The Sex Debate

Gender identity is important because of how society functions. There is a certain level of social conditioning to how genders behave and interact. In an ideal world we would all be human and gender would be subordinate to personality and human qualities. But it is impossible to have a society completely devoid of gender identity. The best we can do is make a sincere attempt for gender equity and ending gender stereotypes.

 

I don't know how important gender identity really is. Many of my best friends growing up were boys. So I've been a tom boy with boyish qualities since I was a kid. I don't mind being perceived as androgynous or boyish. But at the end of the day, I'm still a girl and I do place some relative importance on being seen as a girl.

 

To a large extent, I think we identify with and embrace our biology and have an affinity to it. It may not be an expression of oneself, but it is one part of self expression. Gender, nationality, language, culture, race, religion, class, income, social status and a plethora of other things collectively form self expression.

 

Sometimes gender seems trivial, but when we see transgender children/people struggle to fit in and gain an identity – we realize how important it really is in society. Perhaps the world would be better without so much gender emphasis – but it's a double edged sword. Can we really strip away all these little identifiers that make who we are. Without it we would all be nothing but one carbon compound life form indistinguishable from the other.

Why is person's gender (sex) identity (male/female/others) so important to people?

Its a part of social conditioning. Other than that you could blame grammatical compulsions for it. When I refer to you in the third person should I use he/she/her/him ...? You get the practical problem faced?  😆

How important is our gender identity?

My off hand response was that it hardly matters but I guess we tend to take a lot of things in our life for granted. The ordeal that an athlete who was brought up as a female  had to face due to the gender determination tests she had to go through highlights the significance it can sometimes assume. For details of the case you could check here-  http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/india/india-athlete-gender-ordeal

Some genetic or hormonal conditions could get diagnosed much later in life (around puberty) and change the whole course of a person's life. It would be quite traumatic for a person to suddenly be told that  she /he is not the gender that she /he had believed to be all these years.

Is gender really an expression of one's essential self?

No, I dont think so. It is more of a conditioned response.

I think to answer that question it would depend on the cultural diaspora one is being brought up in: What is the social connotation of your gender in the culture, society, religion, government etc of where you are? 
External influences will always play a role in how one relates to their gender identity, and it's short sides and highlights. There is also the component of primary influences (family, and how you've been raised with in your household) and secondary influences (arguable the most influential: media, society, culture, school, friends) and tying it all together: Your experiences.