Thread by @RobynHoldaway

We need to talk about #gender.
So, there is a lot of stuff going around right now about identity, gender, presentation, sex and what it all means. Being unemployed and passionate about this topic, I have made a thread to explain. Having access to photoshop means pictures.

Many people have done this before me, but I feel like this will be the simplest way of explaining things.
Imagine a world where beings appear to be red or yellow. A variety of shades of this (magenta, scarlet, lemon, daffodil), but they are roughly able to be grouped.

About 1 in every 100 are orange, or amber or blood orange. These are told 'well you are red or yellow', and get pushed into one side or the other. It's a spectrum, but the world sees it as a binary.
This is how sex works.

Now, that is their outside colour. They also have an inside colour. This colour might be red, or yellow, or orange. It could also be blue, or green or purple or polka dot. It often matches their outside colour, but it doesn't have to.
This is gender identity.

For some, they want their outside colour to match their inside colour and can do things to make that happen. They don't have to though, and their outside colour doesn't change their inside colour.
This is roughly how transgender people work.

In this world, in this time, reds tend to be triangles.
Yellows tend to be squares.
Shapes have no colour, and historically have been adopted by all colours. Everyone was a circle at one point, and in a different place, reds are squares.

Any colour can be any shape. It doesn't change their external or their internal colour - it is just a shape. Some like to change shape, or be new shapes. For some shape = colour, but that has no objective basis.
This is gender presentation (hair, make up, clothes etc)

In this world reds are associated with computing, gardening, ironing and looking after teenagers. Yellows are builders, artists and look after children. Some find that reflects them, but for many it doesn't.

There is nothing about being yellow that makes you a good builder, it's just that at this time and in this place that is what is thought. Any colour of any shape can be good at anything. In other places reds are builders and yellows are gardeners.
These are gender roles.

External colour, internal colour, shape and roles might all match. But mostly, they don't. Some external yellows are internal reds, who are stars, who look after teenagers.
Let's take this out of colours and shapes into the real world.

You might have a male body, a female identity, present as female, but fulfil male gender roles. None of this invalidates the other.
Stay at home cisgendered dads are still men.
Nonbinary people aren't always androgynous.
Trans women in trousers are still women.

If someone is transgender, they may associate themselves with certain elements of presentation/ roles associated with their gender.
(So a internal red choosing to be a triangle and work with computers. This helps them to be seen as 'red'. )

But they don't HAVE to. A trans man is a man regardless of what he wears or does. Society has connected identity/presentation/roles, but in reality they aren't!
Presentation and roles are dependant on context, identity is a known inner truth.

This metaphor isn't perfect, but I hope it helps to explain some things.
Whether you agree with gender roles or presentation is down to you, but gender identity is a unique undeniable fact. We all have a gender identity, whether cis or trans.

Let boys wear dresses, let women be mechanics, let nonbinary people have beards. None of this impacts or invalidates their gender identity.

If your understanding or your gender is based purely on external factors, take a moment for self reflection. What makes you, you?

Sex organs aren't gender. Chromosomes aren't gender. Dresses and occupation aren't gender.
If you didn't know what you looked like, what your external colour was, what would your gender be?

Anyway, this thread has gone on long enough. I hope it helps!
#TransRightsAreHumanRights #transgender #LGBWithTheT #queer #identity