Gender Identity

Gender Identity is the gender which a person identifies the closest with and is the concept at the heart of Gender Theory. It is a term used in the LGBTQ+ community to describe transgender people and other genderqueer people, which are those people who identify with genders that are not their own biological sex.

## Definition

One criticism of Gender Theory is that it never has a satisfying definition for what "gender" actually is. In the beginning, it was simply defined as the feelings and experiences associated with having certain hormone levels and genitalia. However, this more traditional and conservative definition has taken on criticism from the trans community which call it "Transmedicalist", and also with the non-binary community since their gender experience does not match the binary experiences of either male or female hormone levels and genitalia.

Another theory is that gender is defined as a psychosocial phenomenon, a social construct, and that it is composed of all the gender roles, emotional range, emotionality, and sociological associations associated with being either male or female, with non-binary people being those who don't identify with either of these sets of phenomenon. However, this theory has faced backlash from the feminist movement since they believe that women and men should be equally capable of everything, and also are proponents of abolishing gender roles in general. Instead, the term "gender" has been adopted to describe the social construct of gender, and "gender identity" is defined separately from that, further causing confusion since now there are three terms, sex, gender, and gender identity.

Other religious members of the LGBTQ+ community believe in a soul separate from the body, which has its own gender identity. In this case, souls with a gender identity may not necessarily appear in a material body with that corresponding biological sex.

The current agreed-upon definition for gender is that it is a feeling and mental state not unlike an emotion. We humans have a number of emotions like happiness, sadness, fear, and so on which we know because we have experienced having these feelings, and being in the associated mental states. Indeed there are some physiological factors involved in the emotions such as heartrate and stuff like that, but this is not the full picture especially when fear and exhilaration or even surprise are all usually associated with similar physiological responses but are strongly different mental states. Due to this, if a person had to describe what Happiness, or any other emotion, was to a person who didn't have the emotion, they most likely would be unable to describe it. Even if they had a set of symbols in mind that they could share (happiness is sunshine, rainbows, etc.), those symbols would be things that remind them of the experience of happiness that they, through their own personal experiences, have associated with the mental state, meaning these symbols and each person's experience of the mental states are relative. All this is saying emotions are mental states you have to EXPERIENCE to understand. With this in mind, proponents of gender theory argue that gender works exactly the same: it is a mental state in the same way as happiness or other emotions, just a more permanent state for that person.

## Gender Affirmation and Pronouns

Gender affirmation is when you identify with a certain gender identity and want to biopsychosocially align yourself to that gender should your outward nature be different from your inner nature. Gender affirmation can include hormone supplements and various surgeries, such as breast surgeries or genitalia surgeries. It also can occur through the use of pronouns, which is the means through which people with a certain gender identity require others to recognize this identity. Trans women (biological males) use she/her/hers pronouns, Trans men (biological females) use he/him/his pronouns, and nonbinary people usually use they/them/their but can also use ze/zim or xe/xim depending on their preference.

Not affirming a person's gender identity is known as misgendering and can make that person feel anxiety due to the cognitive dissonance between their experience of being called one gender and their inner worldview of being another gender. However, there are plenty of rude LGBTQ+ people with entitlement problems that take it a step further and begin to rage once they are misgendered, taking it as a personal attack when it is usually not intended to be a personal attack by the other person.