Gender identity is a highly discussed and debatable topic these days. If a girl is born a girl, then genetically does that make her a girl? Can the way children are raised affect which gender they identify with later in life? Questions like this plague many transgenders today. Some have never felt comfortable in their own skin and others have been physically altered at a young age and have never understood their own uncomfortable feelings. This idea that they are really more like the opposite gender may not affect them until they are full grown adults. But for some, the issue becomes apparent at a young age and the person must deal with the identity crisis for their entire life.

Gender identity is basically when a girl, who is genetically a female, has decided she is not a female and feels the need to be a male instead. Why she feels this way may remain unknown to her or to anyone else in her life. The same goes for boys who don’t feel they are supposed to be boys. Some people struggle with this idea until they are older and then some of them undergo transgender surgery to “correct” the gender problem they face. Others opt purely for hormone therapy to create small changes in their outward appearance. Some parents indulge in their child’s identity issue while others choose to ignore it; the problem can, and sometimes does, get worse.

There are those in transgender groups today who had no control over the gender that was chosen for them early in life. Boys who had smaller than usual genitalia were given a small, surgical procedure and hormones to help them be more female, to coincide with their female appearing parts. Similarly, girls with larger than normal genitalia were treated in the same, ensuring they would grow up to be more male. While this occurrence is extremely rare today it can still happen and creates unmistakable gender identity issues for these children in their adult lives.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 10:09 pm and is filed under Relationships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.