Gender Identity

Gender identity refers to felt sense and experience of one’s gender, whether as masculine/male, feminine/female, a combination of the two, or neither. In addition to this felt sense, gender identity is the personal meaning one attaches to being a particular gender. In order to understand the concept of gender identity, one must first begin with understanding gender. Gender is the collection of attributes, internalized as an identity and expressed through performance, that mark one as male or female, man or woman, masculine or feminine, and beyond. One’s gender can be correlated with the sex they were assigned at birth or different from it. One whose gender correlates with birth sex is known as cisgender, while one whose gender differs may be known as, among other ...