What is gender? The more I think, the more confused I get.

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The analogy I see when pondering gender as a label are the various sound bars on a stereo: you can toggle them up or down at any point (i.e. masculine characteristics to female characteristics). It seems likely all of these criteria that defines someone's gender will range either subtly or drastically between any two individuals, perhaps staying set or changing over time as one grows and experiences more of life.

i dont know, im confused, im pretty sure im male, and if i look down, that just proves i am.


i dont know whats going on, i thought your gender was simply whether you had female parts or male parts, when did it stop being that? im not trying to be offensive or anything. im just confused because to me your sex and your gender and the same thing, infact, sex is another word for gender.

^I always thought that your sex was your biological identity, and gender was part of your personal identity?

its confusing because everyone ive grown up with people who use these two terms interchangeably. i dont get how you can be a different gender to the biological gender you are....im not saying its wrong, im just saying its a concept i cant really grasp

Gender is a social construction that attribute a specific behaviour and role in society to each person based on the genitals with which that person was born. It isn't something inherent to be a human being, quite the opposite, it's something completely artificial since biological sex doesn't affect behaviour at all.
A three-year-old kid doesn't have gender, and if someone has ever told you they did, they are either wrong or they actually meant that they never had physical dysphoria (don't confuse with gender dysphoria) with their genitals and other physical sex characteristics.
Most people feel a strong and deep identification with the gender they were assignated at birth and share a big feeling of forming part of a group and understanding with the rest of the people that were assignated that gender at birth. That doesn't mean it's a natural thing (it really isn't) but that gender has such a big effect in people and is introduced so deeply in everybody's mind during their childhood that it becomes part of their identity.
However, some of us have always found it either hard, umcomfortable or stupid to act the way society expected as to act. When we couldn't reach that expectations we felt bad with ourselves and rejected by the rest of the people. That's called gender dysphoria.
A lot people that suffer from gender dysphoria think (as I did for a lot of years) that there's something wrong with them because they can't behave "in the right way".
Some feel that way for all their lifes. Others learn that they can be whoever they want to be and that they don't have to follow the path that society wanted them to follow, so they chose a new gender that fits and defines them better, or decide that they can still identify with the gender they were assignated at birth but rejecting the expectations, or they just reject the idea of gender and don't identify with anything.
I hope this is clear, I tend to ramble non-stop and I think I don't know enough English to explain such a complicated thing as gender (I find it hard to explain it even in Spanish). Btw, my gender identity is something in between agender, because I reject gender and would like it to no longer exist, and demi-boy / boy, because my gender expression and presentation is mostly masculine but enough femenine for some people to tell me that I look a bit gay (what I actually am), and because I still identify a little as a male even if I don't want to.