Gender identity encompasses a broad spectrum of expression.
Caitlyn Jenner made her debut on the cover of Vanity Fair yesterday. The magazine tweeted the cover featuring the former Bruce Jenner, who announced she will now go by Caitlyn. Last April, Jenner sat down for an interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer about the decision to transition from male to female.
“For all intents and purposes, I’m a woman,” Jenner, 65, told Sawyer. “People look at me differently. They see you as this macho male, but my heart and my soul and everything that I do in life, it is part of me,” Jenner added. “That female side is part of me. That’s who I am.” Moving forward, Jenner wants to be addressed as Caitlyn and with female pronouns.
For many people, gender identity is as clear as a clean glass pane, their preferences expressed by their behavior and dress match the gender they were born with. But others may be deeply unhappy with their biological gender, sometimes to the extent that they want to live as the opposite gender entirely. All those who question the expression of the gender they were born with find themselves in the challenging world of transgender living.
"Our culture teaches children what the appropriate behavior, clothing, and romantic objects are for their gender starting at a very young age," says psychologist Melady Preece, PhD, a clinical assistant professor in the department of family practice at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
When conflict occurs between birth gender and a person's preferences in this regard, possible outcomes include:
- Gender dysphoria.
- Gender identity disorder.
"Much of the negative attitude toward transgender individuals can be traced to the belief that gender variance is related to sexual interests, which it is not," she says. Rather, the issue is the way in which one's own sense of gender is expressed in the world.
Gender Expression
Among people who are uncomfortable with the way in which society says they must dress and behave, there are a number of different ways to express gender. These often come with labels, but Preece stresses that these labels do not have strict and consistent definitions.
"People in a marginalized community who are uncomfortable with the way society defines them will try to find new labels to describe their experience. However, one person who uses that identification may disagree with another person regarding the precise meaning," says Preece.
These labels include:
- Transgender:
- Drag queens:
- Drag kings:
- Transsexuals:
- Cross dressers:
- Transvestites:
- Gender queer:
Sunday, September 13, 2020