Gender Identity (Essay Sample)

Student’s Name Professor’s Name Course Number Date Gender Identity Often, gender and sex are used interchangeably, which is usually incorrect. Sex is described as the biological difference in an individual, whereas gender is defined as how people identify themselves. Further comprehension of gender entails using continuums such as gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, and biological sex. One of the critical categories of gender is gender identity. Investigating gender identity would be critical in better understanding its implications for individuals in society. Research reveals that gender identities are generally formulated when one attains the age of three years, whereby changing them later is significantly challenging. Relatively, much of identity development is usually influenced by environment and hormones as it is by biological sex (Killerman 24). Commonly, challenges develop when an individual is assigned a gender based on sex during birth, which does not match how they identify themselves. One of the challenges associated with gender is the use of a binary system. Relatively, the binary gender perspective presents the concept that only women and men exist, obscuring gender diversity and ignoring the existence of individuals who do not identify as women or men. A gendered assumption based on culture is that an individual assigned female at birth would identify as a woman. In contrast, one would identify as a man in the case assigned male (Kang et al. 51). However, there are instances whereby individuals assigned male at birth identify themselves as women while others assigned female identify themselves as men. In contrast, others identify themselves as neither men nor women. The interpretation of these numerous occurrences regarding gender demonstrates the differences between gender assignment and gender identity. Notably, gender assignment is usually the gender placement on infants done by doctors based on the appearance of genitalia. Gender identity involves the self-discerning of an individual. Moreover, people who do not identify with a specific gender assigned at birth, commonly referred to as transgender...