GENDER:  PERSONALITY    Males & females are different from the day they're born.  They have different natural gifts and skills.   They use different parts of the brain to solve the same problems.

GENDER IDENTITY:  People know whether they're male or female.  That awareness never changes no matter what surgery they have, what medicines they take, or injuries they endure.  No amount of psychological retraining can change a male into a female or vice-versa.

GENDER EXPRESSION:  ROLES & STEREOTYPES   How do men and women dress?  What hairstyles are allowed?  Should they shave?  What social roles are available?  Rules of etiquette.

In the ages-old debate regarding nature or nurture, Gender & Gender Identity are Nature;  Gender Expression is Nurture.
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Ask any mother:  infants have a definite personality the day they’re born:  Some infants are active and demanding.  Others are quiet and curious.  Some love watching bright colors, others are soothed by music.  

Included in everyone’s personality is a set of skills and gifts that are special for girls or for boys.  For example girls have gifts that will help them take care of children.  Girls are very good at language and self-expression.  Boys have gifts that make them competitive.  Boys also have special skills for making & fixing things.  Each child’s set of special gifts is known as Gender.  

Gender is a person’s permanent innate personality traits, intellectual processes and thought patterns.  Researchers has used brain scans to show that when females are given a problem to solve, different parts of the brain light up compared to males given exactly the same problem.  Female brains are programmed for language;  male brains for making consecutive calculations.

In addition, every infant is born fully aware of whether they’re a girl or a boy--known as Gender Identity.  That awareness is programmed unalterably into their brain;  no hormone, surgery, or injury can reprogram the brain.  Gender Identity never changes.

And then there’s Gender Expression.  Every culture has stereotypes about how females and males should look and behave.  Children watch the adults around them and try to adopt a Gender Expression consistent with their inner sense of Gender & Gender Identity--which would be a Right-Gender Expression.    

However adults may not approve of the Gender Expression the child wants to adopt.  In the case of transsexuals, it’s because the parents believe what the obstetrician told them, instead of what their child is telling them.  So they force the child to adopt a Wrong-Gender Expression.  

A person with a Wrong-Gender Expression is a disaster.  The conflict between their inner identity--their Gender & Gender Identity--versus their Wrong-Gender Expression produces constant misery.  Misery so severe many of these children commit suicide or self-mutilation just to relieve the pain.

Other students at school are quite aware that the hapless transsexual has Wrong-Gender Expression:  a gender-girl trying to pretend that she’s a boy.  So they tease “him”, calling “him” sissy and fag.  ...Taunting punctuated by physical violence.

Transsexuality is a conflict between a child and adults about the child’s innate core identity.
Transsexuality is a choice between Right-Gender Expression and Wrong-Gender Expression.
Transsexuals choose between harassment by other children for Wrong-Gender Expression or harassment by adults for perceived stereotype violation.