My name is Katie Spencer, I use she, her, hers pronouns.

And I am an assistant professor and

faculty member at the program in human sexuality.

And I am the co-coordinator of

the transgender health services program with Dr. Diane Burke.

I, well, I primarily work with adults.

So, young adults all the way up on to people into their 80s and

I also work with teens and adolescents.

Gender identity is the concept of how we feel in [LAUGH] your head and

in your heart, so how you experience your gender identity.

And then your birth assigned sex is when all babies are born,

they actually look at the external anatomy and decide if it's a boy or a girl.

But actually, birth assigned sex has more variance than we tend to think of, and

so like 1 in 1,000 babies are born with intersex or

a disorder of sexual development.

So there's a little bit more variability than we tend to think.

But we live in a world that is a gender binary.

And so people are assigned to like boy or girl, male or female.

But not everybody feels that way.

So, again, micro gender identity.

People may have some sort of the external genitalia that looks male or

female but internally may identify differently from that.

And that might mean that they identify,

maybe they have anatomy that is consistent with male anatomy.

That we would think of, that's like a penis, but they might identify as female.

We all live in the world as gendered beings.

Gender is relevant to all of us, so it shapes all of our experience.

And even though we live in a world that is cisnormative, so cisgender is the term

that I like when your birth assigned sex matches your gender identity and

even matches your gender expression, how you express your gender in the world.

You still have a gender identity.

And it still matters about other people as well, too,

because we're all on that gender spectrum.

And we all probably know someone on all of those different places of

the gender spectrum.

Well, what I say to my step-mother, who hadn't really thought about gender and

just thinks that, when we grow up, we're taught that

gender is kind of just a part of who we are and that there's these gender norms.

So if you were born a boy, then you're supposed to act masculine and like we

all could probably name like what it means to be masculine in like the US culture.

And then that's the way it's supposed to be and that's what's right.

But so then most people don't even think about that because that's

just the way it is.

If you fit into that, you don't have any [INAUDIBLE], you don't think about it.

You don't question it.

So the way I would talk about it with my step-mother

is just pointing out that there are variations and actually, in reality,

a lot of people have different variations from that.

I was assigned female at birth, I identify as a woman,

I feel like my gender identity really fits that.

And I present in sort of a normative culture, feminine way.

But there's also feminine traits that don't necessarily fit me.

There's masculine traits that might fit me.

I actually have variability within that.

But some people just don't question that or think about that, so

it's like a process.

And that's like a natural process to just think about that.

So looking at yourself, thinking about your own gender and how it fits for you or

how it doesn't.

And that that's okay, that recognizing we're all on one the gender spectrum,

and that that's not a bad thing.

And if we have that variability.

And then also just looking around you and seeing that there's people

all across that, and that's totally a normal thing too.

So I think it's just about opening your eyes to that and starting to see that.

And instead of conflating that with a negative thing, that

if you don't conform to those gender norms that there's something wrong with you, or

that's something bad, but then shifting that to be, wow.

Actually, the diversity and variability in everybody's gender identities and

expressions is a really lovely and amazing part of humanity.

And that's normal and I think that's what we're trying to do

with the gender from a real life approach, is just kind of teaching people that these

norms that we've been taught our whole life, or these expectations that people

are supposed to fit into this binary, it doesn't actually fit for everyone.

It's great if it does fit for you, that's cool.

We're not trying to rain on anyone's parade about that, but

also that there's this whole spectrum and that's lovely and wonderful.

There's a lot of different flowers in the garden.

[LAUGH]

Gender Identity - Dr. Katie Spencer

What does it mean to identify as Transgender or Gender Non-Conforming (TGNC)?

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