Question
What is gender identity?
Answer
The gender identity of a person refers to their internal sense of being male or female, or somewhere in between. This has nothing to do with who a person is attracted to, or who they might date or have sex with, this is specifically about the individual.
For most people, their gender identity corresponds with their biological sex, which means that they are born biologically female. For example, they have a vulva and vagina, they are chromosomally female, they also identify as female. The reverse can also be true, a person who is born with a penis, who has male chromosomes, who also identifies as male.
But this is not always the way that works, often the struggle is that if a person is born with a gender identity that corresponds to their biological sex, it can be really hard to imagine what it would be like for someone who doesn't. It's one of those things that's so ingrained in us, sort of like we already know how to breathe, that it's hard for us to imagine what it would be like if somebody had to be consciously taking breaths or consciously blinking. When we can't wrap our brain so easily around something, sometimes it can lead us to either assume something doesn't exist, or that nobody has to deal with things differently, or that they're just not doing that thing right, or it would be as easy for them as it is for us.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the webinar, A Social Worker's Introduction to Gender Minorities, presented by Kryss Shane, MS, MSW, LSW, LMSW.
