Published on 12, July, 2020
A discussion in this forum made me ask myself this question, what's gender?. I googled it but what I found there didn't make much sense to me. I always thought that the gender of the other person doesn't tell me much about who they are. It just informs me about the appropriate pronouns that this person wants me to use with them. Frankly I don't care about figuring out my gender. I was born in a woman's body and I never felt like it's the wrong one. I think I'd feel the same if I was born in a man's body. I have never spent time thinking about this part of myself because I never thought that it's important enough to me. I'll be the same person anyway, no? I don't think it would change much about who I am... Can anyone share how they understand gender?
To me, gender is one aspect of how you understand yourself and present yourself to others. As far as I'm concerned, the genitals a person has are none of my business- how I perceive their gender is based on things like the way they choose to dress, the name they use, the pronouns they use (we all have them!) and so on. The most important factors are the ones a person prioritises for themselves and shares with others.
I'm a cis woman, but I've chosen not to have children and due to medical issues probably couldn't have them anyway, so to me the things people might associate with my biological sex have very little to do with my perception of my own gender, outside of the fact that those two things happen to match. I do think that the knowledge that my own gender isn't dependent on a strict set of rules about "what women's bodies can do" has made me a more compassionate and understanding person towards people whose gender and the sex they were assigned at birth doesn't match.