People are always dividing themselves into categories. The most obvious one often goes unnoticed: gender.

For as long as anyone can remember, one has been labeled as either a boy or a girl. When a parent is walking outside with their baby in a stroller and admiring people stop to look, they immediately ask, “Is it a boy?” or “Is it a girl?” However, gender is losing the simplicity we once thought it to possess, and today, answering these questions isn’t quite as easy for everyone.

We generally rely on either a person’s biological make-up or cultural stereotypes to create the definition of gender. So what does it mean to be a “man” or a “woman”? When I attended a meeting on trans awareness by the Rainbow Pride Union Tuesday night, those in attendance were asked to write down some words to try to answer this question.

Things written under the section for “male” included “penis,” while under “female” were words such as “vagina,” “breasts” and “bear children.” As the meeting continued and these words were discussed, each of them was erased from the board one by one as we broke through the typical, narrow-minded way of perceiving the distinction.

The point was made that “sex” does not equal “gender.”

For example, when we came to the word “penis,” it was asked, “If a man has testicular cancer and has to undergo surgery to have his testicles removed, is he no longer a man?” The same would go for a woman who had breast cancer and had to have surgery that would make her lose her breasts. Or, “If a woman does not want to have children, is she no longer a woman?”

But if your sex is not your gender, then what is? I’m not really too sure myself.

Society has always pushed roles that tell people how one should act or speak, what their interests should be, and more. We are all familiar with the negative perception of a boy playing with dolls, or a girl who does not cross her legs. These rules of society constantly push people into its expectations. When one goes outside these boundaries, they face everyone who still remains inside them, as well as their judgments.

Gender has become another way to divide us into what is acceptable and what isn’t — and for some it divides them from who they truly are.

My name is Jennifer, and I was born a girl. To myself, as well as those around me, I am a girl. But to some, this flow with the norm does not exist, and many struggle with identity when it comes to their gender. An example of this daily struggle is someone who is transgender. For those that are not aware or unsure of this term, to be transgender is when a person cannot identify with the gender of the body they were born with. Even a given name can feel foreign. Their assigned gender becomes limiting, confining them to a box that is unsettling to have been placed in.

I have never struggled with identifying myself as a girl. But it is easy to forget that there are people that must deal with this struggle every single day, trying to figure out what this means on a personal level.

I don’t have a final word on what gender is, or what it means to be a “boy” or a “girl,” but when it comes down to it, everyone has the choice to decide its significance in his or her own lives. Why is there so much weight put on gender in everyday life? Is it as big a deal as we make it out to be?

Can’t we just be “people”?