and Sexuality
Headings: Gender and Sexuality
Gender and Sexuality
Content: For example, it is widely believed that girls are not as good at math as boys, and that this difference is rooted in some biological difference between male and female brains. But in fact studies have shown that if girls are given the same amount of attention as boys, and are exposed to positive messages about their abilities rather than stereotypes that tell them they are bound to do poorly, girls' math achievement is equal to boys' ( Else-Quest et al. 2010 ). Mainstream US culture recognizes only two genders, male and female. However, many other cultures have additional gender categories, collectively referred to as third genders. The specific social role of third gender people varies greatly from society to society. For example, bissu is one of the five genders recognized by the Bugis people of Indonesia. Bissu have their own distinctive type of clothing and act as religious specialists with roles in ritual that cannot be perfomed by men or women ( Peletz 2006 ). In the US, terms such as "genderqueer," "genderfluid," "androgyne," and "boi" are coming into use to describe third genders, though the definitions of these terms are not standardized. Gender identity is a person's internal sense of themselves as a man or woman or another gender.