Gender identity
When we talk about gender, often people think about being "male" or "female", or “man” and “woman”. These terms are also be used to describe someone’s sex- this can be because of body parts we are born with or the chromosomes we have. Sex and gender have been misunderstood as being the same thing. However, both are more complex and sometimes do not match.
Many people, including leading doctors and psychologists, are recognising gender and sex as spectrums- and research is being done to advance this understanding, especially as not everyone has a body that fits perfectly into our current definitions of "male" or "female".
Intersex people are those born with combinations of sex characteristics that would be typically assigned to those described as “male” and “female”, sometimes these differences can be apparent from birth, or they may not develop until the individual is going through puberty, or even into adulthood.
“We used to think it was pretty straightforward. X and a Y chromosome for males. Two Xs for females. But we see more combinations than that in real life and even for people with just two sex chromosomes, hormones can vary widely, so can anatomy. What makes someone male or female isn’t so clear cut.”
Some people may not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. Some may seek to change things about themselves, like names, pronouns, their personal style. Some may even wish to pursue surgical procedures or taking hormones. All of these will allow them to align their internal genders with their external presentations. Some people don’t, and this can be for many reasons, including financial reasons, and safety reasons, or even preference.
Some transgender people have "gender dysphoria" which means feeling discomfort with the gender they were assigned at birth. For some, it can vary between occasional frustration, and extreme constant distress.
Some transgender people can experience “gender euphoria”, the feeling of joy or contentment when someone or something affirms their gender. It could be more day-to-day things like when someone calls you by the right name or pronouns, for example, when someone calls you ‘brother’, or ‘sister’, or ‘sibling’, or it could be something less usual, like getting a first haircut, or having a gender marker changed on a driving license, for example.
Some useful terms
Transgender
This refers to people who don't identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.
A person assigned female at birth, but identifies as male would usually consider themselves as a transgender man, or a trans man.
Likewise, someone who is assigned male at birth, but identifies as female would usually consider themselves as a transgender woman, or trans woman.
However, there are multiple kinds of identities a transgender person may have, some may use terms like trans masculine or trans feminine which are broader terms that include those whose identities are entirely or partially feminine/female, or masculine/male.
‘Trans' is an adjective: it describes someone whose gender identity doesn’t entirely match the one they were assigned at birth.
Non-Binary
This refers to people who experience their gender in a way that doesn’t wholly fit into the binary categories of male or female.
Non-binary people do fall under the ‘Trans Umbrella’ as their gender differs from what was assigned to them at birth.
The term non-binary can be an umbrella term in itself. It can refer to those all across the gender spectrum: it could be for those that feel perfectly balanced between man and woman, those that move between gender identities (genderfluid), those that have no relationship to gender (agender), those who may have some, but not an entire, connection to the male or female binaries (demigender), to name a few.
Sometimes it can be even used for ease of purpose, to express that a person’s gender is something other than binary, without discussing the intricacies of their gender identity.
Cisgender
This refers to people who do identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.
For example, a person who is assigned female at birth, and is happy with that term or label, would be a cisgender woman, or a cis woman.
Likewise, someone who is assigned male at birth, and is happy with that term or label, would be a cisgender man, or a cis man.
‘Cis’ is an adjective: it describes someone whose gender identity matches their assigned birth gender.