Sex and Gender: What are They?

Understanding how sex and gender differ is the foundation of trans and gender nonconforming identities as well as many queer feminist ideas. In this article, we’ll define both gender and sex, explain the differences between them, and discuss how they interact with each other.


Gender

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines gender as “…the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other”. Characteristics that define these identities vary among cultures. In the United States, characteristics associated with women may include wearing dresses and skirts, having long hair, caring for children, and being gentle. Characteristics associated with men include wearing suits and pants, having short hair, working to provide for their family, and being strong.

This isn’t to say that men can’t care for children and that women can’t be strong. It also doesn’t mean that men must wear suits and that women must be gentle. These characteristics aren’t set in stone, rather, they are socially constructed frames used by members of a society to decide who fits into the categories of man or woman.

Although gender is something socially constructed, by no means am I saying that one’s gender identity doesn’t have real implications or is not a real experience. Afterall, money is socially constructed. Humans create pieces of paper and coins then state the meaning of those items. Other humans agree that that is what money is and that money has a certain value. There is nothing in the natural world that determines a dollar is something that exists, nor that it has the value we attribute to it. This is to say, there is nothing in the natural world that defines what a woman is or what a man is. If there was, these definitions and expectations wouldn’t change from culture-to-culture or person-to-person.

Sex

WHO defines sex as “…the biological characteristics that define humans as female or male.” They elaborate, “While these sets of biological characteristics are not mutually exclusive, as there are individuals who possess both, they tend to differentiate humans as males and females.”

The characteristics that are used to define sex are: external genitalia, internal reproductive organs, gametes, hormones, chromosomes, and secondary sex characteristics. According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, “It is not uncommon for individuals to have atypical combinations of chromosomes…, hormones, or anatomy that challenge the binary model of sex assignment. Such natural variation, which is neither a disease nor a disorder requiring medical intervention, illustrates the complexity of biological sex.”

Below is a list of various characteristics that are displayed in male-bodied and female-bodied people. This is not an exhaustive list. Not everyone displays each characteristic, nor does everyone display each characteristic to the same degree, as stated by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Some people may have characteristics of both displayed sexes to varying degrees.

Male-bodied people:

  • Penis, testicles
  • Testes, prostate gland
  • Sperm
  • Testosterone
  • XY chromosomes
  • Muscle development, thicker body hair, voice drop/vocal chord thickening

Female-bodied people:

  • Vulva
  • Vagina, uterus, ovaries
  • Ova
  • Estrogen
  • XX
  • Breasts, fat distribution in hips/thighs
Sex and Gender

To put it plainly: Gender is a socially constructed identity whereas sex is a categorization based off of one’s biology.

Many people conflate the two as being the same. They may say that a man is someone who was assigned male at birth and a woman is someone who was assigned female at birth. We know, based on the definitions given previously, that this simply is not the case.

When one is assigned a binary sex, they are often conditioned to perform the gendered expectations linked to the gender identity associated with their assigned sex. This is to say, when a baby is born and the doctor declares, “It’s a girl!”, they usually make this determination based on the baby’s external genitalia (in this case, the vulva). This declaration of “girlhood” is confusing the identity of being a girl with the biological sex of female. From there, the parents and other caregivers may buy that baby pink clothing, use she/her pronouns in reference to the baby, and give the baby a “feminine” name.

As this baby grows up, more gendered expectations are placed on her. She is expected to be calm and sweet. While she may not always wear pink dresses, her wardrobe may be made of pastels and florals. As the boys around her learn to display masculinity through playing in the dirt and wrestling one another, she may be indoors learning to wash dishes or expected to play quietly with her dolls.

The young girl who performs the chores expected of women may yearn to exist amongst the boys. She may yearn to run outside and get messy. She may yearn to wear a fierce dinosaur shirt that isn’t doused in glitters and flowers. These desires don’t mean this young girl is a boy, rather, that she is limited by the gendered expectations placed upon women and girls. One of those boys outside may even be envious of her and her dolls, of her freedom to wear glitter and to be soft and gentle.

As this young girl grows into a young woman, she may take up some hobbies such as sewing, photography, and videogames. She may join her school’s football team and their choir. Some days she may wear a summer dress to school and have her makeup done. Other days, she may have jeans and a T-shirt hastily thrown on.

None of these experiences described make this person more or less of a girl or woman. If she feels like a woman and calls herself a woman, then she is a woman. None of these experiences made this woman a man either. Performing activities or displaying characteristics associated with another gender identity doesn’t make someone a different gender.

Notice that throughout the scenario, the only time sex was mentioned was during her birth, when she was declared a girl based on her apparent female sex. That declaration of girlhood influenced the rest of her life. It formed the expectations of her and the activities she may have been pushed to or conditioned to participate in. As indicated by this example, the declaration of girlhood based on sex, however, is not a definitive determination of her interests, goals, and values. Her chromosomes did not make her interested in dresses just as they did not make her interested in football. Her reproductive organs didn’t determine how much makeup she did or didn’t use on a particular day. The development of breasts did not make her more or less inclined to wash dishes.

Conclusion

This article’s purpose isn’t to explain all of the intricacies of sex and gender, nor is it to say definitively what a man, woman, or any other gender identity is. We can explore those ideas together another time. The biggest takeaways from this article are: 1) Sex is a biological category, 2) Gender is a socially constructed identity, 3) Sex and gender are different, but intertwined, and 4) Assigned sex at birth is used to determine how society forms gendered expectations around a person, despite it being separate from gender identity.

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