The Difference Between Sex and Gender
On our first day of class, I remember our first group activity was to go around the classroom and introduce ourselves. We provided our names, where we were from, why we enrolled in this course, and a pronoun of choice we wanted to be referred by. I was at first confused because I was ignorant to the fact that people of one sex may actually wish to be referred to by a pronoun that didn't conventionally match their sex, but rather matched their self-described gender. From that very first day of class, I was challenged to think critically about my initial idea and assumptions of how sex and gender were similar to one another. Growing up, I was accustomed to the binary stereotypes associated with what a ‘male’ or ‘female’ was: blue for boys, pink for girls: sports for boys, dolls for girls: boys were aggressive and strong. It had never crossed my mind that sex and gender were different, let alone that there were varying degrees and ways to define gender differently. I had always used the terms interchangeably because I assumed they were the same thing. However due to this enlightening class, I have developed a better understanding of how we define an individual and how we should appreciate a person’s self-identifying gender.
For me, the differences between sex and gender were the most valuable things we learned in class because it tested my pre-conceived notions of what those two words even were. We discussed sex as a term that refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that describe men and women. Compared to gender, aspects of sex are ordinarily consistent among different societies and races. This is because defining characteristics of sex are biological: genitalia, gonads, hormones, and chromosomes help define the differences between a male and a female. Gender refers to the socially constructed behaviors, roles, and attributes that society considers belong to men and women. These traits are purely...