Vancouver Sun: "I want to feel comfortable in my body, I don't want to deal with people asking me if I'm a guy or a girl," she says. "I tried so many times to be a boy, just to make other people happy. I'm concentrating on myself now." Shamai started dressing as a man, although never at his parents' home, but when his parents got separated, a few months before he turned 21, "they told me they didn't want to see me anymore," he says. "I left home, and decided to start transitioning. They couldn't understand it." Although other family members have told him that he is valued in their family life together, he has not been in contact with his parents for more than three years. "I still miss my family, around holidays or whatever," he says. "You want somebody to be proud of you. Family times I really want to call my mother and say, 'I have this great job, I have relationships.' "I realize I was never what my mother wanted me to be. I wanted to try to make her happy but I haven't had a chance to say, 'I'm not a girl but I'm still successful!'" (Gender identity crisis can be the beginning of a long, lonely journey).
A gender identity is the way in which an individual identifies with a gender category, for-example as being either female or male, or in some cases being neither. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to change after that. All societies have a set of gender categories that can serve as the basis of the formation of a social identity in relation to other members of society. In most societies there is a basic division between male and female genders, that are understood to be determined by biological sex, but in all societies some individuals do not identify with the gender that is otherwise associated with their biological sex. Some societies have so-called third gender categories which that can be used as a basis for a gender identity by persons who are uncomfortable with the gender that is usually associated with their sex (Wikipedia: Gender identity).
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