This issue has certainly gotten a lot of attention in the media lately, particularly by Charlie Rose.
You dont know very many women do you? lol
That period of time when you observed that children stopped holding same sex hands and then start holding opposite sex hands was called puberty. Up until then gender is a taught by social interaction. Before puberty I knew I was a boy because I was told I was a boy and then someone pointed out that I was a out'y instead of a in'ny.
But as soon as my hormones kicked in all the sudden the opposite sex became a focal point to my existence. As some would say I started thinking with a different head...
But then we have been talking about gender identity not
gender roles. IE how a individual views their gender identity; do they personally feel like a man, women, or there abouts. Science or other peoples opinions are not going to change how some feels about their gender identity. How they feel is how they feel. Of course there is some gray area since how a person feels can be greatly affected by chemicals in the brain, mental disorders, emotional trauma, a misunderstands of ones own feelings, biological changes etc. And really a person could just want to be the opposite sex for whatever reason, even if they dont actually feel that way. Or perhaps they just dont feel like the sex they were born as. Hell its their feelings I am not going to tell them they are wrong. I dont think anyone would listen to me if a I tried.
My point though is that a persons feelings are private, and the individual owns them. Other people telling them what they can and cannot do with their own feelings of self perception is extremely arrogant. This trying to establish gender identity as being black or white, is self serving for the people looking for a valid reason to have the personal feelings that they identify with in their own gender identity. It is a insecurity. They want to be viewed as legit humans.
Of course people will turn this into something about bigotry. And yes there are a lot of bigots that dont accept alternative lifestyles. The popular theme in this thread is that a individual cannot personally change their gender identity. Yet there are people that do.
I suspect that the actual issue here is a projection of a certain ideological belief system. A individual has their own personal feeling of gender identity. But there are people saying that individuals are powerless to change that identity. Its a collective of people saying that the consensus is that you cannot change your feeling s of your own gender identity and that you are locked into that gender identity until you die. But ignores the nature of humans; ignorance of ones own feelings isnt unheard of and in fact a natural part of the brains development. The danger is that this movement is trying to tell people who may not actually know enough information yet, to definitely know their own feeling of gender identity. Many homosexuals because they too are influenced by society, dont come to the realization that their gender identity is not what the believed for a good part of their life. The feeling took time to grow while the person learned more about them self. They may have thought they identified their gender a certain way but learned through the years what their actual feelings were.
But to most of the posters in this thread, a individual is locked into their gender identity and cannot change it for any reason. As if introspective feelings of ones self identity cannot change. I am who I think I am, no matter what road blocks society erects.