What is your Gender?

Answer 1

Gender means that you are either a boy or a girl. Some people consider a person's sex to be what parts they have, but consider the gender to be who you are. So some consider gender to be the "sex" of the soul or at least the brain. But others consider gender to mean if you are male or female.

There are also people who have both sets of sexual organs. Intersex means the person can physically be both male and female or can choose. Intersexed is the correct term for a mammal having both sets of sexual organs. Hermaphrodite is considered offensive when applied to humans. Many plants, including flowering plants, are hermaphrodites.

Some people try to be varying degrees of a gender at the same time, and this is what some people call a gender bender or "genderqueer." Sometimes you can be male but wish you were female or vice versa, or merely pretend to be the other gender. That would be transgender.

If you feel that you are a boy you are probably a boy despite the sex organs you have, and vice versa. Most people are the gender that fits with their sex, but sometimes your brain and your body don't line up.

Sometimes there is a anomaly which is caused in the genes, DNA, or hormones before birth that changes how our gender identity is made. That's why you have intersexed and transsexual people. So you may have the physical sex of a male or female but be the opposite inside the brain if you are a transsexual. Unlike transgenderism, the condition of transsexualism usually means the person feels they are trapped in having an operation to remove one set of the organs. They don't merely wish to become the other gender, they already are that other gender but simply have the wrong body, at least from their perspective.

Homosexual and bisexual people are not the result of any physical defect, as far as science can tell us thus far. This is classified as normal nowadays but wasn't not so very long ago. Everybody is considered equal now.

Another way of looking at things is to consider there being at least 4 components to human sexuality. There is the physical sex, the gender identity, the gender expression/role, and sexual orientation. Your sex is what set of genitals you have. Gender identity is about who you are, your inborn interests, what part of society you are most comfortable identifying as, and what gender you take yourself for granted as being. Gender role or gender expression has more to do with social constructs and expectations, how you dress, how you behave, and so on. Sexual orientation is someone's persistent choice or preference in sexual partners.