In the process of losing my religion, I have found that I have also lost any sense of care about my gender identity. It's not that I now want to be identified as transgender or gender-queer, I'm still perfectly fine with being identified as cis-gender. I just don't care about that anymore, and it doesn't have any significance to me. I'm gender apathetic, if you will.
The problem is that from my earliest memories, my gender identity was wrapped up in my sexual identity and I was indoctrinated with the idea that my purpose in life was to reproduce. My parents were "quiverfull" believers; they subscribed to the radical ideology that a woman's purpose in life was to create as many children as humanly possible so as to spread their religion. My mother had an astonishing 13 pregnancies in 15 years, but was only able to carry 3 to term. We knew many families who had 20+ children, and my parents were always judged as inferior people with less faith until my mother explained that she suffered from frequent miscarriages. When I was 13, she suffered some kind of problem with her uterus that resulted in massive blood loss and required an emergency hysterectomy (probably the result of an illegal abortion she had in her teens). She felt that her usefulness in life was over, that she had no purpose now that she could no longer have children.
Growing up, I was never even told that there were sexual orientations other than straight. I gradually got involved in online communities, meeting people from around the world with other opinions and sexual orientations. I realized I wasn't straight after a particularly miserable relationship ended when I was 21, and spent the next few years trying to find a label that fit me. I was eventually told, "Maybe you're asexual." That was the first time I'd heard the term, and my immediate reaction was, "Wait.....that's an option?!" I am asexual (I feel no sexual attraction towards anyone), and a subset of asexual called anti-sexual/sex averse (I am repulsed and disgusted by the entire concept of sexuality, but do not go so far as to say that sexual desires should be eliminated from the human genome and all new humans should be created in vats).
Tie that in with my earlier point about being indoctrinated from birth with the idea that my purpose in life as a woman was to have children, and you begin to see the problem. I am averse to the idea of having intercourse or procreating. So, if I do not feel I have a religious obligation to do so, and do not have any desire to do so either, the entire basis of my gender identity is gone. The entire construct of my gender identity had been based on the notion that I am a woman, the weaker sex, cursed by God to suffer in childbirth and have a man rule over me.
"Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." I had sought relationships with men because I believed that only in being ruled over would I be "safe." I longed for the protection I thought that being in a relationship would provide. The men I sought to help me often abused me, and I endured it because I believed that it was what I deserved or needed. They were men, they were in authority, and they abused the trust I placed in them.
So now, without religion, without God, without any man or any family, I am building a new life. For the first time, I am "allowed" to explore the idea of being a strong, independent woman without feeling shame or guilt. I can be myself, even if I don't know who that person is or should be. I am on a voyage of discovery and awakening. Discovering the woman, not that I was born to be, but that I want to be.
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