Kirkpatrick presents her thoughts about three areas of female experience: core gender identity and the inner genital; maternal instincts; and the sexual life of women. She suggests that the emphasis on biological counterparts to passive, receptive, creative femininity, is based on trying to adapt female development to a male preconception about women. Gender identity is much more psychological and less biological than we had thought. It originates with the parental assignment of sex, which influences the perception of the female genital as much as the other way