This sounds like you are trying to express the philosophical concept of essence and identity. Essence, in this sense, could be summed up briefly as the core attributes which an entity must have to retain its identity. So for instance, if we take the rungs away from a ladder, it ceases to be a ladder: it's just two parallel poles. (And possibly not even parallel, given there's no structural feature to keep them that way, but that's a trivial digression.) Arguably, it's not even worth separating essence and identity.
It is worth separating those for multiple reasons, but primarily because identity takes on outside factors as well. If you take the rungs away from a ladder, it ceases to be a ladder, and that is changing the identity by changing the essence. But also, if you lay it on the ground across a gap, now its bridge, and you've changed the identity by changing the perspective without changing the essence at all. Identity changes with context, as Stanford said in the article Silvanus posted, it is contingent and temporary.
I assume this is what you were trying to get at saying there was no objective reality several posts back.
I did not say there is no objective reality. I said that we cannot know it. Most people, certainly including me, still believe that there is objective truth, and the things we experience are caused by objective truths, even if we can't clearly see them because they are filtered by our limited and subjective perspectives. The very concept of gender, I think, is a product of that filtering. Gender is not objective, it's perceived. Much like the physical realities of the object discussed above exist (the structure with the rungs), but ladders and bridges are products of human perspective.
You, on the other hand, think the collective should have the right to dictate to an individual their identity... that is all.
Ya'll keep accusing me of this, but that's not it. I'm not saying that people have the right to dictate things, I'm not saying that I want to dictate things, what I'm telling you is that these things are defined socially.
A) Any personal identity you take on at minimum relies on the language you use to define that identity, and language is socially constructed, your identities are limited by the words and meanings you have access to.
B) All identities exist relative to others. You cannot identify as something if that something has no alternatives to compare to, and the rest of the people in society are the baseline which you compare to.
C) Some parts of identity are socially defined. I'm sure arm wrestling champions consider that a chief part of their identity, but you cannot just identify that within yourself, that is a social position that must be established interpersonally.
So like, you and Silvanus can keep acting like I think we
should be dictating people's identity, but I'm not talking about "should" anything. I'm telling you that everyone is part of everyone else's identities, whether you want them to be or not, you cannot just detach from each other and say everyone is whatever they want to be independent of one another, because we aren't independent of one another.