Hi OP,
There's a lot of jargon being thrown around in this thread, but I'll try to give a straightforward explanation.
Let's start with the most old-fashioned way of seeing gender and sexuality. You've got two options:
female-bodied, feels like a woman, attracted to men
male-bodied, feels like a man, attracted to women
There's some obvious problems with this model - like that gay people exist, which shows that sexual orientation and gender are two separate things. Similarly, the existence of transgender people shows that biological sex (what's going on in your body) and gender identity (what's going on in your mind) are two separate things.
This genderbread person graphic illustrates those separate categories.
So now let's think about biological sex and gender identity. Biological sex is relatively simple, but still fuzzier than most people think: it's estimated that up to 2% of people are born with some form of intersex condition, where their chromosomes, gonads, genitalia, or hormone levels don't quite line up with a male or female "ideal" [Blackless et al 2000], and transgender people can change some of those aspects of biological sex using hormones or surgery. That's why the graphic has two scales describing biological sex, one for male sex characteristics and one for female sex characteristics.
Gender identity is where it gets really fuzzy. It's not determined solely by the body you're born with, nor solely by society, nor solely by your personality traits. It's some complex mix of all those factors. Science isn't very usefulHere's some examples of how people could feel about their gender identity:
For whatever reason, some people feel very strongly that they are a man, or a woman.
Some people don't feel strongly about it, and don't really understand what it would mean to "feel like a man" or "feel like a woman". For example, I've got a friend who's
Other people
