Gender Identity

Can anyone really say, including a woman, that she feels like a woman.  Similarly, can any man make  a corresponding claim in relation to feeling like a man.  The issue is largely irrelevant because we are what we are and we don't go around wondering about it too much.

Our sex is usually determined at birth by an examination of our anatomical configuration. Legally, we are declared to be male or female and we then begin to live our lives as boys or girls with all the social and psychological presumptions (or is that myths) that are regarded as desirable, important or essential to being male or female.  Traditionally, many of those presumptions tended to go unchallenged and boys/girls and men/women were expected to adhere to them or run the risk of being regarded as deviant.

Girls love ballet...don't they?

The male sex were expected to be masculine (whatever that meant in the society in question) and women were expected to be feminine (as per the societal norms and values). Feminism was important in challenging those presumptions but it failed -more accurately, it never really tried- to dig more deeply into the related and wider issue of gender identity in terms of how individuals (rather than society) wish to define and present themselves.  For most T-Girls (and T-Men) the matter of gender identity, and how they define themselves, is critical to who they are.  They may be anatomically male but they wish to present as and engage as women.

Rather than create a problem for others and society in general, that self expression should be valued as an affirmation that men and women should be free of socially imposed constraints that want the 7 billion human inhabitants of this planet to fall neatly into boxes marked male/masculine and female/feminine.