Gender and sex broadly influence socialization and communication norms in many ways.

Yep, there are many cases where people do not conform to standard gender/sex norms… but the norms do still broadly, empirically exist or have a physiological basis.

Personally, I am all for breaking down gender norms and stereotypes and roles, and everyone being accepting of more variance and deviation from the norm, as many people do not neatly adhere to the patriarchal hetero dichotomy norm.

… But many still do.

Especially where I am right now, in a poor red state (had to move quite far to find somewhere I could afford to rent), where the education quality is laughable, and traditional gender/sex norms are very prevalent, there are no legal protections against discrimination against queer, disabled persons such as myself.

EDIT:

Also, another, perhaps more direct way to answer your question:

Then I see in their notes later that I am ‘arguementative’ or ‘agitated’ or ‘aggressive’… far, fsr more often if its a woman psych/soc worker/counselor who I am… not even ‘correcting’, just trying to not have them put words in my mouth.

Men tend to be less intimidated and more open to my insistance that I meant exactly what I said… and I am talking in the same voice, same mannerisms, same everything, with everyone.

I don’t know how you’re reading this, but again, I meant what I said.

What makes me think that gender and sex affect a person’s efficacy in the psych field, as it pertains to treating different sex/genders, is that I have personally experienced this.

I have been seeing many different kinds of pscyh professionals for a very long time… kickstarted by my mother having a mental break down when I was a kid, and then my family developing a very dysfunctional dynamic, then us all going to family therapy, and then basically each of us continuing on with individual therapy, and moving, and then moving again, and then again…

So I have seen many, many different psych people in my life thus far, and from my own, personal experience… it is far more common for women to interperet things I am saying as hostile and aggressive.

Switch over to a male therapist, if this is possible given insurance and local staffing constraints… and oh hey wow, nearly none of them interpret me as hostile, and I’m acting the same way.

…

I really don’t see how this is that baffling of a concept… it is very common with PCPs, for example, sometimes various nurses as well… for your gender/sex preference as to who will be caring for you to be something that is asked.

It is fairly common for say, queer folks to be able to request or prefer a queer therapist… many addiction counselors are former addicts themselves, and this often is very important to establishing trust and relatibility with an addict seeking to detox or go clean.

There’s a whole wealth of academic literature about how male PCPs will often downplay women’s legitimate health concerns, and I find such literature to be largely valid.

In comparison, there is nearly no literature on how women mental health experts downplay (or even aggravate) men’s mental health concerns, despite this being part of the broad stereotype of ‘why don’t men go to therapy?’

Yep, a lot of it is from the machismo and social stigma.

Another lot of it is from… a lot of guys who actually get over those things and try it, well they basically feel unheard, that their treatment was ineffective or unhelpful at addressing their concerns, or even worse, they feel basically gaslit and manipulated.

…

In conclusion, perhaps the most useful medicsl advice I have ever recieved, and I will joyfully tell you it was from a woman:

Be your own advocate, especially if you don’t have a reliable support network in your general life.

They are human beings who are more frequently able to relate to people who are similar to them based on shared experiences including social pressures. I don’t think either gender is unable to relate to the other gender, but social pressure is pretty strong and leads to common outcomes that involve pressures based race, gender, and economic status among others. Someone from a wealthy family is more likely to have a certain outlook compared to someone who had food insecurity as a child.