How do you define your gender?

Question

I don't mean how you define your sex. Your sex is the parts you have. Whether you have an innie or an outtie
I mean your Gender. What makes you male, female, or other If you were in an accident and lost all your reproductive organs, what would be left to define that part of you? Is it what types of interests you have, or how you communicate with others? Is it based on who you're attracted to? (even though many would say sexuality and gender are different things) Or something else entirely?
It's something I've been thinking about, but had some difficulty coming up with an answer other than just saying “I don’t know”. So I'd like to get some other views on it.
I'll add my definition to this soon when I come up with something...

Answer 1

It sounds shallow, but to a certain extent you do define your gender through whether you have an innie or outtie. However there are certain physical characteristics that can define being a man:
deeper voice
taller height
facial hair or beard
diamond shape pubic hair pattern
increased body size overall
less subcutaneous fat
increase in overall body hair
male pattern baldness
coarser skin
darker skin tone
A higher level of androgenic hormones such as testosterone, making it easier for most men than most women to develop their muscles.
Autism and color blindness are more common in men than women
These probably feed into the stereotypes of how men are perceived to be:
More aggressive than women.
More competitive
Less empathy and awareness of social nuance than women.
More self-confident (even arrogant) and thus better leaders than women.
Less emotional than women.
More technically skilled than women.
More focused, but less able to attend to several things at once, than women.
As we know with all stereotypes there are exceptions to the rules. People might feel they tick some of the boxes, but not all of them and so. These complexities are what makes us human. However some of the above mentioned things are male characteristics and ways of pinning down how a man is defined!

Answer 2

Another great question guy! and a tough one to answer.

I have a lot of stereotypical male traits:
-I love cars...or any kind of powerful engine, the sweet thumping of a well tuned V twin engine is musical to me

-I'm competitive in nearly everything I do

-I love gadgets...Shaper Image, Herrington, Radio Shack....from my sack full of high tech cameras to my new satellite radio I love to tinker

-Love the smells and feel of wood, leather, old books and a garage where serious work has been performed

-Enjoy the company of men...not sexually always (though that is nice too)...but men in a pool hall, or a board meeting, men being men.

However I have some more stereotypically feminine traits:
-I've been known to cry openly

-I can be moved beyond words by a great work of art, a beautiful sunset, or a selfless act of kindness

-I'm a romantic. I love setting the right mood for time with my lover. I love finding the perfect gift to express my affection, and I'm always thinking of little romantic things to do that say "I love you"


I have no idea what all that means taken together other than humans are complicated creatures and gender roles are not as narrowly defined as a lot of people seem to think.

Answer 3

This is a really interesting question. I think it goes beyond that to whether you are a man, boy, woman or girl.
It could just be whatever ideas we've had implanted in our brains about what those words mean, and then we say we are whichever one we feel fits us best.
I consider myself a woman because I feel powerful, deeply sexual, emotional, soft, receptive, nurturing. It's the imaginative, subjective, creative energy. That's my idea of what being a woman is, and even though I like some "boy things" like abseiling, big dogs, rugby etc it's as though being a woman changes why I like them. It changes the way I experience the world so what a man would get out of it would be different to what i would.

Answer 4

It's how I see myself (not completely, I mean there's way more to who I am than just being a girl, but it's still a major part.) About whether looking into a mirror feels more or less like looking at 'me' when I emphasize the feminine qualities or the masculine qualities (ie. wear makeup or let stubble grow.) And what I see when I look in a mirror during a dream.

It's about what social trends I'm vulnerable to and which ones don't really interest me (which in a way is a bit about interests - though I'm very strong in the belief that there's nothing wrong with girls having boyish interests and still being girls or vice versa, girls will generally have more 'girlish' interests than 'boyish' interests.)

It's about it feeling 'right' when I hear myself addressed with feminine pronouns instead of male ones, and about having to take a second to realize I'm being referred to when the opposite happens and wanting to correct the person.

It's about *how* I want to have sex moreso than who I want to have sex with.

Answer 5

For me (and I stress that part), I think a lot of it is self-image. I feel attractive and pleased with myself more often when I have facial hair, for one thing. The parts of me that I don't necessarily like are those that are typically associated with testostereone: could use some bigger arms, a smaller gut, etc. A LOT of it is also social conditioning, where it's not so much "males have to do XYZ", but more like....there's a WHOLE lot of letters that are "masculine", and if you have more of those letters than you do the "feminine" ones, there's a sense of belonging and congruity with one's gender. Societal affirmation, I guess. That said, there's a lot of "guy things" that I don't really do.

I did also hear about a study that showed some biological connection to gender. (Without explanation, this sounds a little "duh", but they compared transwomen's brains post-mortem to XX-chromosomed women's brains and found some similarity that was different in mens' brains).

Answer 6

With me i seem to gave gotten a blender
and put a two lots of female to the one lot of male mixed it up pored it in to my soul,
i am some where in between but it is differently more female then male
i think what makes you a certain gender
is how you identify your self
i identify my self as female yet
i have the crappy manly body that is getting renovated

Answer 7

I'm not sure...I was brought up to believe that men and women were equal human beings ...not the division of characteristics that I see so often now...preconceived ideas like 'men like working on cars and women like baking bread'...didn't exist in my family...so I have a great deal of trouble identifying my gender to you if I had no sexual parts that make me male....I would like to think that I would be the same person no matter what (well, the sex IS nice..and I'd hate to give that up LOL)...Help! am I making any sense here at all?---I'd really like to define myself as just a nice person.

Answer 8

I identify as a woman, but I refuse to restrain myself to sticking to someone else's idea of what a man or a woman is. I'm just who I am. Sometimes I'm more female. Others I come off as more male. I believe in the mutability of human flesh also. I prefer a more female form in both the body of my partners and my own, so I'm modifying it, to eventually include "the op."

Answer 9

well, to me it is how you feel about yourself inside. who do you most identify with? even if you were in an accident like you said and lost your reproductive organs you would still either be a man or woman by how you identify yourself. i, myself, identify best as a man because that is what makes me comfortable. i feel at ease being a man. it is no different than the way you carry yourself. some men are masculine and some are feminime while others are just in between. but it is how comfortable you are by being who you are that makes you either masculine, feminime, man or woman. that is only my theory.TTFN.

Answer 10

I'm a slightly femmey boy lovingly nestled in the body of a girl.

It's the best way I know to describe myself.

I say 'slightly femmey' because I have long hair and don't get disgusted or angry at wearing makeup or dresses. I do it occasionally, and it's nice, but just not nice enough to do every day. But then again, getting all butched up like a boy would be just as 'not me' as getting dolled up girly style. It all frickin' feels like drag. I'm just me, on the outside, but people usually call it a girl . . .

Inside, I feel much more masculine than feminine. Am I stereotyping certain behaviors to make this statement? Of course. I know and have heard of tons of transsexuals or transgender people (especially transsexuals, though), who go through mental distress as the idea of their wanting to transition. How can they want to switch sexes, and correspondingly, gender, when they've spent their lives proclaiming gender to be a social construction (this especially from feminist, gender-studies types of FtM's). The fact of the matter is that we spout a lot of words that mean nothing in the world when we still see mannerisms as male and female, and people put meaning into that. (I hope that just made sense). Anyhoo, I just feel like I behave in a more masculine way, naturally, and my feminine qualities are more how I was raised. I am often shy and quiet (stereotypically feminine traits), but I think I got that from my mother and being raised as her daughter. But in my communication style, I like to be in control, to cut to the chase, etc., etc.. I have no inner self-censor- I laugh and joke about crude things and dirty jokes. I find the concept of emotional women offensive- as a woman, I am not that woman everyone sees who has mood swings and breakdowns and expects everyone to be a mindreader and understand when she changes her mind a hundred times. All these things somehow contribute to my feeling more boyish inside than girly, but again, they rest on a lot of stereotypes.

I think I prefer being a woman- staying who I am- because I doubt I could handle the men's world, and I like certain parts of who I am that are feminine. I don't hate my body, even if I'd like a male one, just, you know, on loan sometimes. I have no problem with people relating to me as a woman, though it's best if they just relate to me as a person, since I ain't your stereotypical lady. That's why I say I'm lovingly nestled inside a female body, not trapped in one. I don't have transsexual aspirations.

As per sexuality, I don't think it plays much into my gender identity. Being bisexual and queer-loving, I wish, for the bedroom, that I could become everyone to everybody- a gay man, straight woman, lesbian, straight man- and pair off with everyone else, too. I guess you'd call me a switch of the extreme kind- I want to be top and bottom, master and slave, equals, whatever. I simply can't pick.

So . . gosh, if you've read this all, I pity you. I should've just left it at a sentence and spared you the details of my weirdness. If anything, let it be a lesson that gender identity is so freaking complex that sometimes you've just got to go with what you feel and try not to analyze it . . . though I encourage you to think about it. Just don't feel pressured to get a label if one doesn't present itself. Good luck!