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Arch Sex Behav (2010) 39:14571465 DOI 10.1007/s10508-010-9665-5
INVITED ESSAY
Robert Stollers Sex and Gender: 40 Years On
Richard Green
Published online: 12 August 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Abstract By its title, Sex and Gender announced a conceptual breakthrough in distinguishing basic elements of human experience. In Robert Stollers rst book, patients illustrating this divergence were lucidly presented. Transvestites and the newly publicized transsexuals were two examples. Clinical and dynamic distinctions between the two formed a basis for Stollers criteria for patient selection forsex change.They remain current. The complex identity of the intersexed was described with sensitivity and insight. It, too, remains timely. An innovativedescriptionofthegenesisofboyhoodtranssexualismwas presented in considerable detail. This nding is less commonly reportedtodaybutisalsonotlookedfor.Stollerwassympathetic to the request for sex change. He credited a biological contribution to the development of masculinity and femininity. Both stances were remarkable for a psychoanalyst. Robert Stoller introduced the termgender identity.It is now our vocabulary when we articulate this bedrock of personhood.
Keywords Gender identity Transsexualism
Transvestism Intersexuality Psychoanalysis
Introduction
The signicance of the title of Robert Stollers rst book was announced in the Preface:
we have split offgenderas a distinguishable part of sexuality. The word sex in this work will refer to the
male and female sex and the component biological parts that determine whether one is male or female. [There remain] tremendous areas of behavior, feelings, thoughts, and fantasies that are related to the sexes and yet do not have primarily biological connotations. It is for some of these psychological phenomena that the term gender will be usedThus, while sex and gender seem to common sense to be practically synonymous, and in everyday life to be inextricably bound together, one purpose of this study will be to conrm the fact thatsex and gender are not inevitably boundeach may go in its quite independent way. (Stoller, 1968, pp. vivii)
And, introduction of a seminal term: While the work of our researchteam hasbeenassociatedwith the term genderidentity, we are not militantly xed either on copyrighting the term or defending the concept as one of the splendours of the scientic world(Stoller, 1968, p. vi).
Gender Identity
I do not know exactly when Stoller began using the term. I am condent that it was the name of the program when I arrived...