Gender Identity is a learned self-perception, a self-identification. Learned because essentially, the person experiencing frustration with their labeled gender goes through a sort of trial-and-error process. For example, if as male, an individual feels dissatisfaction, they try out the opposite gender and may learn that as female, they live a better life. According to Anne Vitales' article Notes On Gender Transition, these people explore in the opposite genders and find that living as the other sex gives them more satisfaction and acceptance than they have ever felt before. So there they remain-a decision consciously made by their own self through analyzing their own emotions. Thus, b

In the traditional mode of thinking, genetics determine gender. Thus, according to Dawn R. Banks' A Study of the Components of Gender Identity a person with XX chromosomes will be classified as female and will be expected to be born with vagina, to identify, act and dress as female; a person born with XY chromosomes will be classified as male and will be expected to be born with a penis, to identify, act and dress as male. However, if you think of gender identification as a continuum where male and female represent the extremities of the line, the space between remains ambiguous. To begin to clarify the undefined area, you must realize that there exists a distinction between gender and sex. The term sex refers to genetics, the biological factors. Gender, a social term, refers to the psychological and social characteristics associated with the male or female classification-the masculine and feminine characteristics a person displays. Encompassed within the idea of gender, there exist culture-defined characteristics. Look at the onset of infancy-the doctor immediately classifies by marking male or female on the birth certificate. Anne Vitale points out that at childhood, colors assign gender specification-boys wear blue and girls wear pink. Adults handle girls more tenderly than boys and as they grow older, parents allow rough-housing between boys and encourage the girls to play nicely. We live in a world where, due to stereotyping, dress codes are different for women and men. Gender-dominated positions do exist-it cannot be denied that they do not. Ariadne Kane, executive Director to Outreach Institute for Gender Studies, introduces a piece that rebuts the "norms of gender." She questions: "Who set them up? Who decided that men do this and women do that and that there is no real cross-over? When you start to investigate that, you find it's very arbitrary and culturally bound. When you find yourself on the point of saying, "Why can't I do that?" you then take a quantum leap and you say, 'I can do that!' Then you open up what I call the Pandora's Box but also the world of gender ecstasy, exploration and perhaps peace of mind." Kane re-emphasizes that defining female-male identification as an either/or situation provincially confines the world into two categories-rebutting an obvious gray-shaded area. Gender identification shifts from a comfortable black and

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Approximate Word count = 1608
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)