Who are you? Take a moment and write down all the different identities that you might answer that question with. Your list likely includes references to your race, gender, sexual orientation, political identity, ethnicity, or age. Maybe it also includes your family background, the work you do, your social status, and your hobbies and passions. Your list of the things that make you who you are is as individual as you are.

Here’s another question: How did you become you? How much of who you are were you “born with,” and how much is because of things you’ve learned, your experiences, or your choices? Most people would agree that our identity is based on a combination of all of these factors and much more.

In sociology, identity formation is a process of coming to understand ourselves and differentiate ourselves in relation to our social world. Identity formation relates to our presentation of self, or how we portray ourselves to society through actions, expressions, and affiliations with others. As demonstrated by the list you just made, identity is multifaceted. In this section, we will look briefly at identity formation in general and then explore how individuals form and express gender identity.

Sociological Theories of Self-Development

As discussed in the previous section, we are born with a genetic makeup and biological traits. However, who we are as human beings develops over time, often through social interactions. Many scholars in psychology and sociology have theorized about identity development. Psychologists tend to look inward at the qualities of individuals (mental health, emotional processes, cognitive processing). In contrast, sociologists tend to look outward to qualities of social context (social institutions, cultural norms, interactions with others) to understand human behavior.

One of the pioneering contributions to sociological perspectives on self-development was Charles Cooley (he/him) (1864–1929). He stated that people’s self-understanding is constructed, in part, by their perception of how others view them—a process termed “the looking-glass self,” which is thoroughly social (Cooley 1902). It is based on how we imagine we appear to others. This projection defines how we feel about ourselves and who we feel ourselves to be. Therefore, the development of a self involves three elements in Cooley’s analysis: “the imagination of our appearance to the other person; the imagination of [their] judgment of that appearance, and some sort of self-feeling, such as pride or mortification.” For example, how we express gender is based on how we think society and others will view us, and we internalize the positive or negative consequences of what others think of us, as well as how we feel in response to this social process.

Later, George Herbert Mead (he/him) (1863–1931) advanced a more detailed sociological approach to the self. He agreed that the self, as a person’s distinct identity, is developed through social interaction. He further noted that the crucial component of the self is its capacity for self-reflection (Mead 1934). He broke the self down into two components or “phases,” the “I” and the “me.” The “me” represents the part of the self in which one recognizes the “organized sets of attitudes” of others toward the self. It is who we are in other’s eyes: our roles, our “personalities,” or our public personas (like some of the identities on the list you made at the beginning of this section. The “I,” on the other hand, represents the self that acts on its initiative or responds to the organized attitudes of others.

Mead theorized a developmental process of identity formation based on growing awareness and integration of the I and the Me, in which we move from imitating others in a preparatory stage to practicing possible identities in a play stage, to learning the social rules that are attached to different identities in the game stage, and finally, with a growing understanding of what society expects of us specific contexts, we internalize those norms and expectations as though they are our own identity (figure 2.12). As we move on to consider gender identity formation, see if you can identify these stages.

Gender Identity

Using Mead’s model, the formation of gender identity can be understood as a process of learning gender, discovering and understanding our gender, and learning how to navigate our social world as our gender. Gender identity is the gender we experience ourselves to be. Since gender assignment at birth is so heavily emphasized in patriarchal societies, gender identity formation is heavily influenced by gender socialization. Think of it as coming to a conscious awareness of what our assigned gender is and then learning and internalizing the meaning and rules of conforming to social expectations of our gender.

A growing body of research reveals that gender identity is not purely based just on socialization or biology but a combination of the two and also on individual preference. While many children develop a gender identity that aligns with their assigned gender, transgender and gender-nonconforming children as young as three display a preference for gender-nonconforming clothing and play and a tendency to self-socialize as a gender other than the one they were assigned (Gülgöz et al. 2019). Many adult trans and nonbinary people report experiencing similar preferences when they were children.

This standard assignment of sex at birth led to the creation of the term transgender—trans as an abbreviation—which means that one’s sex assigned at birth does not align with one’s gender identity. This term dates back to the 1970s, but the term cisgender came much later in the mid-1990s (Merriam-Webster n.d.). In America, 1.6 million people identify as transgender (Herman et al. 2022). Transgender people who identify as men or women may describe their identity as transgender women, transfeminine (trans femme), transgender men, transmasculine (transmasc), or they may simply identify as women or men without disclosing their transgender identity.

Some people who do not identify as men or women may identify as nonbinary or genderqueer, for example. Nonbinary refers to gender identities beyond binary identifications of man or woman/masculine or feminine. Genderqueer is an umbrella term that covers gender identity and expression that falls outside the binary/non-normative labels. It can also be used by people who wish to hold queer gender identity without any other defining specifics about their gender identity or expression. Some people use gender-neutral pronouns, such as ze/hir or they/them, rather than the gendered pronouns she/her or he/his.

Misgendering

The trauma of navigating a society that privileges binary gender can cause severe social and emotional distress for trans and nonbinary people. The term gender dysphoria refers to intense feelings and struggles and disconnection from one’s biological sex, body, and gender identity. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR) describes gender dysphoria as “a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and their assigned gender” (APA 2022). Trans and nonbinary gender identities are not disorders. Rather, transitioning to a trans or nonbinary identity can provide relief and even resolve gender dysphoria.

Have you ever had someone get your gender wrong? How did that feel? Misgendering is the harmful practice of referring to people by a gender other than their stated gender identity (Kapusta 2016). Misgendering people can also reinforce feelings of gender dysphoria. Many, but not all, people who transition choose new names to match their gender identity. Deadnaming is the harmful practice of continuing to call trans people by the name associated with the gender they were assigned at birth rather than the name they ask you to call them. It is closely related to misgendering. You can help reduce anxiety related to gender dysphoria for trans and nonbinary people by interrupting misgendering and deadnaming, and by using stated pronouns.

In workplaces where inclusion is a priority, misgendering and deadnaming are classified as harassment. As pronouns and gender identities are not visible on the body, trans communities have created procedures for communicating gender pronouns, which consists of verbally asking and stating one’s pronouns (Nordmarken 2014). The practice of stating pronouns during introductions has helped create social settings that are more inclusive and welcoming of trans and nonbinary people (figure 2.13).

Let’s Review

Licenses and Attributions for Constructing Identity

Open Content, Original

“Constructing Identity” by Heidi Esbensen and Nora Karena is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Figure 2.12. “Mead’s Development-of-self Theory” is adapted from “5.1 Theories of Self Development” by Tonja R. Conerly, Kathleen Holmes, and Asha Lal Tamang, Introduction to Sociology 3e, OpenStax, which is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Modifications by Nora Karena include creating a table to visualize the theory.

“Constructing Identity Question Set” was created by ChatGPT and is not subject to copyright. Edits for relevance, alignment, and meaningful answer feedback by Colleen Sanders are licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Open Content, Shared Previously

“Sociological Theories of Self-Development” is adapted from the first five paragraphs of “Theories of Self-Development” by Tonja R. Conerly, Kathleen Holmes, and Asha Lal Tamang, Introduction to Sociology 3e, Openstax, which is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Modifications by Nora Karena include revision for length and context.

Figure 2.13. “2016.07.01 Nametags with Pronouns – Avery 5392_nonbranded” by Ted Eytan is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.