OKTOBER_UNIKUM_WEB

OPINION
Gender 101
Jakub Świerkocki
Writer
Illustration: Unsplash // Jason Leung
Did you ever think: Why in English does words such as sex and gender exist? Did you ever think about the difference? If not, but you are
curious about it, this article is for you. I will explain why sex and gender have an important distinction and why is it not simple to call
someone female or male, woman or man.
Let’s start with the definition of ‘sex’.
The oldest one I found was from 1985.
“ ‘Sex’ is a word that refers to the biological differences between male and female: the visible difference in genitalia, the related difference in
procreative function” (Oakley, 1985)
And the World Health organization’s definition (WHO):
“Sex refers to ‘the different biological and physiological characteristics of males and females, such as reproductive organs, chromosomes,
hormones, etc.’ ”(WHO)
Okay, so we have definitions. Let’s look at the language they are using. When they are referring assigned sex, we use female and male,
not man or woman. Also, the definition doesn’t include intersex people, who are either male or female. The definition for intersex is:
“Intersex is an umbrella term used to describe a wide range of natural bodily variations. In some cases, intersex traits are visible at birth
while in others, they are not apparent until puberty. Some chromosomal intersex variations may not be physically apparent at all.”(UNFE)
There is a whole discussion about what to put into the intersex conditions because the percentage of people will vary depending on it.
If we include conditions such as Turner syndrome, Klinefelter‘s syndrome, vaginal agenesis, Locah, the number will be estimated to be
1.7% worldwide but there are people that don‘t agree with this (Fausto-Sterling, 200). Without these conditions, the number is estimated
to 0.018% worldwide (Sax, 2002). I wanted to show you both sides of this intersex discourse. I’m not gonna get into that too much because
it will take the whole newspaper to make a point. Also, if you want to read more about sex as a spectrum, I’d recommend an article
written for Scientific American, “Visualizing sex as a spectrum” by A. Montañez. The spectrum of sex is shown as a graph.
Since we went through ‘sex’, let’s go to the easier topic, which is gender.
First and foremost, gender is a social construct, it’s created by people and society.
Gender, according to WHO:
“Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviors and roles
associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society
to society and can change over time.”(WHO)
So once again, gender is a social construct. Not a biological thing, it was created by humans. Also, gender is a spectrum. Some people don’t
like the roles associated with their gender, so they change it to find the most comfortable one. You can identify as a man, woman, both,
neither or you can be just in the middle. We have a name for these categories.
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