Ilka wrote:
Well, I think your gender should be easy: look down and what you see thats your gender. About your sexual orientation... thats another story. But, do you really need a label? Just let the things flow. You cannot control who you fall in love with, so wait until you fall in love, and hope the person who fall in love with falls in love with you, too. I have even heard of people who falls in love with a person of the same sex and then with a person of the other sex. As I told you before, you cannot control who you fall in love with.
So do not worry that much and love freely.
There are a minimum of four criteria on which a person might be classified by sex, and there is nothing to say that any of them will be consistent with each other.
First, there is a persons karyotype. Most people have either an XX or an XY karyotype. But probably as many as one person in 500 has a different karyotype: XXY (Klinefelters), XXX (Triple X) are the most common, but others include, X- (Turner's), XXXY, or even, remarkably, XXYY (and other multiple Y presentations).
Second, there is physiological sex. There are XX males (usually caused by an fault in meiosis, where the SRY gene gets attached to the X chromosome in the sperm). There are XY females (generally a result of gonadal dysgenesis). There are hermaphrodites who present ambiguous genitalia.
Third, there is gender identity. Even with consistent genes and physiology, a person may self-identify as the opposite sex. This self-identification is often sufficiently profound to indicate sex reassignment surgery.
Finally there is social gender. A person with fully consistent genes, physiology and gender identity may choose to present as the opposite gender and fulfil the traits and characteristics of that gender, without presenting the need for SRS.
It's not as easy as looking down.
_________________
--James