What is gender identity and expression and how does it differ from sex and sexual orientation?
Gender identity and expression refer to the way people self-identify and present their masculinity and/or femininity to the world. Often, but not always, this corresponds to the person’s sex as assigned at birth, so that a person born biologically male or female often dresses, adopts a hair style, and uses a name and pronoun in ways that reflect the culturally accepted roles associated with their birth sex. Gender variant is a term that describes anyone who differs from conventional gender norms on a regular basis, such as tomboys and feminine men. Transgender is an umbrella term used to designate a community of people who regularly present in a gender different from the sex assigned to them at birth and who live a significant part of their lives in that gender. This includes people who have undergone medical procedures to change their sex and those who have not. Sexual orientation refers to one’s romantic and sexual attraction. Gender variance is not in itself any indicator of sexual
