Gender identity is used to describe a person's own, internal sense of being a man or being a woman. Gender expression is the external communication of a person’s gender identity through "masculine" or "feminine" behavior, clothing, and other external personal characteristics.
A person's gender identity and/or gender expression may or may not align with a person’s assigned (genetic or anatomical) sex at birth.
A transgender person's gender identity does not match his or her birth-assigned sex. For example, a transgender person may have been assigned male at birth due to anatomy, but may have an internal sense of gender identity as a woman. This transgender person may live her life as a woman, despite the fact that she was assigned 'male' at birth.
A cisgender person's gender identity is aligned with their birth assigned sex. For example, a cisgender person whose assigned sex at birth was male also identifies as male in gender.
Someone who is non-binary does not identify as exclusively male or female. They may identify as both, neither or some combination of the two. Being non-binary does not imply anything about a person’s sexual identity.
