Gender Identity
Gender Identity
What is Gender Identity?
Gender identity is one's innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both, or neither. Someone's gender identity can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth. A person may express their gender identity through behavior, clothing, haircut or voice, and this may or may not conform to socially defined behaviors and characteristics typically associated with being either masculine or feminine.
A person who identifies as male but was assigned female at birth is known as a trans man, and a person who identifies as female but was assigned male at birth is known as a trans woman. A person who identifies as neither female nor male is known as nonbinary.
Gender Identity options available in HR Direct Employee Self Service:
| Agender | An individual who identifies as not having a gender. Agender people may identify as neutrois, genderless, or gender neutral, having an unknown or indefinable gender, or deciding not to label their gender. |
| Cisgender (non-trans) man | An individual who identifies as a man and was assigned male at birth. |
| Cisgender (non-trans) woman | An individual who identifies as a woman and was assigned female at birth. |
| Demigender | An individual who feels a partial connection to a particular gender identity. Examples of demigender identities include demigirl, demiboy, and demiandrogyne. |
| Genderfluid | An individual whose gender varies over time. A genderfluid person may at any time identify as male, female, genderless, or any nonbinary gender identity, or as some combination of gender identities. |
| Genderqueer | An umbrella term and a specific identity for an individual who identifies as neither male nor female (but as another gender), as somewhere in between or beyond genders, or as a combination of genders. |
| Nonbinary | An umbrella term and a specific identity for an individual who does not fit into traditional “male” and “female” gender categories. Nonbinary people include individuals who identify as bigender, genderfluid, genderqueer, pangender, and many additional genders. |
| Questioning | An individual who is uncertain about how they identify their gender. |
| Trans man | An individual who identifies as a man but was assigned female at birth. |
| Trans woman | An individual who identifies as a woman but was assigned male at birth. |
Using Gender-Neutral Language in Groups
When addressing groups of people whose self-identity(ies) have not been shared, we should use gender-neutral language. For example, we might use “friends” or “colleagues” rather than “guys” or “ladies.”