THE SEXUAL

SELF
 INTRODUCTION
Our self-concept refers to the knowledge and belief
that we have and the evaluation that we make about
ourselves. The elements of our self-concept are self-
schemas, or those specific beliefs that help organize
and guide our processing of self-relevant information.
(Myers&Twenge, 2017). These schemas provide
direction to our action and coherence to our identity.
Our sexual self comprises a complex set of schemas
that allow us to understand and express, ourselves as
sexual beings. We hold self-schemas that pertain to
our sex, gender, sexual orientation and sexual
expression/responses. Sex refers to the biological and
physiological characteristics that define men and
women and that constitutes the sex categories of
male and female (World Health Organization, 2014.)
It is sometimes referred to as biological or
assigned sex as it is based on what a person in
endowed by nature or at birth. Gender, on the
other hand,refers to the attitudes, feelings and
behaviors that a given culture associates with a
person's biological sex (American Psychological
Association,2012).
Gender Identity is an internal awareness of
where the individual belongs in the feminine
and masculine categories. One may identify
with either of these categories, or neither, such
as in the case of people who label themselves
as "gender queer",
"Gender variant", or "gender fluid". Sexual
orientation refers to the direction of one's
sexual and romantic interests (Rathus,2014).
Categories used to describe sexual
orientation are heterosexual, homosexual
or bisexual. Finally, we have schemas that
guide how we express ourselves in sexual
relationship.
Many might find it easy to describe themselves
simply as men or women because there is
congruence in the schemas related to their
sexual self. However, as we know there are
others who have a different experience and
who find that those self-schemas are not in
arrangement with each other.
The society at large tends to also see human
beings simply as men or women. MAMAWA
is an abbreviation used for " MEN-ARE-
MEN-AND-WOMEN-ARE-WOMEN"
assumption. Although it could have been
better abbreviated as MAMAWAWA, but
that is how it is referred to by Pinel (2014).
It is a simplistic and heuristic reference to
what makes a man and a woman based on
age-old traditions and perspective of these
two genders. This assumption has been
stronly questioned now particularly because
of the modern roles that males and females
play which may no longer fit the gender
stereotypes.
This kind of thinking that views sex or gender as
based on core or innate differences, pervades
most of society. Among the assumptions is that
"female hormones" and "male hormones" fuel
that different sexes leading to differences in their
shape and behavior. Others tend to quickly
summarize their assumptions about sex or
gender differences with lines such as men are
from Mars and women are from Venus.
While we may be drawn by the simplicity and
comfortable social implications of
"mamawa", this assumption is flawed
(Pinel,2014). This assumption over
emphasizes the role of nature and explains
differences between males and females
mainly from this perspective. It is important,
however, to understand the interplay
between nature, nurture in our conception of
the sexual self .
Therefore, the intended learning
outcome of this Chapter is to
expand our understanding about
the sexual self by looking as it's
multiple dimensions that consists
of both biological and
environmental influences.
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