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Distinction between Sex and Gender
[Writer Name]
[Institute Name]

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Distinction between Sex and Gender

The study of sex differences has a long history in psychology
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At
least three obstacles stymied these projects: Some studies found inconsistent results; many
studies found no differences between the sexes; and it was impossible to create a nonsexist
environment in which the essential natures of males and females could emerge untainted
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Anne Constantinople’s argument that
femininity and masculinity were neither undimensional nor bipolar led to a further shift to the
study of androgyny
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Moving beyond a focus
on personality traits, contemporary approaches highlight the importance of status and power in
determining sex differences in behavior and attitudes
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e
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e
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John Money and his colleagues provided one of the earliest distinctions between
sex and gender in pointing out that gender identity, one’s sense of oneself as male or female, is
not bound to biological sex
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The replacement of the term “gender differences”
by the currently popular usage “gender-related differences” further emphasizes the uncoupling of
gender from sex
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In psychology, Rhoda Unger advocated the adoption of the dual vocabulary of sex and
gender, not only to limit assumptions of biological causality associated with findings of sex
differences, but also to highlight the importance of gender as a stimulus variable, that is, how the
label “male” or “female” alters others' expectations and perceptions
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Sex is
important primarily as a static cue that assigns people to a particular gender category; hence,
biological properties are relevant only as they are socially meaningful
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and economic forces that shape
relations between men and women
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Some claim that
all sex differences other than those engaged in reproduction are socially constructed, suggesting
that these differences are infinitely plastic and culturally malleable (Grauer & Macadam, 1998)
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This view risks overlooking important, biologically linked aspects of women's (and

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men's) experience
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Certainly
bodies are subject to cultural interpretation, but an emphasis on gender to the exclusion of sex (or
on culture to the exclusion of biology) may disregard potentially important aspects of people's
lives
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For example, many organizational policies ignore the fact that a woman's career-building years
coincide with her childbearing years
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Including biology in a feminist psychology of women requires that we make explicit the
assumptions underlying our conceptions of sex and gender
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I then criticize the assumed separation between sex and
gender that stems from what I will argue is a false distinction between nature and nurture
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I conclude by
advocating the use of a transactional model of the relationship between biology and the social
environment as a strategy for including biology in the study of women and men
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That is, two
genders are assumed to parallel two sexes
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Fire Sexes, Not Two

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As Unger noted, the division of sex into dichotomous categories is not always selfevident
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People who have ambiguous or contradictory
sex characteristics also challenge our assumption of sexual dimorphism (Canary, Sommer &
Faulkner, 1998)
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Intersexes individuals
provide so many combinations of male and female sex characteristics that geneticist Anne
Fausto-Sterling has created three more sex categories to facilitate proper classification
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Although western culture rejects the notion of more than two sexes (and supports that
rejection with surgical intervention), some societies, such as the Sambia of Papua New Guinea or
those in the Dominican Republic, have a third social category for intersexes “females” who
become male at puberty
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g
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The need to identify the infant’s “true sex” as male or female is a fairly modern
invention
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Today, a general assumption in western culture is that people have a “primary,
profound, determined and determining sexual identity,” discoverable at birth
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As Suznnne Kessler’pointed out, physicians who treat the intersexes engage in a
curious semantic reversal
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At the heart of the need to identify “true sex” is the belief that one’s sex “hides the most
secret parts of the individual: the structures of his fantasies, the roots of his ego, the forms or his
relationship to reality
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Not only is the blending of bodies prohibited bur also the blending of
minds
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Kessler has argued that physicians undertake genital reconstruction of intersexes infants
not because ambiguous genitalia are life-threatening to the child, but because they are
threatening to a culture founded on a two-sex system
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But such a belief defies nature, since almost all biological aspects of gender exist
on a continuum rather than in discrete categories
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Even Fausto-

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Sterling's categories of “merms” and “ferms” treat as disjunctive differences that actually are
continuous
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In a five-sex system, it is impossible to talk
about the “opposite” sex
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But parents of three
or four children focus on unique aspects of each child in their descriptions, emphasizing diversity
rather than opposition
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Many Genders or None
Gender, likewise, is not a simple dichotomy
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The prevalence of a belief in a twosex system obscures the perception of cultural systems that are not binary
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Furthermore, gender must be viewed in the
context of other demographic variables that have social import, such as race and ethnicity
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g
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) The expectations and life experience of women may be defined as
much by other demographic factors such as race or poverty as by gender
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Yet women who are infertile are no fewer women
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Much behaviour thought to be related to gender might actually be associated with status or
power
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For example, although Carol GiIligan32 linked with gender an emphasis on rationality compared
to relatedness in moral decision-making, Rachel Hare-Mustin and Jeanne Maracek reframed
Gilligan’s distinction, making status rather than gender the determining factor
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From this perspective, gender is not the sum of
individual personality characteristics attributed to males and females, but the product of
interactional processes occurring within particular contexts that reflect and reinforce the
distribution of resources in society
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Canary, Tara M
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Sex and Gender
Differences in Personal Relationships
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2-9
Anne L
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Sex and Gender in Paleopathological
Perspective
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1-7
Ann Oakley (2005)
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Published by
The Policy Press
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The Body: The Key Concepts
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81-96



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