Cultural Dimensions of Sexual Identity Development According to Heterosexual and Non-heterosexual Men and Women from Jalisco, Mexico

Introduction: The sexual identity is a physical and psychological process necessary for human development, related with mental and sexual health, and influenced by social and historic individual context, what hinders its approach in medical practice. Objective: To know the cultural dimensions of concept “sexual identity” of men and women from Jalisco, Mexico. Materials and Methods: A cognitive anthropology’s study was made during 2017 with 140 heterosexual and nonheterosexual men and women from Guadalajara’s Metropolitan Area, Jalisco, Mexico, which was contacted by Facebook®. The “free lists” and “pile sort” techniques were used by mean SurveyMonkey® in each group separately. The mention frequency, average rank of key concepts’ mention, Smith’s index, hierarchical conglomerates and cultural consensus level were obtained using Visual Anthropac©4.0. Results and Discussion: The sexual phenotypic characterization, self-esteem development, sense of belonging to a group or ideology, moral, and values were identified as common elements that explain how sexual identity is constructed. Conclusions: The sexual identity is an introspection process determined by the phenotypic characterization of the people, limited by moral norms and propelled by individual need for social adaptation. These elements should be utilized in the medial practice for understand the sexual and mental education needs of patients.