The link between centrality, gender identity, and sexual pleasure

Abstract

This manuscript aims to study the effect of having high centrality on the commitment to heterosexual norms and heterosexual scripts. Centrality is the level of importance of one's gender is to an individual's identity which has been traditionally prescribed by stereotypical gender traits. Also, this study will evaluate whether gender identity plays a role in determining an individual's choice of sexual partners’ gender. This study focuses on an individual's gender makeup (on the scale of masculine and feminine) and the participants’ own view of importance for how gender identity plays a role in the way the individual feels about themselves. Previous research has focused on sex roles and gender stereotypes as it pertains to pleasure and intimacy, but these studies have only focused on binary gender identity categories (male/female). The researchers conducted a secondary data analysis using survey data, from the 2020 and 2021 Pleasure Study, on human sexuality that was collected online. There were a total of 1183 respondents in the study of various gender identities. The data shows strong correlations between highly masculine individuals with high centrality choosing sexual partners with high femininity and not individuals with high masculinity. This study showed that cismen with nonbinary partners and ciswomen with nonbinary partners had the lowest average centrality out of all the gender partner combinations.