Gender Identity

Gender is a facet of personal identity that corresponds with a set of expectations a society usually places on the biological sexes. The predominant gender identities expected in the Western world are male and female, and they are usually assumed to align with biological sex. Those whose gender identities align with their biological sex are cisgender, and those whose do not can identify as transgender (identifying as having a different gender than their biological sex), agender (having no gender identity at all), nonbinary (identifying as neither exclusively male nor exclusively female, or as a gender that is neither male nor female), or gender-fluid (not having a fixed gender identity). Discovering and becoming comfortable with your gender identity can be a difficult and painful experience, even for cisgender people who differ too far from the allowed or expected behaviors for their gender within their immediate community.