Sexual preference, sex role appropriateness, and restriction of social access.

This study related components of gender inappropriateness that isolate target persons from sources of reward and hence function as social controls against such deviance. The study confirmed that a significant portion of negative responsiveness toward homosexuals results from the belief that their behavior is incongruent with their anatomical sex. Further, it was found that people are tolerant of out-of-sex-role characteristics when such traits are irrelevant to effective functioning in the situation, as long as the target does not display additional gender incongruence, namely, homosexuality. The results did not support the hypothesis that negative reactions to gender incongruence occur as a function of personal threat to one's own sexual identity.