How much of your identity is tied up with your gender?

We are all many things. But perhaps, first, we are all of some gender—typically male or female (for others, the matter is not so clear cut). Gender plays an enormous role in what happens to us in life—what is expected of us; what we are thought to be capable of; and on and on. Gender plays a huge role in determining how we are seen.

But does it play that same role in helping us form our own identities? Do we identify first as male or female (or other), and then as our role in society or at work or in our families or communities, or whatever? Or does something else come first?

What is it for you? Is gender your first point of identity, or is something else? What is the something else? Why do you think gender plays the role it does in your concept of yourself?