Sex and Gender
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Wikipedia-Article "Sex"
- This article is about sex, meaning the different biological sexes — male, female, etc. For alternate uses, such as the activity called "sex", see Sex (disambiguation)
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Sex, in the scope of this article and category refers to the male/female duality of biology and reproduction. The somewhat similar term gender has more to do with identity than biology. The concept is confined to organisms that reproduce sexually.
The female sex is defined as the one which produces the larger gamete (i.e., reproductive cell) and which typically bears the offspring. The category of sex reflects the biological reproductive function, rather than sexaulity or other behaviors. In some lower animals, sex may be assigned to specific structures rather than the entire organism as some species, such as earthworms, are normally hermaphroditic.
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Sex in non-animal species
- Main article: Plant sexuality
Plants are generally hermaphrodites, but this terminology is quickly complicated by variations in the degree of sexuality. As with animals, there are only two types of gametes. These are generally called male and female based on their relative sizes and motility. In flowering plants, flowers bear the gametes. In some cases, flowers may contain only one type of gamete while in others they may contain both.
In other varieties of multicellular life (e.g. the fungi division, Basidiomycota) sexual characteristics can be much more complex, and may involve many more than two sexes. For details on the sexual characteristics of fungi, see: Hypha and Plasmogamy.
Sex among humans
- See Human sexuality for information about sexual activities (having sex, making love), sexual sensation, sexual gratification, and sexual intimacy between human beings
In humans, sex is conventionally perceived as a dichotomous state or identity for most biological and social purposes, such that a person can only be female or male. However, when the criteria which are generally used to define femaleness or maleness are examined more closely, it becomes apparent that the assignment or determination of 'sex' occurs at multiple levels. Environmental, biological, social, psychological and other factors are all believed to have some role in this process, and the complex interaction of these factors is expressed in the diversity of biological and psychosocial 'states' or levels found amongst the human population. A significant fraction of the human population simply does not correspond exclusively to either 'female' or 'male' with regard to every level of definition expressed in the following table. This discordance is discussed in more detail below.
The table outlines the major levels at which we currently recognize a difference between human females and males. Some criteria are dichotomous and some, such as body size, exhibit sexual dimorphism (i.e. characteristics which are statistically more likely to be found in one sex than the other). Some of the levels are more amenable to scientific study or measurement than others; some are "imputed" or assigned to individuals by the society of which they are members (e.g. whether human males must wear trousers is a result of social norms); and some seem to be generated within each individual as a subjective identity or drive.
"Primary" sexual characteristics are typically present at birth and directly involved in reproduction. "Secondary" sexual characteristics typically develop later in life (usually during puberty) and are not directly involved in reproduction.
| Level of definition | Female | Male |
| Biological levels (Sex) | ||
| Primary sexual characteristics (Sex) | ||
| Usual sex chromosomes | XX in humans | XY in humans |
| Usual gonads | ovaries | testes |
| Usual level of sex hormones | oestrogen, gestagen | testosterone |
| Usual anatomy of internal genitalia | clitoral crura, vagina, uterus, fallopian tubes | corpora cavernosa, urethra, prostate, seminal vesicles |
| Usual anatomy of external genitalia | glans clitoris, labia, vulva, clitoral hood perineal urethra | glans penis, scrotum, phallus, foreskin fused perineum |
| Secondary sexual characteristics (Sex) | ||
| Usually | Breasts, menstrual cycle, development of "hourglass" body form, relatively shorter height, relatively more body fat | Facial and body hair, development of "triangular" body form, relatively higher height, relatively less body fat |
| Usually both sexes | Pubic hair, underarm hair | |
| Psychosocial levels (Gender) | ||
| Usual Assigned sex | "It's a girl" | "It's a boy" |
| Usual Gender of rearing | "You are a girl" | "You are a boy" |
| Usual Gender identity | "I am a girl/woman" | "I am a boy/man" |
| Usual Gender role | "feminine" social behavior | "masculine" social behavior |
| Usual sexual orientation | androphilic | gynephilic |
The relationship between the various levels of biological sexual differentiation is fairly well understood. Many of the biological levels are said to cause, or at least shape, the next level. For example, in most people the presence of a Y chromosome causes the gonads to become testes, which produce hormones that cause the internal and external genitalia to become male, which in turn lead parents to assign 'male' as the sex of their child (assigned sex), and raise the child as a boy (gender of rearing). However, the degree to which biological and environmental factors contribute to the psychosocial aspects of sexual differentiation, and even the interrelationships between the various psychosocial aspects of differentiation, are less well understood (see the nature versus nurture debate).
Discordance
As indicated above, the levels of this paradigm imply a certain level of 'discordance' amongst the human population as a result of diversity amongst humans.
Some discordances are purely biological, such as when the sex of the chromosomes (genetic sex) does not match the sex of the external genitalia (anatomic sex). This type of discordance is fairly well understood and is described briefly in the next section and more fully in the article on intersex.
Discordances between the biological and psychosocial levels, such as when the gender identity does not match the anatomic sex, or between the various psychosocial levels, such as when the gender role does not match the gender identity, are even more common but less well understood. These levels of definition and discordance are described below and in individual articles.
Understanding discordance is important for several reasons. We can learn much about the processes of sexual differentiation, both biological and psychosocial, from people with biological discordances. Some of the levels of discordance have enormous significance to the lives of those affected and their relationships with society. In some cases, the causes of the discordances have acquired controversial political significance. Societies vary on the values placed on some discordances. In the last several decades the public consensus of many Western societies has come to view some discordances as less undesirable and more tolerable than much of the rest of the world, although this view may itself exhibit a certain level of cultural imperialism.
Biological varieties of discordance
Human variability occurs in all the levels by which sex and gender are defined. Discordance at the biological levels is often referred to as an intersex condition. For example, some women may have an XY karyotype (chromosomal constellation). Some boys may have a rudimentary uterus, or an extra X chromosome. In a small subset of boys or girls with intersex conditions, the external genitalia may be undervirilized or overvirilized. If the degree of virilization is "in-between", the genitalia are described as "ambiguous". Many people with intersex conditions do not have ambiguous genitalia. However, for these people the relationships between biological factors (such as hormones ie progesteron, etrogen, and testosterone) and environmental factors (Aluminum 2,3-dicholorohexane) and the psychosocial levels of sexual identity such as gender identity and sexual orientation have proven to be complex, with plenty of exceptions to proposed theoretical systems. For example, there have been cases of male genetic/chromosomal sex, with female external genitalia, assigned and raised as female, but discovering or deciding upon a male gender identity by adolescence. The degree to which a person's gender identity is affected by hormones, by genetic factors distinct from hormones, by early education, by social factors, and by "existential choice" remains imperfectly understood and a subject of superfluous contention.
Psychological, behavioral, and cultural varieties of discordance
In contrast to the small percentage of people with biological discordances of sex, a fairly large proportion of human beings may be "discordant" in one or more behavioral or psychological dimensions. The vast majority of these people who are discordant in some aspect of psyche or behavior do not have any detectable biological intersex condition (although some recent studies point towards biological factors in at least some of those conditions). Human societies respond to, or accommodate, these behavioral and psychological discordances in many different ways, ranging from suppression and denial of difference to acknowledging various forms of "third sex".
It is interesting, and perhaps significant, that some societies identify youths with atypical behavioral characteristics and, instead of giving them corrective therapy or punishing them, socialize them in such a way that their individual characteristics let them provide a needed and/or useful function for the society in a recognized and respected role (e.g. individuals who take on the role or customs of shaman, medicine man or tong-ki).
See the article Pictogram for an example of a pictogram of a man and a woman, to indicate the respective toilets. It shows the man with broader shoulders (sex dimorphism) and the woman in clothing that is in the western world rarely worn by men, a dress (which functions as a gender signal). (Presumably these "male human" and "female human" pictograms are not used in countries where men wear dress-like clothing.) In most societies, it is considered improper for a person of one sex to misrepresent himself or herself as a member of the opposite sex by donning inappropriate clothing (thereby practicing transvestism or cross-dressing). Such behavior receives severe social and/or legal sanctions in some cultures.
See also berdache, hijra, xanith and transgender.
Such complex situations have led some scientists to argue that the two sexes are cultural constructions. Some people have sought to define their sexuality and sexual identity in non-polar terms in the belief that the simple division of all humans into "males" and "females" does not fit their individual conditions. A proponent of this movement away from polar oppositions, Anne Fausto-Sterling, once suggested we recognize five sexes: male, female, merm, ferm and herm. Although quickly rejected as a bizarre flouting of human nature and social reality, and inimical to the interests of those whom she was attempting to champion, it expresses the difficulty and imperfection of the current social responses to these variations.
Social and legal considerations
Forms of legal or social distinction or discrimination based on sex include sex segregation and sexism. Notably, some businesses, public institutions, and laws may provide privileges and services for one sex and not another, or they may require different sexes to be physically separated.
In gender theory, the term "heteronormativity" refers to the idea that human beings fall into two distinct and complementary categories, male and female; that sexual and marital relations are normal only when between two people of different genders; and that each gender has certain natural roles in life.
See also
- Male
- Female
- Hermaphrodite
- Reproduction
- Mammalian gestation
- Sexual differentiation
- Distance sex
- Human sexuality
External links and further reading
- Francoeur, Robert T. (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Sexuality [full text]
- Raymond J. Noonan, Robert T. Francoeur, and Martha Cornog, "Continuum Complete International Encyclopedia of Sexuality". Continuum, August 2003, ISBN 0826414885
- Human Sexual Differentiation by P. C. Sizonenko
- New Scientist article on Sex chromosomes in the platypus
Wikipedia-Article "Gender"
- For other uses, see Gender (disambiguation).
In a variety of different contexts, gender refers to the masculinity or femininity of words, persons, characteristics, or non-human organisms. The classification into masculine and feminine is analogous to the biological sexes of male and female, often by physical or syntactical analogy, linguistic decay, misunderstandings, societal norms, or personal choice. The nature of this categorisation varies depending on the context. For example, gender can be used to refer to the differences in biological sex between two members of a species, or different characteristics of electrical connectors. On the other side, in feminist theory, gender is used to refer solely to socially constructed differences between male and female behaviour, and the gender of a noun in many languages may have nothing to do with the concept described by it.
Controversy surrounds the reasons, history, validity, and usefulness of many of these classifications.
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Etymology and usage
Gender comes from Middle English gendre, from Latin genus, all meaning "kind", "sort", or "type". Ultimately from the proto Indo European root, gen, which is also the root for "kind", "king" and many others. It appears in Modern French in the word genre (type, kind) and is related to the Greek root gen- (to produce), appearing in genesis and oxygen. As a verb, it is used for to breed in the King James Bible:
- Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind. — Leviticus, 19:19
According to Aristotle, the Greek philospher Protagoras used the terms masculine, feminine, and neuter to classify nouns, introducing the concept of grammatical gender.
Since the 14th century, the word is also used as a synonym for (biological) sex. Examples:
- The Psyche, or soul, of Tiresias is of the masculine gender — Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia
- I may add the gender too of the person I am to govern — Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey
- Black divinities of the feminine gender — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
- Our most lively impression is that the sun is there assumed to be of the feminine gender — Henry James, Essays on Literature
By 1900, this usage was considered jocular by some. In 1926, Fowler's Modern English Usage suggested that “gender...is a grammatical term only. To talk of persons...of the masculine or feminine g[ender], meaning of the male or female sex, is either a jocularity (permissible or not according to context) or a blunder.”
From Maven's Word of the Day:
- Despite such pronouncements, which may be found in similar forms in many usage books, the use of gender to refer to sex has been increasingly common in the last several decades. This use of gender is comparably common, if not more common, than the equivalent use of sex. A few examples from this year: "The state has to justify any discrimination based on race, gender, national origin [etc.]" (New Republic); "No residential college at Yale prohibits visits by either gender" (New York Times Magazine); "Can clever readers really tell a writer's gender from his or her prose?" (Harper's). The growth of this usage, sometimes blamed on "feminists," is probably a result of the increased frequency of the word sex in the sense of sexual intercourse; gender is employed to avoid the potential physical connotations of sex.
In some parts of the social sciences, following a usage shift that began in the 1950s and was largely completed in the 1980s, gender has been used increasingly to refer to socially constructed aspects, in contrast to biologically determined, using the word sex for the latter. Example (again from MWofD) “Today a return to separate single-sex schools may hasten the revival of separate gender roles”. Another example: “The effectiveness of the medication appears to depend on the sex (not gender) of the patient”, but “In peasant societies, gender (not sex) roles are likely to be more clearly defined.” This distinction has been advocated vociferously by some, who consider the use of gender as a euphemism for sex incorrect.
In the last half of the 20th century, the use of gender in academia has increased strongly, now outnumbering the occurrences of the word sex in the humanities, social sciences, and arts. However, use of the term gender includes the meaning biological sex, and the distinction between sex and gender is only fitfully observed. (Haig, 2004)
Grammatical gender
Main article: grammatical gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender is a type of inflection. We say that a language has grammatical genders, or noun classes, when nouns are divided into groups according to natural characteristics of the concepts which they represent. This division can manifest itself in two ways: through morphological characteristics of the nouns themselves, and through morphological changes in other parts of speech that refer to nouns (gender agreement).
For example, in Spanish, most nouns that end in -o are masculine and most nouns that end in -a are feminine. Thus, niño means “boy”, and niña means “girl”. This allows new nouns with a similar meaning to be readily created in a different class, by analogy: given the noun empresario (businessman), it was straightforward to make the new noun empresaria for “businesswoman”, when women reached the work market. This kind of class shift can also have more subtle uses, such as making a collective noun like fruta (group of fruits) from a singular noun like fruto (fruit).
To understand gender agreement, consider the sentences "The man is tall" and "The woman is tall". In English, the only word that differs between them is the noun "man/woman", which has a direct semantic association with sexual identity. In Spanish, however, one says "El hombre es alto" and "La mujer es alta", respectively. Not only do the words for "man" and "woman" change, (hombre vs. mujer), but so do the article (el, la) and the adjective (alto, alta). When a noun belongs to a certain class, other parts of speech that refer to that noun must be inflected to be in the same class. This is similar to number agreement, whereby parts of speech that refer to a noun are inflected to agree with the grammatical number of that noun.
Sex
Main article: Biological sex
Gender can refer to the (biological) condition of being male or female, applied to humans, animals, plants, and other sexual species. In this sense, the term is a synonym for sex, a word that has undergone a usage shift itself, having become a synonym for sexual reproduction.
Haig:
- "Among the reasons that working scientists have given me for choosing gender rather than sex in biological contexts are desires to signal sympathy with feminist goals, to use a more academic term, or to avoid the connotation of copulation."
See sex-determination systems and sexual differentiation (for homo sapiens).
Social category
Cribbed from old/current gender article with some quotes from Haig. This needs to be expanded. It's easily the most interesting part of the article.
Since 1950, and increasing part of the academic literature, and of the public discourse uses gender for the perceived or projected (self-identified) masculinity or femininity of a person. The terms was introduced by Money (1955):
- “The term gender role is used to signify all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself or herself as having the status of boy or man, girl or woman, respectively. It includes, but is not restricted to, sexuality in the sense of eroticism.”
A person's gender is complex, encompassing countless characteristics of appearance, speech, movement and other factors not solely limited to biological sex.
Societies tend to have binary gender systems in which everyone is categorized as male or female, but this is not universal. Some societies include a third gender role; for instance, the Native American Two-Spirit people and the hijras of India.
There is debate over to what extent gender is a social construct and to what extent it is a biological construct. At the extremes of these views you have social constructionism which suggests that it is entirely a social construct and essentialism which suggests that it's entirely a biological construct.
Gender associations are constantly changing as society progresses. For example, the color pink was considered masculine in the early 1900s and is now seen as feminine.
In feminist theory
During the 1970s there was no consensus about how the terms were to be applied. In the 1974 edition of Masculine/Feminine or Human, the author uses “innate gender” and “learned sex roles“, but in the 1978 edition, the use of sex and gender is reversed. By 1980, most feminist writings had agreed on using gender only for socioculturally adapted traits.
Other languages
In English, both sex and gender are used in contexts where they could not be substituted ( sexual intercourse; anal sex; safe sex; sex worker; sex slave). Other languages, like German, use the same word Geschlecht to refer both to grammatical gender and to biological sex, making the distinction between sex and gender advocated by some anthropologists difficult. In some contexts, German has adopted the English loan-word gender to achieve this distinction. Sometimes 'Geschlechtsidentitaet' is used as gender (although it literally means gender identity) and 'Geschlecht' as sex (translation of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble). More common is the use of modifiers: biologisches Geschlecht for sex, Geschlechtsidentität for gender identity and Geschlechtsrolle for gender role etc.
Other uses
Fasteners and connectors
In electrical and mechanical trades and manufacturing, each of a pair of mating connectors or fasteners is conventionally assigned the designation male or female. The assignment is by direct analogy with animal genitalia; the part bearing one or more protrusions, or which fits inside the other, being designated male and the part containing the corresponding indentations or fitting outside the other being female.
Examples:
- A power cord on a lamp or appliance terminates in a (male) plug; it connects to a (female) socket in a wall or on an extension cord.
- Co-axial cables used for video or other high-frequency signals are normally terminated, at both ends, in a connector comprising an inner pin and an outer fixed or rotating shell; these are conventionally reckoned as male.
- A nut is female and a bolt is male.
The gender of a connector is determined by the structure of its primary functional components, e.g., the conductors of an electrical connector, or the load-bearing parts of a fastener, and not by secondary features such as covers, shields or handles that may be installed for environmental protection, safe operation, etc.
Connectors are also classified into plugs and receptables (or sockets, jacks); plugs are often male and receptables often female, but this is not always so. For example, the C13 IEC connector used to connect many desktop computers is female plug that fits into a male receptable. A device called a gender changer may be used to join two connectors of the same gender, for example, to extend one video cable with another. Certain connector designs involve paired identical parts each containing both protrusions and indentations; the term hermaphrodite is used for such devices,
Music
In Western Music theory, chords and scales are grouped into modes called major and minor, traditionally related to masculine and feminine. By analogy, the major scales are masculine (clear, open, extrovert), while the minor scales are given feminine qualities (dark, soft, introvert). German uses the same word (Tongeschlecht), and the words Dur (from latin durus, hard) for major and moll (from latin mollis, soft) for minor. See Major and minor.
References
- Chafetz, J. S. Masculine/feminine or human? An overview of the sociology of sex roles. 1st ed. 1974, 2nd ed. 178. Itasca, IL: F. E. Peacock.
- Haig, D. The inexorable rise of gender and the decline of sex: social change in academic titles, 1945-2001. Archives of Sexual Behavior 33: 87-96, 2004 [1]
- Money, J. Hermaphroditism, gender and precocity in hyperadrenocorticism: Psychologic findings. Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, 96, 253–264, 1955.
- [2]
See also
- androgyny
- female bodybuilding
- feminity
- gender bender
- gender identity
- gender role
- Gender Studies
- homosexuality
- masculinity
- Queer
- Queer Studies
- stereotype
- third gender
- transgender