5 Gender Identification
Learning Objective:
- Defining and understanding gender identification and how expression of one’s gender is related to inclusion and equal rights.
Gender Identification
Gender identity, in recent years, has become quite relevant as it pertains to a person’s internal sense of their gender, which can be male, female, both, neither, or anywhere along the gender spectrum.
Keep in mind that gender identity is different from sexual identity, which is about one’s attractions to others. Gender identity is usually consistent with a person’s biological sex, but it doesn’t have to be. For example, someone who has a biological sex of male but identifies as female is transgender.
In recognizing gender expression and how one identifies, we must look at the origin of gender identity.
In the Beginning
Gender identity is programmed into the brain during early development. It’s often communicated through physical appearance and presentation, such as behavior, clothing, body characteristics, or voice.
In the Present
Gender expression may or may not conform to socially defined behaviors and characteristics typically associated with being either masculine or feminine.
Some common pronouns include “she”, “her”, “hers”, “he”, “him”, and “his”. “They” is also commonly used as a singular pronoun when we are talking about someone, and “they/them” pronouns represent “just a little bit of a switch”.
In the Future
As a professor, from a personal perspective, the author has witnessed students who have changed in reference to gender identity during their educational journey, and particularly during the time when preferred pronoun usage was being implemented (for instance, being asked to express your preferred pronouns even when original gender identification had not been changed or even considered to be specifically noted or identified). We are in a society where gender identity and expression is connected to inclusion, so awareness is imperative.
Bring to Light:
This will focus on “LGBTQ students wrestle with tensions at Christian colleges” which touches on Last year, the 33 LGBTQ students or former students at federally funded Christian schools filing a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education, claiming the department’s religious exemption allows schools that receive federal dollars to unconstitutionally discriminate against LGBTQ students.