Gender is the most fundamental part of one's identity as a human being. The very first question everyone asks about us is "Is it a boy or a girl?" Important though it is, most people never think much about gender. They have no idea what causes their sense of being a boy or a girl, a man or a woman. Having never suffered mis-gendering, they take their gender for granted like the air that they breathe, never giving it a second thought. It is an unquestioned birth privilege to have a gender. Conventional wisdom says that people are either boys who grow up to become men, or they are girls who grow up to become women. There are only two possibilities, and you are either one or the other. It's obvious at birth from your "genital sex", and that's all there is to it! However, as we will see, reality is not that simple. …show more content…
What determines our gender identity? During early pregnancy, a fetus that has male genes (XY chromosomes) usually develops into a boy with male genitals. It develops into a girl with female genitals if it has female genes (XX chromosomes). This happens well over 99% of the time. Doctors and parents look at an infant's genitals at birth, and simply declare it to be a boy or a girl. Those declared to be boys usually grow up into men having a male gender identity, and those declared to be girls usually grow up into women having a female gender identity. Again, it all seems pretty straightforward. Although more than 5% of all men and women will grow up to be gay, and will seek love partners of the same sex and/or gender as themselves, they too usually have normal male and female gender identities as men and women, respectively. Intersex conditions - including intersex babies whose gender is ambiguous at