What is gender? The difference between gender and sex

When I was in 5th grade and other students first started using the word "gay" to insult others, it made other students laugh. I didn't know what it meant to be gay, I didn't know what gender was outside of boy and girl. 

When I was in middle school and other students started coming out as gay, I saw them ostracized and marked as different.

When I was in high school and had friends that were boys paint their nails, I did not think anything of it. 

When I began my first semester in college, I took an introduction to sociology class and began to understand the difference in gender and sexuality. I learned that as humans, we like to check things off and put them into nice and neat little boxes, but that is not the way gender works. Instead of putting people into "boy," "girl," and "other" boxes, we need to consider gender and sexuality as a fluid scale. Someone with male body parts may have a feminine gender identity and dress that way sometimes, but dress as a man other times (such as drag queens). A person can move around on the scale, anywhere between boy and girl that they feel fits them. I began to understand this more with life experiences. I saw my friend from high school join the army, and also saw him become a drag performer. My roommate from college went back and forth on if she liked men and women or both, or neither, and I began to understand that it is less about the identity of the person that we have a relationship with, but about personality and how they make us feel. I met transgender people for the first time, saw an individual from my church transition from male to female and be welcomed with open arms. Speaking with these individuals and hearing their struggles to accept themselves and hope that others will continue to love them opened my eyes and my heart. Reading stories about people that go through similar situations has the same effect.

For children, hearing stories about people who are unlike them can open their minds to acceptance. One book that introduces the idea that gender identity and the feeling of who we are can differ from the sex that was identified at birth is I am Jazz. This children's book is written by Jazz Jennings,  a teenage, transgender girl, and she tells the story of what it was like as a child to not feel like the person that everyone wanted her to be. Her story is written in an age-appropriate way that introduces the vocabulary transgender and reminds children and adults alike that everyone just wants to be loved.