Though a "Male" or a "Female" designation is assigned at birth depending on our visible genitalia, there are a lot of other biological and physiological factors that go into gender. We are far more complex than a simple binary system.
The majority of us do identify quite well with the gender indicated by our physical appearance, but a minority of people feel a disconnect with their assigned gender. The transgender people that I know have always felt that their brains were a different gender than their sexual organs. Some feel a mix of the two, some feel neither fits, or something different entirely. As we learn more about ourselves, we discover that there is always so much we don't yet know.
Look at homosexuality; it has always occurred in about ten per cent of the human population, and in the same percentage of roughly four hundred fifty other species. They didn't make a decision to be gay any more than we made a decision to be straight. We are attracted to whomever we're attracted to. It feels as unnatural for a gay man to be sexually attracted to a woman as it does for a straight woman to be.
Even within heterosexuality, there are a wide range of of sexual appetites. I am attracted to some men, and not to others. There is nothing necessarily wrong with those others, I'm just not attracted.
Just as with sexuality, gender is complex. Some feel that they need corrective surgery to make the outside match the inside. Some do not feel the need for surgical intervention, but still conform to whichever gender makes them feel authentic.
This is not new, it's just been suppressed by most religions and cultures in the past. Some Native tribes have long ignored assigned gender and have fully integrated their homosexual and gender-fluid people. We have finally reached a place in the US and Western Europe where we are more understanding of these people.
I think their mental health, and ours, is much improved when we simply live and let live. For example, I am seen as a woman because of my genitalia, and I am comfortable with that. I am seen as straight because I am in a monogamous marriage with a man. I am, however, bi-romantic asexual, if we're calling things as they are. I am emotionally and deeply attracted to and capable of forming strong romantic relationships with both males and females, hence bi-romantic. I am asexual in that, while I form deep personal and romantic connections with any gender, I am not interested in sex per se. I have sex with my husband because I recognize that it is a connection that he needs, but I don't.
As to those who would continue to marginalize and ban people for being different on religious grounds, Jesus taught us to love our neighbors and to respect the dignity of every human being. Either we are made in God's image or we are not. There's no "You are and I am, but she's not."
As to the political side of that, we are all equally protected under the Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson, speaking on religion, once said, "It does me no harm if my neighbor believes in one god or twenty gods; it neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg."
I would say the same applies to any area where no one is harmed. It does me no harm if my neighbors feel they are this gender or that; it neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg.
Life is short enough. I live mine as I see fit, and I ask nothing more or less than that of anyone else.
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