Transgender Identity And Gender Identity

When I was a child, I did not have the most feminine upbringing. I was influenced by my older brother, so instead of liking dolls and Disney princesses, I liked Pokémon, dinosaurs, and Hot Wheels. I had Barbies, but I do not remember using them much until I started going to school and interacting with my peers. At that point, my brother had grown older and took interest in cars, and I began to pay a little more attention to clothes. But even though I had interests that were not stereotypically for girls as a kid, I still identify as a girl and a woman. For some people, gender identity is not so straightforward. For people who are intersex, their biological sex is not easily decided as male or female. Intersex accounts for a set of conditions

Most people feel comfortable with the body they are in, but some transgender people do not and they cannot control that they feel that way. Some transgender people may suffer from gender dysphoria and get diagnosed under the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), and to relieve gender dysphoria, people can get surgery, counseling support, and hormone therapy (Hockenbury et al, 2015; APA, n.d.). People who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria do not have a mental illness, but they have feelings of extreme discomfort, anxiety, and depression because their gender and biological sex do no match (APA, n.d.). Because of social constraints and the perceptions people have about gender, transgender people can struggle with their gender

Some people may consider gender as interchangeable with biological sex and think that naturally, people should be treated according to their biological sex. But gender has to do with how people see themselves socially and psychologically, while sex is part of biology (Diamond, 2002). When I was raised, I was allowed to continue the interests I had regardless of whether there was any assigned gender to the toys, but I never felt as if I were a boy. Psychologically, I never felt as if I were in the wrong body, and socially, I feel mostly comfortable with my role in society, barring some aspects of gender conformity that are expected of me but that I do not conform to. But because of the way I was raised, I can also understand why other people may not conform to strict gender roles and identities. Especially in the cases of transgender and intersex individuals, strict gender roles and stereotypes can lead other people to regard them negatively. In a report on the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, 63% of the participants in their survey had experienced discrimination (Grant, Mottet, Tanis, Harrison, Herman, & Keisling, 2011). Many transgender people face discrimination for being different than what is considered normal, but they are still people and should be treated with the same respect as other people. While