Gender identity

Sexual and gender diversity tells us about the infinite possibilities of existing in this world and, particularly, about how to live and express aspects of our sexuality such as gender identity and/or sexual orientation.

Gender is a social and cultural construct that each society defines, develops and internalizes through the process of differential gender socialization.

What is differential gender socialization? It is a process that provides a pre-established definition of the roles, attitudes, behaviors and other factors expected of the masculine and feminine. Of course, differential socialization emanates from the patriarchal system, so everything that does not respond to hegemonic masculinity has less value.

The sex/gender system is the set of socioeconomic and political structures that maintains and perpetuates the traditional roles of masculine and feminine, as well as what is classically attributed to men and women ( EIGE , 2016).

The sex-gender system is, furthermore, eminently binary and has historically been limited to the recognition of two sexes (male and female) and two genders (man and woman), excluding, discriminating, making invisible and oppressing the rest of sexual and gender realities. that get out of this binary.

However, there are multiple realities regarding gender identity.

Cis or cisgender people : “ Cis – ” is a Latin prefix that means “from the part or side here” and the term “ cisgender ” or its personal abbreviation “ cis ”, serves to identify those people whose gender identity is corresponds to your sex assignment at birth.

Trans / trans people *: “ Trans – ” is another Latin prefix that means “on the other side of” and serves to identify those people whose gender identity does not correspond to their sex assigned at birth.

The umbrella term “ Trans *” identifies all those people who, regardless of their sex assignment or gender identity, step outside the cis-norm and/or question the male/female binary as the only option for individual and social identification.

Therefore, at the level of gender identity, we can find:

People who identify as men.
People who identify as women.
People of non-binary gender, who break with gender binarism, since they do not identify with what is masculine or feminine. Includes agender , bigender , genderfluid people …

Do you know the word Queer ?

The word “ Queer ” comes from English and means “strange,” “eccentric,” or “twisted.” Queer people are people who do not identify with the cisnormative and question normality from a critical perspective. Queerness integrates a dissident gender identity, but it is also a philosophy, a political practice, an artistic expression and a form of vindication .