Gender Versus Sex

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Psychology and Gender Gender Versus Sex Contributors: Patrick Sweeney Edited by: Kevin L. Nadal Book Title: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Psychology and Gender Chapter Title: "Gender Versus Sex" Pub. Date: 2017 Access Date: July 22, 2017 Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc. City: Thousand Oaks, Print ISBN: 9781483384283 Online ISBN: 9781483384269 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483384269.n Print pages: 769-771 ©2017 SAGE Publications, Inc.. All Rights Reserved. This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book. SAGE Contact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com. SAGE Reference Psychologists use the term sex to refer to the biological aspects (e.g., hormones, chromosomes, gonads, genitals) of being male, female, or another configuration of sex and the term gender to refer to the psychological, social, and cultural aspects (e.g., gender identity, gender expression, gender roles) of being a man, a woman, or some other gender. The distinction between sex and gender is not particular to psychology and is used widely across the humanities and social sciences. However, the terms sex and gender are often conflated and used interchangeably both in popular culture and in some academic work. This conceptual error has important consequences for popular understandings as well as for research and clinical practice in psychology. The distinction between these terms was created to correct the once widely held assumption that gender roles were innate and fixed by demarcating the difference between the biological aspects of being male, female, or another configuration of sex, which are generally constituted by basic biological and genetic developmental processes, and the psychological, social, and cultural aspects of being a man, a woman, or another gender identity, which depend on socially located understandings of what it means to be a particular gender in a particular place at a particular time. For example, a newborn baby can be said to have a particular sex but not a gender. From the perspective of the dichotomous conceptualization of sex that is prevalent in contemporary Western culture, a baby born with XX chromosomes, ovaries, and a vulva would be considered female; a baby born with XY chromosomes, a penis, and testes would be considered male; and a baby born with a different combination of chromosomes and/or anatomy would be considered intersex. They cannot have a gender, however, because they are not yet aware of the cultural meanings associated with being a woman or a man in the time and place in which they live. In addition, research shows that as many as 1.7% of babies would not fit into the dichotomous categories of female/male and would instead have genitals that are not clearly recognizable as female/male or chromosomal configurations other than XX or XY (e.g., XXY, XYY, XO, XXXX). Awareness of these people’s lives calls into question the assumptions of the two-sex model and has encouraged psychologists to acknowledge the diversity of biological sex. Conflation of Sex and Gender Despite the progress made in the public awareness of transgender people in Western society during the second decade of the 21st century, many people still conflate sex and gender, thinking that if one knows something about an individual’s genitals or gender presentation, they can infer other characteristics or traits that are related to gender stereotypes. As the growing public awareness of transgender experiences has shown, one’s sex has no inherent relation to one’s gender identity, gender expression, or sexual identity. This has relied on a growing understanding of the distinction between sex and gender. The experience of transgender public figures is only comprehensible if an audience can conceptualize the distinction between the sex an individual was assigned at birth and their psychological experience and social expression of gendered subjectivity. The conflation of sex and gender has historical roots in the way our culture and our discipline have made sense of, and spoken about, these very terms. History The original use of the term gender does not refer to humans at all but rather to grammatical classes of nouns. Sex, however, had been used to refer to what we would now refer to as the Page 2 of 6 The SAGE Encyclopedia of Psychology and Gender SAGE Contact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com. SAGE Reference conflation of sex and gender since the 16th century. When the term sex began to take on erotic meanings in the 20th century, and especially after it began to refer to sexual intercourse in the 1930s, gender rose in popularity to replace sex as the most common way to refer to what we would now refer to as the conflation of sex and gender. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, these terms came to have a more formalized meaning in the field of sexology’s study of intersex and transsexual people. Gender was now used to differentiate the psychological experience of sex from its biological aspects. In the 1970s, the concept of gender continued to be developed as feminist theorists used the term to refer to the aspects of being a man or a woman that were not determined by biology. This move to further emphasize the psychological, social, and cultural aspects of gender allowed for a critique of the psychological literature on “sex differences,” which had so long understood women as a naturally inferior binary opposite of men. Thus, gender differences in reasoning, mathematical skills, emotions, and so on could be seen not as products of the inherent distinction between men and women but rather as constructed by a social psychological context in which one’s sex was used to sort individuals and socialize them into different roles. Binaries However, much of this research continued to conceptualize sex and gender as binaries. Sex and gender were often thought of in binary pairs: male/female (sex) and man/woman (gender). However, there are a large number of sexes and an infinite number of genders. Gender Beyond the Binary While gender is theorized in psychology as multidimensional, context specific, and changing across time and place, it is still often reduced to unidimensional and dichotomous check boxes in most psychological research. Not only does gender encompass wide variation across and within individuals with regard to their expression of gender, but it also varies widely across and within individuals with regard to their subjective experience of gender identity. Gender identity and gender expression can change throughout an individual’s life span, and contrary to previous belief in some areas of psychology, a stable and coherent gender identity is not necessary and not a marker of mental health. Each person’s gender identity—the way they experience gender and relate to cultural conceptions of masculinity and femininity—is unique to each individual. In addition, it is multidimensional, consisting of many facets of human experience—how one relates to their body, how they feel about their relation to gender stereotypes, and other subjective experiences. Gender expression is also multidimensional, encompassing the physical body, clothing choices, hairstyles, jewelry, voice, interaction style, and more. The possibilities for combining cultural signifiers of masculinity and femininity with an individual’s particular embodiment offers an array of choices of gender performance that reach far beyond what is captured in a binary understanding of gender. Because gender identity and gender expression have an infinite number of possible variations, and they function as dynamic and fluid in different social contexts and across the life span, it is not useful to conceptualize gender as a binary opposition between woman/feminine and man/masculine. Sex Beyond the Binary Sex is often conceptualized as a binary category (female/male). However, as previously discussed, some individuals do not fit into the categories of female/male. In addition, relying on a conceptualization of sex as a binary obscures the variation in genetics, anatomy, and Page 3 of 6 The SAGE Encyclopedia of Psychology and Gender SAGE Contact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com. SAGE Reference physiology that is present within groups of females and males. Furthermore, what have been conceptualized traditionally as markers of biological sex, such as genitals, secondary sex characteristics, hormonal profiles, and reproductive abilities, are increasingly malleable in the hands of contemporary technology. This section discusses each of these three reasons why binary conceptualizations of sex are not useful to psychological theory, research, and practice. One of the aspects of the binary conceptualization of sex that is most clearly not useful is its complete erasure of the experiences of individuals who do not fit into the categories of female and male. Research estimates that up to 1.7% of the population is born with an intersex condition and activism to prevent surgical “reassignment” at birth to more male or female appearing genitals has raised awareness of the presence of intersex individuals in our society. Their lives point to the need for an understanding of a greater range of biological diversity than the female/male binary allows for. In addition, the female/male binary erases the vast variance in genetics, anatomy, and physiology that exists within the categories of female and male. Indeed, research shows that on most biological measures, there is more difference within the categories of female and male than across them. Contemporary controversies over the sex of elite female athletes considered “too masculine” are an entry point into the complicated science of variation within sex. Elite female athletes have been banned from sports because of naturally occurring high testosterone levels, a condition known as hyperandrogenism. However, there is no objective way to draw a line between “female” and “male” levels of testosterone, because its presence in the body varies not only with regard to time of day, time of life, and social status, but it also varies widely among females and among males. Correspondingly, there is no objective level of high enough testosterone levels for males, despite what advertisements for doctors willing to administer testosterone to aging males or to those who feel they are otherwise lacking might suggest. Beyond hormones, variation within and across sex exists with regard to lung capacity, brain function, bone size, and metabolic rate. Brain function is a particularly interesting site of variation because it is used as evidence of the “innate” psychological differences between males and females yet is also surprisingly plastic. Evidence shows that brain structures are experience dependent and that the differences found across groups of females and males may be due to the accumulated effect of repetitive performances of gender roles, and not necessarily to any innate difference. The biological aspects of sex vary not only due to natural differences between individuals or as a result of experience throughout the life span. Today, they may also be more actively chosen and manipulated. Advancements in technologies such as contraception, artificial insemination, hormone therapy, sex reassignment surgery, and the possibility of artificial wombs, cloning, and same-sex reproduction show that our bodies have much more potential for living, reproducing, and therefore categorizing human beings than was previously thought. The widespread use of hormonal contraceptives by females across the Western world has brought about a major shift in the meaning of sex and sexuality. By manipulating sex hormones, sex has become decoupled from reproduction, and the female body is no longer necessarily linked to pregnancy and childbirth. On the other hand, males are increasingly not necessary for conception as technologies create ways to fertilize without traditional heterosexual cisgender intercourse. Furthermore, surgeries can create or modify genitals, and the psychopharmacological application of hormones can shift the “sex” of an individual’s brain and body. Sex has often been conceived of as static and innate, versus the constructedness and fluidity of gender. However, contemporary research shows that not only are traditional markers of sex constantly shifting across contexts and throughout an individual’s life span, Page 4 of 6 The SAGE Encyclopedia of Psychology and Gender SAGE Contact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com. SAGE Reference but they are also increasingly being actively shifted and manipulated through technological means. Implications The ways in which psychologists conceptualize gender and sex have implications for how people understand their own gendered and sexed lives, as well as those of other people. As a discipline involved in constructing contemporary understandings of these concepts, the stances psychology takes influence public knowledge about sex and gender. In addition, the ways in which psychologists conceptualize gender and sex have implications for the research they carry out in their discipline. The methodological approaches, procedures for collecting data, and analytic techniques they use will shift if they conflate sex and gender or if they acknowledge the differences among psychological, cultural, and biological aspects and refuse to rely on reductionist binaries that force the multiplicity and variety of human life into a strict dichotomous classification. It may be most useful for psychology to not think of gender versus sex but instead focus on gender and sex. The biological and psychological/cultural aspects of sex and gender deserve to be analyzed in relation to each other, even if they are conceptually held as discrete concepts. Examining how gender and sex function in mutually constitutive ways in any psychological situation of interest will allow psychologists to more deeply mine the profound variations of human life. See alsoCisgender; Doing Gender; Gender Nonconformity and Transgender Issues: Overview; Gender Roles: Overview; Genderqueer; Heteronormativity; Male Privilege; Neurosexism; Trans* women sex work sex trafficking transsexualism sexism sexual harassment women against violence against women Patrick Sweeney http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483384269.n 10.4135/9781483384269.n Further Readings Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000). Sexing the body: Gender politics and the construction of sexuality. New York, NY: Basic Books. Fine, C., Jordan-Young, R., Kaiser, A., & Rippon, G. (2013). Plasticity, plasticity, plasticity … and the rigid problem of sex. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(11), 550–551. Golden, C. (2004). The intersexed and transgendered: Rethinking sex/gender. In J. C. Chrisler, C. Golden, & P. D. Rozee (Eds.), Lectures on the psychology of women (pp. 137–152). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill. Johnson, J. L., & Repta, R. (2012). Sex and gender: Beyond the binaries. In J. Oliffe & L. Greaves (Eds.), Designing and conducting gender, sex, and health research (pp. 17–39). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Karkazis, K., Jordan-Young, R. M., Davis, G., & Camporesi, S. (2012). Out of bounds? A critique of policies on hyperandrogenism in elite female athletes. American Journal of Page 5 of 6 The SAGE Encyclopedia of Psychology and Gender SAGE Contact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com. SAGE Reference Bioethics, 12(7), 3–16. Preciado, P. B. (2013). Testo-junkie: Sex, drugs, and biopolitics in the pharmacopornographic era. New York, NY: Feminist Press. Stainton-Rogers, W., & Stainton-Rogers, R. (2001). The psychology of gender and sexuality. Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press. Page 6 of 6 The SAGE Encyclopedia of Psychology and Gender