Applications of a Functionalist Theory of Gender: A Response to Reflections and a Research Agenda

The Role of Power Within Critical and Humanistic Perspectives

Moradi’s (2019) response focused attention on the implications of the theory for considering power relations. She invoked the historical context of LGBTQ+ cultures, which resisted heteronormativity, and referenced the Radicallesbians and the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group—the latter had a marked early influence upon my teenage self. As a student in 1987, I found in the library of a women’s shelter in Toronto, the Leeds (1981) booklet on political lesbianism and, with my heart pounding, I asked the woman at the front desk if I could use their photocopier to make a copy. It was the first time I considered sexual identities in functional terms, as a signal of resisting oppression, and I found this idea compelling. In her considerations, Moradi (2019) queried whether in my framework, power emerges in a single domain or runs through all four of the domains in which gender functions. In reply, I describe here why the issue of power should be read as occurring within all the domains. Power appears in the model in two forms: heteronormative and cisgenderist hegemonic power that creates the need for gender identities, and subversive power that permits the stigma resistance and norm reconstruction, which is fostered by LGBTQ+ gender identities.

Hegemonic power is inherent in the description of the functions of gender within the four domains (psychological, cultural, interpersonal, and sexual), as each is prompted by a set of needs. These needs emerge across groups of people during the same period of time because of oppressive societal messages and acts that dominate that context. Within the psychological domain, power—invested in a restrictive gender system (e.g., a gender binary)—prevented the participants in our studies from feeling that they could be themselves authentically. On a cultural level, strong historically based expectations made clear to the participants that aspects of their selves were irreconcilable or unacceptable (e.g., being feminine and lesbian), and the power behind these messages was so overwhelming that it often silenced participants’ internal sense of themselves. In the interpersonal realm, power—constituted by the threat of rejection, harm, and alienation—drove participants’ needs for status and security. Finally, in terms of sexuality, power in the form of social norms led to the internalization of beliefs that participants were undesirable, repugnant, and unlovable. Because the norms across these domains were incongruent with the participants’ authentic sense of self, they resulted in needs to resist the gender norms that enforced these types of hegemonic societal power. The convergence of these shared needs across a group of people led to a gender identity community.

Subversive power is tied to the generation of new norms in the face of oppressive ones—it is the response to the needs generated by oppressive hegemonic power. It is the subversive power of gender that results in the four effects described in the framework (i.e., changes in identity, security, belonging, and social values) that run through all the domains in my theoretical framework. Throughout the original paper and in Table 1, I describe this power; I use various terms (security, shifting safety, reducing minority stress, empowerment) because the acts of resisting oppression and claiming emancipatory values result in many positive effects (as well as some negative effects, especially fatigue; Levitt et al., 2009).

I have found that the subversive power of gender functions across all domains in this theory. Finding language to name their authentic gender was profoundly powerful for many participants; it created the possibility of speaking truth and advocating for their own experience where it had not existed before (i.e., psychological effect). The formation of groups that provided communion around a gender identity allowed members to resist these dominant narratives and reconcile aspects of their identities that were seen as incompatible historically (e.g., being both masculine and gay; i.e., cultural effect). The development of these identities allowed participants to communicate status and social power in ways that were authentic (e.g., being butch-enough became associated with gaining social power, rather than being closeted-enough) and gender cues could be learned and manipulated to help people be more secure in a heterosexist world (i.e., interpersonal effect). Finally, gendered aesthetics allowed participants to celebrate their authentic sense of self as desired and celebrated (i.e., sexual effect). Types of subversive power can influence one another. For instance, developing sexual self-esteem allowed participants to feel more empowered and could bolster their ability to resist the stigmatization of their gender expression. The coexistence of both hegemonic and subversive power can help to explain the finding that minority groups appear to face both greater risk—and greater resilience—than majority groups, as noted by Watson (2019; Velez, Watson, Cox, & Flores, 2017).

Moradi’s (2019) discernment that I am framing LGBTQ+ communities as serving the functions of coalitions of consciousness (P. H. Collins, 2013) is especially apt. In the contexts of these gender communities, people developed shared psychological, cultural, interpersonal, and sexual experiences, understandings, and referents that were oriented toward mutual support and deliberate social change. These common psychological and experiential understandings of oppression led to group trust, interpersonal bonds, and political commitment that structured resistance and advocacy. In this way, the gender communities may be one type of affiliation within a larger set of coalitions of consciousness.

In the development of this theoretical framework, as well as in the development of coalitions, the role of agency is central. If a person is not seen as an agentic being, concerned with authenticity (i.e., desiring to live in accordance with the person’s core sense of self, which is independent of and often in opposition to social sanctioning), little resistance or community building can occur, and the subversive and resilience-building effects of gender identities may go unrecognized and under-explored. Because of their mutual valuing and complementary understandings of agency as an important human attribute, I locate my understanding of power in both humanistic and critical (feminist and multicultural) perspectives. While humanistic theories have focused on familial and interpersonal developmental experiences with power that lead people to mistrust their own experiences (e.g., Rogers, 1977), critical theories have focused upon the experiences linked to systemic societal oppression and trauma that obviates this same trust (Zerbe Enns & Nutt Williams, 2013). While often examined separately (Levitt, Pomerville, & Surace, 2016), both these sets of experiences interact. Conceptualizing and studying people from both feminist-multicultural and humanistic perspectives structures the recognition that people have both supports and pressures that may be occurring across different spheres of their lives. This is why feminist-multicultural and humanistic perspectives are equally central in my theory as well as others’ conceptualizations of power in research, theorizing, and therapy (Brown, 2007; Comas-Diaz, 2012; Levitt & Whelton, 2019).

The Application of a Functionalist Analytic Tool: Vital Questions and Directions

In response to the thoughtful ideas put forward in the special section of Psychology of Women Quarterly, I identify here some of the central problems that this theoretical framework can advance. I developed the framework of my theory of gender from a functional analysis of the commonalities across experiences of a number of specific gender identities, and it was not intended to reflect all the nuances of the many genders explored. For each of the gender identities that I described in the lead article of the special section, separate articles have been written that provide more detail and attunement to each specific gender and how its functions and effects play out (see Levitt, 2019, for a list of those articles).

There is great utility, however, in identifying common functions and effects of gender within communities. It responds to the call for more accurate conceptualizations of gender that support education, research, and practice to move beyond gender binaries (Hyde, Bigler, Joel, Tate, & van Anders, 2018). This framework orients researchers to consider central ways in which gender has been found to function and evolve across gender identity communities, while also supporting scholars to adjust and elaborate the functions to reflect the specific genders they are studying. The theory was developed by drawing from studies that were systematic, grounded in a rigorous and extensive mixed method program of community-driven research, and strategically based on the study of a diversity of gender identities. It is not meant to serve as a fixed checklist into which genders are forced, but as a flexible analytic tool that supports the investigation of central questions about gender and gender identity in a manner that recognizes the intertwining psychological, cultural, sociological, and sexual functions of gender. This theoretical approach to analysis can lead to the adoption of quantitative, qualitative, or mixed method research methods but, as it seeks an understanding of the functions and effects of gender across these four domains, it will likely either be grounded in qualitative methods or built upon prior literature that addresses those areas. In the next section, I describe an agenda for the field in six types of major problems to which this approach to inquiry can be applied that can further the understanding of gender.

How to conceptualize and study gender and gender identity as distinct from sexual orientation or other identities?

I developed my functional theory of gender from the empirical study of gender, with a specific focus on its transition into a community-endorsed gender identity. In the studies that formed the basis of my framework, I examined the ways that participants’ internal sense of gender functioned and how those functions expanded as their gender became named in relation to a gender identity community. Grounded in this line of inquiry, the domains are not expected to hold for a person’s internal sense of sexual orientation and sexuality generally (e.g., asexuality), without some adaptation. This said, the framework can be adjusted for the study of sexual orientation identities.

Sexual orientation tends to be considered as either innate or so deeply rooted that it is quite resistant to change (APA, 2009; Australian Psychological Society, 2015). This is similar to how most of our participants experienced their internal sense of gender as well (Polderman et al., 2018), but is distinct from how their gender identities were developed (and changed) in relation to the functions they served (Levitt, 2019). Therefore, it may not be fitting to ask about the functions of sexual orientation in the way gender identity has been explored. It is possible though, that asking about the effects of sexual orientations across different domains may be a coherent application of this framework.

The application of the functionalist framework to the adoption of sexual orientation identities, especially as tied to communities, however, may be more straightforward. For instance, an asexual identity may help a person develop a more authentic identity to resist cultural pressures to be sexual, to develop communication and affiliation with asexual people (e.g., wearing an asexuality flag), and to increase their self-esteem, as well as replace shame in relation to their asexuality. However, within the sexual domain, the development of an erotic aesthetic is particular to gender identities. It evolves from the process of attributing value to the signifiers developed in the other domains and characterizes the relation between gender and gender expression (see Levitt, 2019). It can help to remember that gender identity and sexual orientation operate independently. For instance, a lesbian can adopt a femme, butch, genderqueer, transgender, or cisgender feminine aesthetic (or none at all). Asexuality could be understood in this same way (e.g., Sloan, 2015). This framework may require similar adaptation to study other identities as well, after a consideration of the character of that identity. Researchers are encouraged to apply the framework with fidelity to the identities under study.

What are the functions and effects of LGBTQ+ and cisgender heterosexual gender identities?

The functionalist theory of gender allows for flexibility in its application across gender identities (as can be seen in the application of this approach across communities, resulting in descriptions attuned to each gender identity). Gender identities can function to resist hegemonic pressures in multiple ways, thus developing an intimate understanding of a gender identity community is necessary to engage in this work. The sources of oppressive gender messages may vary. For instance, femme sexual minority women might not typically experience cisgender-related shame about their sexuality that is inflicted upon many gender non-conforming LGBTQ+ groups, because their appearance may be read as cisgender and not be stigmatized. Still, their femme gender may allow them to resist the cisgender stigma tied to fat-shaming (Taylor, 2018) and to develop new empowering relationships with their sexuality (Levitt & Hiestand, 2005).

Also, appearance alone may not indicate why a gender expression is transgressive. For instance, trans women may opt for a cisgender appearance, similar to that of heterosexual cisgender women, but this expression may serve an additional set of functions because it is repairing a history of stigmatization. The functions and effects of gender will not reveal themselves to casual observation. For this reason, participatory action research, community-based research, qualitative inquiry, and research that involves community members as researchers can be crucial either as an initial method or to build foundational literature.

How do genders evolve into gender identities and communities?

The functional theory of gender can be seen as an analytic approach that can be used to support researchers in analyzing the evolution of genders into gender identities and gender identity cultures. The premise of this theory, as exemplified in the historical review of the gender identities under discussion (Levitt, 2019), is that the functions that genders serve evolve across time and in interaction with social and historical forces from both mainstream and LGBTQ+ cultures. This can be understood, retrospectively, as a process of evolution.

In our research, we found that people initially have an internal sense of gender (whether that be in terms of femininity, masculinity, or nonbinary gender) that they experience as physiologically driven and/or as deeply rooted in formative early experience. This initial sense of self serves the functions of directing their preferred social position and enactments in relation to sets of characteristics that have been socially consolidated in their cultural context. When their sense of gender is incongruent with the gender and gender attributes assigned to them, they may seek out gender identities and LGBTQ+ communities that allow them to better identify and live in accordance with their authentic experience. Their experience with this gender identity and community allows them to value cultural qualities that have been marginalized, to gain interpersonal status and increase security, and to develop an aesthetic that allows them to increase their self-esteem and comfort with both their gender and sexuality. This is the process through which gender transforms into a gender identity and evolves from serving fewer to serving greater, resilience-building functions and effects.

Using this analytic lens, people or groups of people who have not developed a gender identity that feels authentic to them (they may not be out to themselves or others about their gender, may not have a gender identity that reflects their internal sense of self, or may not have a gender identity community) may be thought to have their gender serve a more limited range of the potential reparative functions that were identified in the framework. At one extreme, they may internalize the stigma associated with gender variance with little resistance and, at the other, they may experience the empowerment that is associated with having their gender function to support them across the four domains of functioning. Developing a gender that functions to resist stigma across psychological, cultural, interpersonal, and sexual domains does not mean that the external context of stigma disappears. In our research and that of others (e.g., Tabaac, Perrin, & Trujillo, 2015; Velez & Moradi, 2016), however, being out and active in LGBTQ+ gender communities has been found to engender resilience and decrease distress. Tracking the social conditions that led to the generation and evolution of genders can help us to combat pathologizing narratives of people with diverse genders and to develop more accurate historical understandings of gender.

What are the functions and effects of gender expressions when tied to identity cultures?

If viewed in the flexible manner in which it is intended, the functional framework can be applied to the analysis of gender expressions that are reflective of subcultures. Genders still can function subversively within cultures that language their genders in terms of masculinity and femininity, such as bears and leathermen, but adopt distinctive gender expressions that are reflected by their cultural identities. As described in the lead article (Levitt, 2019), bear and leathermen were not forced to develop new gender identity terms because they could reassign meanings to these terms (creating specifically bear and leather masculinities) and retain the advantages of their cisgender identities.

This application may be appropriate for identifying the functions and effects of cisgender gender expressions and identities in this way. The functional framework can allow the analysis of the development or evolution of dominant or nondominant cisgender genders in a region. For instance, a woman whose authentic sense of gender does not fit within a community, or who does not feel safe in her present context, might develop a new gender expression by entering a punk rock community oriented to resisting classism, or a sports-oriented community that decouples weakness and femininity. Although she may not discard her gender identity as a woman, the functions and effects of her gender may shift as she adopts a gender expression and norms that subvert prior norms. All gender communities can have negative functions and effects, as well as positive ones, such as a religious sect that offers protection to women but in the guise of benevolent sexism (Glick & Fiske, 2001), a goth scene that promises sexual empowerment to girls along with their objectification (Lamb & Peterson, 2012), or LGBTQ+ gender identity communities with overly constraining gender norms (Levitt et al., 2018). Similar analyses could be conducted to bring a critical feminist understanding of the functions and effects of gender expression in communities.

How do types of oppressive power and resistance functionally distinguish gender identities?

As a functionalist approach, the theoretical framework can guide researchers to identify the types of oppressive social power and resulting needs that lead a specific gender identity—providing a deeper appreciation for the drive for that gender and the ways it resists societal oppression. The similarity in gender identity terms across time and culture can complicate the understanding of gender, and the framework can help trace shifts in their functions across times. For instance, traditional femme lesbians from the 1950s can be seen as protesting cisgender femininity of that time, as well as expectations of heterosexuality, and as subverting the compulsory attraction to men by their attraction to butch women. Some sexual minority women continue to identify as femme with these same meanings, but other contemporary femme sexual minority women (or men) may use the term purely descriptively as a synonym for “feminine LGBTQ+ person” and find the identity useful to resist social expectations that sexual minority women (or men) cannot claim cisgender femininity (Levitt & Collins, 2019). By conducting a functional analysis of gender, researchers can examine how gender identities (even those that utilize the same name) may be separate genders functionally because they serve distinctive purposes. These insights can aid researchers in developing measures to better identify or differentiate populations of interest.

How to develop attuned foundations for activism and interventions to lessen risk factors or inequities in gender communities?

An understanding of how cultural gender norms act in a community can allow researchers to shape efforts toward either activism or intervention. Efforts can be directed to support the positive effects of gender identities and their communities with an understanding of the struggles that they represent. For example, the development of an HIV-intervention in gay family communities (Horne, Levitt, Sweeney, Puckett, & Hampton, 2014; Levitt, Horne, Puckett, Sweeney, & Hampton, 2015) was directed by qualitative findings that this gender identity community promoted pride and connection as a response to alienation and overwhelming intersections of racism, classism, heterosexism, and transphobia. We identified, from community-based qualitative research, HIV-prevention messages and scenes that deliberately affirmed the community’s values and understanding of subversive power that resisted hegemonic intersecting oppressions. We collaborated with this community and a local community center to obtain support (from the Elton John Foundation and Ryan White HIV program) and co-developed a series of brief HIV-focused public service announcement videos. Influential community members and a local videographer guided the scripting and enactment of these messages (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zu1IfWtQFA), which appeared to increase the likelihood to discuss HIV and to use condoms (Koven et al., 2017). This project is an example of a strategy to develop actions that build upon the ways that a community already functions to resist oppression.

In addition, Watson (2019) has provided a number of perceptive suggestions on how a functionalist understanding of gender can be used to advance both pedagogy and clinical care. The emphasis she places on exploring clients’ intersectional experiences, as well as the benefits and costs of gender identities, is important to underscore. Also, as she suggested, clinical practice for sexual and gender minority clients would be well informed by the finding that engagement in social justice advocacy leads to improved well-being for LGBTQ+ people (Levitt et al., 2009; Velez & Moradi, 2016; Watson, Morgan, & Craney, 2018). If therapists support clients to reflect on the functions of their sexual and gender identities in light of stigma-related experiences, they can create contexts of both self-exploration and affirmation in their sessions (see LGBTQmentalhealth.com for expressive writing exercises that have been crafted to support healing from, and developing responses to, homophobic, biphobic, and transphobic experiences and that can be recommended to clients as therapy homework; K. M. Collins, Maroney, Roberts, Wadler, & Levitt, in press).

The Future: Support for Critical Epistemologies and Functional Analyses of Gender

Both Tebbe (2019) and Moradi (2019) remarked on the importance of qualitative community-informed methodological approaches in conceptualizing gender. When communities are studied only as a handful of variables, the web of interconnections that comprise the landscape of human experience is necessarily sparse. There are changes in psychology that are increasing support for these research traditions.

Qualitative methods have long been referred to as humanistic methods, because of their emphasis on holistic situated understandings (Rennie, 2007), and as feminist, multicultural, and queer critical methods, because they often are applied within epistemological traditions that centralize systemic power relations that are not directly observable (see Bowleg, 2017). They also invite community-based methods and the sharing of power with people who have the experiential lived experience of a phenomenon. These perspectives permit an understanding of the complexities of gender and the formation of community.

Tebbe (2019) noted that transparency in research reporting, via explicating authors’ perspectives, enhances confidence in findings; however, this reporting style too often is read as transgressive within psychology (Bazerman, 2000; Rennie, 1995). The feminist ethic underpinning this approach stems from the epistemological belief that the acts of knowing and learning are situated in researchers’ lived experiences and their perspectival limitations. The need for disclosure about researcher’s expectations within research reporting is gaining recognition in our field, as quantitative and qualitative methodologists acknowledge the influence of researchers’ allegiance to theories (e.g., Munder, Brütsch, Leonhart, Gerger, & Barth, 2013), differentiate between planned and unplanned hypotheses (Appelbaum et al., 2018), and consider the effects of researchers’ perspectives (Levitt et al., 2019). Self-reflective reporting has not only been put forward as a standard for qualitative research, now codified in American Psychological Association (APA) style (Levitt et al., 2017, 2018), but it also has been found to be typical of qualitative research reports in a meta-method review of psychotherapy literature (Levitt, Pomerville, Surace, & Grabowski, 2017). It appears that feminist reporting styles are becoming increasingly acceptable.

The use of the current functional theory of gender may contribute to these shifts in research reporting, support researchers in using critical and humanistic epistemologies, and permit a depth of understanding of this politically complicated social experience. The role of LGBTQ+ gender is likely to continue to increase in importance. Probability-based analyses of the size of the transgender population in the United States suggest that these numbers will be increasing nationally (Meerwijk & Sevelius, 2017). And new gender identities continue to proliferate across national and international contexts (e.g., Callis, 2014; Wang, Griffiths, & Grande, 2017).

Also, as represented in the genealogical description of the evolution of LGBTQ+ genders (Levitt, 2019), it is typical that gender identities develop in resistance to prior gender constructs. Emerging gender identities that indicate resistance to prior genders (e.g., non-binary identities) therefore should be seen as entirely appropriate for analysis using this framework. Indeed, the studies in Levitt (2019) on transgender, house/family, and drag identities included non-binary and genderqueer participants and their experiences were influential in the development of the functional theory.

The conceptual shift to analyzing how gender functions can assist researchers in developing attuned strategies for prevention and intervention to counter the risk factors and health inequalities tied to increased gender minority stress. It can direct quantitative and qualitative researchers and funders toward engaging community-based programs of research to increase their supports and resilience. And they can help clinicians better understand the motivations and lived experiences of individual clients. Articulations of the functions and effects of minority gender identities may be instrumental in fostering gender literacy, comprehension, and support from the general population—an approach recently called upon to complement the strategy of calling out prejudicial attitudes (Nicholas, 2018). By developing a situated interdisciplinary understanding of how social power dynamics and gender identity are inter-related, genders that seemed inchoate can become intelligible—fostering an acceptance that can transform the stigmatization and pathologization tied to gender variance that is routinely faced by many LGBTQ+ people today.