What is gender identity?

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Gender identity is someone's deeply felt an internal sense of gender and how they may express their gender identity outwardly (gender expression).

Gender is considered a social construct that people typically describe as femininity and masculinity according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Generally, in many Western cultures, people associate femininity with being a girl and masculinity as a male trait. However, this social construct differs from culture to culture.

There are many types of gender identities. Just to name a few:

➼ agender: genderless, may also be considered gender-neutral, doesn't identify with a particular gender

➼ androgyne: gender encompasses both masculinity and femininity or in between those two

➼ bigender: has two genders (ex. being both male and female)

➼ cisgender: identifies with the sex they were assigned at birth

➼ gender-expansive: an umbrella term used for those who expand their culture's commonly held interpretations of gender

➼ genderfluid: a presentation and/or gender identity that shifts in between or outside society's expectations of gender

➼ gender outlaw: one who refuses to allow society's def. of "male" and "female" what they are

➼ genderqueer: gender identity or expression isn't the same as society's expectations for their sex assigned at birth or assumed gender (may also be used by someone who's identity encompasses multiple gender identities)

➼ masculine of center: typically used by lesbians and/or trans ppl whose gender presentations and identity lean more masculine

➼ nonbinary: gender identity isn't experienced in the gender binary; gender isn't exclusively male/female; may have an overlap of gender expressions, such as gender non-conforming

➼ omnigender: experiences/possesses all genders

➼ polygender and pangender: experiences/displays aspects of multiple genders

➼ transgender: umbrella term encompassing everyone who experiences and identifies with a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth; also encompasses those who identify as a gender other than man or woman, including nonbinary and genderfluid.

➼ trans: a shortened version of "transgender"

➼ two-spirit: an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of sexualities and genders in Indigenous Native American communities; are various definitions of Two-Spirit, and Indigenous Native American people may or may not use it to describe their experiences and feelings of masculinity and femininity; a cultural term that's reserved for those who identify as Indigenous Native Americans.


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