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The Gender Unicorn Series: A Basic Explanation of Gender

Sex and gender and gender expression are a bit...muddled in the media today. So, with the help of the Gender Unicorn, I'm going to be doing a quick, basic series of posts explaining some different terms and ideas.

What's the Gender Unicorn?

http://www.transstudent.org/gender
This helpful creature is used by many people and classes to explain the differences between gender, gender expression, sex, physical attraction, and romantic attraction.
Today I'm going to focus on gender.

Gender (also called gender identity) is the mental state of being a female/woman/girl, male/man/boy, none of the above, or something in-between.

To be perfectly clear, this isn't something you choose. It's just how you are.

If you go looking for them, there are lists and lists and lists of genders on the internet. While this is helpful for people looking for a word to identify themselves clearly, it can be confusing for people just wanting to learn "the basics."

The fact is, it's hard to condense something as fluid and complex and, above all, personal as gender into something quick and easy. But I'm going to try.

Let's start by taking the concept of the arrow presented on the Gender Unicorn chart and explaining it from left to right.

The far left, the circle that begins the arrow, would be representative of someone who does not identify with that gender.
The middle of the arrow would be representative of someone who is in-between genders, or only partially identifies as that gender.
The far right of the arrow would represent someone who fully identifies as that gender.

The arrow is an arrow because the degrees to which someone feels any of this are practically infinite.

Now, some of the most basic terminology you might hear when discussing gender.

  • Agender: someone who does not identify as a gender
  • Bigender: someone who identifies as two genders
  • Cisgender: someone who identifies as the gender that aligns with their physical sex
  • Genderfluid: someone whose gender changes
  • Nonbinary: someone who identifies as "in-between" or "multiple." (This is an umbrella term for more specific genders, such as bigender, pangender, and the unlisted here demigender as well as many others.)
  • Pangender: someone who identifies as more than one gender, even up to identifying with all genders.
  • Transgender: someone who identifies as a different gender than their physical sex. (Most commonly used for people who fully identify as the opposite gender of their physical sex)
So, yeah, there's a lot of information. And most of it isn't on this page. But this isn't a bad place to start. 
~Liss
If you're unsure of someone's gender identity and wish to find out, ask them privately and be warned that they may not feel it's your business. It's possible that they may not be "out" yet as something other than cisgender and might not be comfortable discussing it.
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