Investment

I have often written about core identity but what do we mean by this? Well at the very least I would say that it involves a deep psychological and emotional investment.

Imagine a male actor playing and expressing a female role on stage but once the costume is removed, there might be zero investment because there is no root identity issue present. How can there can be identity without investment.

We know that gender variance runs the gamut from occasional expression for amusement, relaxation or sexual titillation to a deep sense of identity. Where it gets interesting of course is when bluring occurs in the middle (basing ourselves on the Benjamin scale as compass).

Binary transsexuals would very emphatically tell you they are women and yet others might say they feel in between genders. Others still would say that their birth sex suits them perfectly well and there is no deeper investment other than enjoying the clothing.

Therefore as a exercise, when next reflecting on your identity I might suggest you use the term investment as a synonym and see what happens.