distinction between sex and gender be defined?
In discussing whether the distinction between sex and gender can be defined I am going to use the early distinction between the two and how this has been socially constructed to identify if there is a distinction. Additionally, I am going to use a variety of feminist influences since the 1960’s, to draw upon the main issues when defining sex and gender. I will investigate the implications of defining sex and gender by looking at sexism. I hope this will enable me to define a faultless distinction between sex and gender.
It was in the late 1960s when feminists first began to identify a need for a distinction between sex and gender (fem philos). Before this time the English language used the word gender to refer to masculine or feminine words. Linda Nicholson used the example of a boat being historically thought of as feminine to explain this point (Alison and Jaggar, 1998). Robert Stoller also influenced a beginning to the distinction between sex and gender. He said that sex is reference to the biological connotations and gender is psychological or cultural differences. Stoller broke gender down into two sections. The first section is gender identity, which Stoller outlines as the anatomical, hormonal and chromosomal features of our body, which make one either male or female. The other section Stoller identified is gender role: behaviors surrounding social expectations making us either a man or a woman. The purpose of
Gender has been described as masculine or feminine characteristics that encompass gender identity sex as well as social roles (Nobelius 2004). According to sexologist John Money, there is a difference between gender as a role and the biologically of differences in sex (Udry 1994). Within scholarly disciplines, cultures and contexts, gender frequently has its own mean, contextual frame of reference and the manner in which it is used to describe a variety of issues and characteristics. The sociocultural codes, conventions and the suggested and literal rules that accompany the notion of gender are vast and diverse. There has been and continues to be much scholarly debate regarding the idea of gender and how it has been viewed historically; as well as changes in the grammatical use of the
While reading “Gender,” an essay by Jack Halberstam, the topic of sexism was brought to the forefront of my mind. It has been brought up more often in conversation in the modern era, issues such as how a few cruel insults pertain to female reproductive anatomy and, in a sense, degrade females and ultimately identify them, as well as femininity, as inherently “bad”. Such a thought stemmed from how Halberstam touches on the “problematic stabilization of the meaning of ‘women’ and ‘female’”: meaning there is no room for argument when it comes to your gender—you’re either a girl or not. You either fit into a strict mold, or you do not.
In the article, “Doing Gender,” West and Zimmerman (1987) argues the concept of gender as a social activity or interaction, as opposed to an intrinsic individual value. These activities and interactions are socially constructed norms of male and female, masculinity and femininity. To further explain gender, the authors define 3 important concepts: sex, sex category, and gender. Sex refers to biological factors (e.g., hormones, genitalia), sex category refers to visual markers (e.g., dress, hairstyle), and gender is the interactive piece. The authors state that doing gender is always certain and ongoing as it is embedded in everyday life (e.g., the way we dress, walk, sit, and communicate) and it is the individual who holds sole responsibility
For just a brief moment, imagine yourself sometime in the future. You have been recently married, you just started a brand new job, and are looking to start a family. As a way to plan for financial security, you have done some research into financial investments. You are hoping to build a portfolio, which will be a mix of low, median, and high-risk stock. Flash forward into the future by 20 years. During this time, the stock prices have appreciated and depreciated, yet overall done remarkably well. All of a sudden, one morning you wake up to some disastrous news. One of the company’s you invested in, which held a majority of the portfolio of stock, has been participating in financial fraud. While they had been presenting themselves well, under the surface deceptive accounting and financial practices were being used and now the company is broke. All of your hard earned money which was invested in that company is now gone-down to the last penny. Does this sound vaguely familiar? It should. In 2001, Enron, a United States company, became the very largest bankruptcy and stock collapse in history (Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia). As a result, in 2002, The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed as means to prevent fraud, improve financial reporting, and gain back the trust that was previously lost by investors. Although numerous publicly traded companies, which are companies registered on the U.S. stock exchange, were less than happy to welcome
In the past gender and sex use to be considered synonymous in context. Gender was often just a compassionate, moderate, more socially acceptable way of evading the word sex. However, there is a good motive for them to be
Gender is a very important and influencing issue in this novel. Before dealing the issue with sex, and sexuality, it is important to differentiate what exactly is meant by these two categories, ‘gender’ and ‘sex’. While the term ‘sex’ defines the biological makeup of an individual, it is suggested by some scholars that the
Although men and women have significant biological differences, the question whether gender-specific labels stems from these biological differences or are gender constructed remains a polarised nature versus nurture debate. Whether it is through the process of socialisation or genetic make-up, “gender identity” is given from a person’s birth, determining how a person culturally interacts and the expectations society places on them. Along with a “gender identity” comes a whole set of “norms”, “values” and so-called “gender characteristics”, which are supposed to define the differences between a male and a female. According to the World Health Organisation (n.d.), the term “sex” is often used to define the biological and physiological
Gender is one of the most heated terms in the English language during the 21st century, whose role seems to be constantly changing, always on the move, reflecting new updated meanings for society. Gender roles often portray the fairness and justice of any given society, hence the more equality genders reach, the more advanced and sophisticated the society is considered to be. They also suggest a set of rules that males and females have to follow and play their parts in order to define genders. However, the ambiguity of society’s confinement, like an invisible hand around everybody’s neck, draws attention to the artificiality of what we define as “acceptable” behaviors.
The distinction of sex and gender that was defined is not easily made in reality. A more realistic view of gender an sex is the example given. It makes it seem as though sex and gender are the same thing instead of separate entities.
The definition of gender is to be either male or female. This refers to: Biological/ physiological characteristics, social behaviours and activities.However in recent times these boxes of thinking have created resistance with modern culture. Equality has always been an issue throughout history. Men and woman alike need to be educated in a great degree by the manners of which society they live in. This creates superficial knowledge by gaining what terms of knowledge of the world is available.The question is where is the sexual difference, when the education is the same? The word masculine is a degree
Gender can be defined as “sex roles” which are conditions that one considers to be for men or women. People tends to mistake it with sex or thinks that they are both the same. We discussed about the patterns of gender which how the authors of The Kaleidoscope of Gender describes it as “regularized, prepackaged ways of thinking, feeling, and acting” (Spade and Valentino,2017). It becomes an identity for us. We believe that there is and can only be two genders, being masculine for men and feminine for women. These roles has been forced onto us since birth: blue for boys, and pink for girls. You can see the roles being push onto a person throughout one’s life, but we don’t notice it since it’s “normal” to us.
It is not the same as sex and it is not the same as women. Gender is determined by the origination of tasks, functions and roles attributed to women and men in society and in public and private life.
The term ‘gender’ was coined by John Money in 1955: “Gender is used to signify all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself/herself as having the status of a boy or man, girl or woman, respectively” (Coleman and Money, 1991, 13). In
The words ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ are commonly confused with each other in regular, everyday conversations when the two have very different meanings. The term ‘sex’ refers to the biological and physiological characteristics of a person, such as male or female; ‘gender’ is a social construction that refers to masculine or feminine roles in society ( Nordqvist). For
When considering gender and sex, a layman’s idea of these terms might be very different than a sociologist’s. There is an important distinction: sex, in terms of being “male” or “female,” is purely the physical biological characteristic differences – primarily anatomical differences. (There are also rare cases of “intersexual” individuals as outlined in the Navarro article, “When Gender Isn’t a Given”.) Gender, on the other hand, is an often misconstrued concept that is commonly mistaken as synonymous with sex. A non-sociologist might surmise the following, “men act masculine and women act feminine, therefore, it must follow that gender is inherent to sex,” however, this is not necessarily the case.