dreams, again

Really unsettling dream about watching a friend (an amalgam of my ex and another friend) getting exorcised in a conventionally Abrahamic way and almost rolling my eyes at the inefficiency. That my friend was possessed was inarguable, but the priest guy was doing it all wrong. At some point, almost as an act of pity on him (the possession seemed minor at the time), I stepped in. As soon as I started drawing ideograms on my friend's forehead, the possession kicked up several notches, and the possessing entity, claiming at times to be Baelzebub or "the Devil" popped up. I was having trouble remembering how to draw a particular ideogram (energy, I think, but I kept getting it confused with horse), and the mockery, with really annoying/grating/creepy giggling, kicked in. Of course there was vomit, but even in the dream I remember being glad it was thin and normal, not the gallons of pea soup like in the Exorcist. Before I could draw the character correctly on my friend's forehead, I woke up, still with that creepy giggling in my mind. Ick.

overdesignated sign

Chatting with ineffabelle today about (among other things) gender and identity and the relation of internal to external, the idea came up that gender (and possibly other aspects of identity) is overdesignated, that it can (and often does) refer to both the internal sense of self and to larger category membership. The point was really driven home when ineffabelle prompted me to describe my own gender, and I quickly realized I didn't know what might be gender, and what might be individual characteristics.

So, to broaden this to the readership, I'm curious: of the traits you may think of as pertaining to your gender (not your sex; that's a different conversation), which ones of them would you also see as individual characteristics of your personhood? Which ones pertain solely to your gender? For bonus points, in general terms, could you describe the interplay between internal sense of self and external categorical membership in relation to your gender, and if so, would you?