Gender identity

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Gender Identity is how a person identifies themselves. A person’s gender identity is based on what label and type they feel most comfortable aligning with. It can change throughout someone’s life, depending on how they feel during that time. Much of dominant society across cultures follows the construction of the gender binary, prescribing that everyone must either be a man or a woman. However, more genders exist outside of male and female. Recent decades have brought new terminology and means of using language to make space for a range of genders. And more importantly, the rise of LGBTQ+ education and rights have brought transgender issues to the attention of the public, as well as the many genders that a person can identify as.

• Cisgender: the label for people who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth (ex: male and female)

'Transgender' is both an identity label and an umbrella term. A person can identify as a trans woman or trans man, but there are more genders that fall underneath the transgender category. Nonbinary genders (or people who do not identify as male or female) may fall underneath transgender, depending on how the person self-identifies. 'Nonbinary' may be used as a synonym for agender, or someone doesn't identify with a gender, but also may refer to other genders.

Some gender identities include, but aren't limited to:

• Agender
• Bigender
• Cisgender
• Genderfluid
• Genderqueer
• Nonbinary
• Transgender
• Two-Spirit^[1]
• and more.

1. ↑ Wilson, Alex (2010-02-08). "How We Find Ourselves: Identity Development and Two Spirit People". Harvard Educational Review. 66 (2): 303–318. doi:10.17763/haer.66.2.n551658577h927h4. ISSN 0017-8055.