Anatomy at birth may prompt a check in the "male" or "female" box on the birth certificate but to doctors and scientists, sex and gender aren't always the same thing.
The Trump administration purportedly is considering defining gender as determined by sex organs at birth, which if adopted could deny certain civil rights protections to an estimated 1.4 million transgender Americans.
But variation in gender identity is a normal part of human diversity, the American Academy of Pediatrics, or AAP, stresses in a new policy that outlines how to provide supportive medical care for transgender youth.
Aren't sex and gender interchangeable terms?
Gender identity is more an inner sense of being male, female or somewhere in between regardless of physical anatomy, he explained. It may be influenced by genetics and other factors, but it's more about the brain than the sex organs. And transgender is a term accepted across science and medical groups to mean people whose gender identity doesn't match what Rafferty calls their "sex assigned at birth."
How early can people tell if they're transgender?
What kind of care might they need?
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