As Kathryn Gonzales and Karen Rayne explain:
“Gender is a social construct that assigns people roles, tasks, responsibilities, and expected ways of being in the world.”
Biological Sex
Biological sex is not the same thing as gender identity. This is the hardest thing for some people to understand.
Biological sex is not something you choose. You are born with male or female genitalia. Some are born with both.
Gender Identity
Gender identity is one’s own internal sense of who they are. They know this to be true regardless of what others say. This is also something they do not choose. They are born that way.
Gender identity is not just a masculine and feminine thing. It is more complicated. I will only mention nonbinary here as an example.
Now, in a small minority of people, their biological sex and their gender identity do not match. These people are known as transgender. This is how they were born. It is not something they choose.
Honor Trans-People
Just because you do not have this mismatch of sex and gender, doesn’t mean that everybody is like you. That’s just ignorant. It is important to honor people for trying to be honest about who they are.
It’s frustrating to see them persecuted, when they’re hurting nobody. They’re just trying to be who they’re created to be. They are real and their experiences are real. I don’t care what bigoted Christians say.
References
Kathryn Gonzales and Karen Rayne, Trans+: Love, Sex, Romance, and Being You. Washington, DC: Magination Press, 2019.
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