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GENDER AND SEX

Gendered Behavior

At a young age, children learn and copy perceived a lot of gendered behavior, which in many cases leads to the limiting of children’s expression. This doesn’t necessarily prove that all gendered norms have a firm basis in nurture, that’s something that this doc hasn’t adequately addressed yet.

Note: this section is really in need of a rehaul, it isn’t necessarily representative of the general science here and it’s also vague on how much of gendered norms are nurtured as opposed to natured.

Early Childhood Education Journal: Chick et al. 02
- Evaluation of a childcare facility suggests that gender role development is socially constructed and learned from birth.
Aina and Cameron 11
- Gendered stereotypes were found to affect children’s perception of gender and appropriate behavior and proliferate through certain influences:
  - Consumer products
  - The Media
  - Early childhood education
  - Relationships with parents
Lee 08
- A study of Korean immigrant girls and gender stereotypes
  - Korean immigrant girls admired princesses based on beauty or singing voice while boys admired princes based on chivalry, courage, or actions. Combined with a tradition of female subservience in Korean culture, these young girls appeared to accept their disenfranchisement.
  - Korean immigrant girls perceived that a woman could not be President of the United States because a classroom poster depicted all male presidents.
Freedman 07
- Observed children between the ages of 3-5
- Children predicted parents would consistently apply these stereotypes as reflected by their approval or disapproval of children’s choices to play with gender stereotyped or cross-gender toys.
- As early as 3-5 years, children recognize stereotypes about gendered play and subconsciously account for social disapproval
Saltmarsh 09
- One paper which details how children, from a young age, are subject to stereotyping and perceived gender differences, and the poststructuralist outlook
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10519-018-9889-z
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Zlatan_Krizan/publication/271722875_Evaluating_Gender_Similarities_and_Differences_Using_Metasynthesis/links/55c35cdf08aea2d9bdc06e70/Evaluating-Gender-Similarities-and-Differences-Using-Metasynthesis.pdf

They/Them Pronouns

Singular “they” is grammatically correct

Grammarly - Mora 18
- They/Them Pronouns are academically approved
- As of 2019, most big style guides—including the Associated Press, the Chicago Manual of Style, the MLA style manual, and the APA style manual—accept the usage of the singular they.
Oxford English Dictionary
- Traces singular they back to 1375, demonstrating a large historical precedent.
- “They” is grammatically similar to “You,” which “was a plural pronoun that had become singular as well.”
Lupercallegit - 20
- Latin scholars pieced together a guide for gender inclusivity in the Latin language
- Shows that scholars of different languages accept gender neutral and non-gendered language

Sex is Not Binary

Modern science endorses a bimodal model in its understanding of sex

Scientific American: Montañez 17 (IMAGE) (png of that image)
- Graphic describing the many characteristics which factor into one’s sexual identity.
- Helpful in indicating the ambiguous and bimodal nature of sex/responding to people who believes it’s as simple as XX/XY
New York Times: Fausto-Sterling 18
- NY Times Op-Ed from a professor of biology & gender studies
- Explains the biological complexity of sex and the ways in which the Trump Administration’s attempts to legislate that complexity of existence are both immoral and unscientific.
- Please be mindful that this specific source has some rebuttals to it online which I haven’t checked out, so you might not want to use this as a go-to proof. It might not be a great source and I might remove it later, depending on the rebuttal.
Legato 18
- Description of modern scientific attitudes towards human sex.
- “The view that the world’s population can be separated into a clearly defined dyadic unit of male and female is defunct; not only clinical observations, but molecular biology has established that sexual identity is on a continuum, with an enormous potential for variance”
https://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943
https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2015/02/24/sex-biology-redefined-genes-dont-indicate-binary-sexes/
https://www.ubcpress.ca/the-spectrum-of-sex a whole book
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07238-8

Gender and Sex are Different

Modern science also recognizes an important distinction between gender and sex. .

Whether or not “gender” and “sex” are distinct basically depends entirely on how we define those ideas in the first place.

	Quote
National Institute of Health (NIH) [2] [3]	Understanding sex and gender is critical to understanding human health and disease. Although “sex” is often incorrectly thought to have the same meaning as “gender,” the terms describe different but connected constructs. Sex and gender shape health independently as distinct factors, as well as interactively through the many ways in which they intersect and influence each other.
American Psychological Association	Sex is assigned at birth, refers to one’s biological status as either male or female, and is associated primarily with physical attributes such as chromosomes, hormone prevalence, and external and internal anatomy. Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for boys and men or girls and women. These influence the ways that people act, interact, and feel about themselves. While aspects of biological sex are similar across different cultures, aspects of gender may differ.
National Health Service (NHS)	Gender identity refers to our sense of who we are and how we see and describe ourselves. Most people identify as “male” or “female”. These are sometimes called “binary” identities. But some people feel their gender identity is different from their biological sex. For example, some people may have male genitals and facial hair but do not identify as a male or feel masculine. Some may have female genitals and breasts but do not identify as a female or feel feminine.
Stanford University	Sex and gender interact: The term gender was introduced in the late 1960s to reject biological determinism that interprets behavioral differences as the outcomes of biological disposition. “Gender” was used to distinguish the sociocultural factors that shape behaviors and attitudes from biological factors related to sex. Gendered behaviors and attitudes are learned; they are neither fixed nor universal. Gendered experiences can affect biology. Moreover, some individuals seek to change aspects of their bodies to align them better with their gender identities. Sex and gender are often useful analytical terms even if in reality sex and gender interact (see Method: Analyzing how Sex and Gender Interact).
World Health Organization (WHO)	Gender interacts with but is different from sex, which refers to the different biological and physiological characteristics of females, males and intersex persons, such as chromosomes, hormones and reproductive organs. Gender and sex are related to but different from gender identity. Gender identity refers to a person’s deeply felt, internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond to the person’s physiology or designated sex at birth.
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)	Sex refers to a set of biological attributes in humans and animals. It is primarily associated with physical and physiological features including chromosomes, gene expression, hormone levels and function, and reproductive/sexual anatomy. … Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, expressions and identities of girls, women, boys, men, and gender diverse people. It influences how people perceive themselves and each other, how they act and interact, and the distribution of power and resources in society.
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists	For the purposes of clarity, sex is defined as the presence of specific anatomy or chromosomes. Gender is a social construct, made up of attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that a culture associates with either males or females; terminology often varies by geographic region, culture, and individual preference.

Some extra stuff on this:

Logical points to keep in mind:

Definitions and word meanings can change with time, they aren’t necessarily rooted in one place. If society begins to recognize a distinction between two synonyms, this isn’t necessarily abnormal nor necessarily bad.
Many people use “gender” and “sex” interchangeably in a casual context which is fine, but we are talking within the context of transgender people. Words can often have specialized definitions depending on the context: for example, the word “derivative” in a casual setting has a very different meaning compared to when it’s used in the context of calculus. Science usually requires that we abandon colloquial definitions - they’re simply too vague and too arbitrary to be useful. Physicists have their own definition of ‘mass’ that differs from the colloquial concept. In the context of transgender people, “sex” and “gender” take on more specialized meanings which we wouldn’t see as much in a casual, everyday conversation.
A sex/gender distinction is already used in definitions for “transgender”
- Merriam Webster defines “transgender” as being “of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity differs from the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth”
- Oxford English Dictionary defines transgender as “Designating a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond to that person’s sex at birth, or which does not otherwise conform to conventional notions of sex and gender.”
This gender/sex distinction is a semantic difference, so it doesn’t need to be proven with studies. This is a distinction that exists because the relevant medical communities defined the words “gender” and “sex” differently to fit these specific niches in that medical context. Asking for a study to prove the distinction is like asking for a study which proves that happiness and sadness semantically are not the same thing - obviously “happiness” and “sadness” are referring to different concepts because we defined those words like that. What matters here is that we recognize the situation is really just two different words defining two different concepts.
- “Two different concepts? What?” Let’s look at that bit using the NIH’s definitions:
  - “Sex” refers to biological differences between females and males, including chromosomes, sex organs, and endogenous hormonal profiles.
  - “Gender” refers to socially constructed and enacted roles and behaviors which occur in a historical and cultural context and vary across societies and over time.
- Would you agree that these two words are defined differently, and that they are referring to different concepts? Sex is being defined in reference to biological stuff, while gender is defined in reference to more socially constructed stuff. We don’t need a study to prove that these two words are referring to two different concepts.
If the semantic distinction still doesn’t sit right with you, you can always say “gender identity” and “biological sex” as it creates a clear distinction between the two without being as confusing.

An analogy to help explain the distinction between gender and sex, with a focus on age (complementing biological sex in that it’s more concrete and unchangeable) and maturity (complementing gender identity in that it’s socially constructed):

James is 16 years old. You’d expect him to be whatever brash, obnoxious, wreckless person you’d expect a 16-year-old to be - but he covers his family’s bills, he works a job to take care of his siblings, and he’s basically acting as an adult even though he is 16 years old and is expected to be irresponsible and rowdy. He’s grown out of being a child and effectively acts as an adult. You could point out that he’s 16 and that he is still legally a child, but the way he acts, how he presents, and who and where he hangs around effectively means his actions reflect that of a mature adult.
Here, we’ve essentially substituted biological sex for age (instead of being male or female, the focus is now your age) and maturity for gender (this is the more socially constructed side of things). Even though we regularly associate different ages with different levels of maturity (similarly to how gender and sex are intertwined), we’re still able to recognize how these are distinct concepts which aren’t always tied together in the same way, i.e. childish adults and mature youth.
Even though immaturity is associated with young people and maturity with adults, we see James breaking that norm by being both mature and a young person. Similarly, even though we expect men to act in a certain way and women a certain way, transgender people break that norm insofar as they pick up social roles not associated with their biological sex.

Gender in the Past

We didn’t always hold the same attitudes or use the same terminology for genders that we do now.

History Extra: BBC
- Interesting origins of gendered terms and raising children
- “Nor have boys always even been called boys. Until the late 15th century the word ‘girl’ simply means a child of either sex. Boys, where they had to be differentiated, were referred to as ‘knave girls’ and girls in the female sense were called ‘gay girls’. Equally a boy could be a ‘knave child’ and a girl a ‘maiden child’. The term ‘boy’ was reserved for servants or ‘churls’, the meaning ‘young man’ probably deriving from the latter as a pejorative term but not occurring before 1440.”
Newman 15
- It used to be considered manly to cry - not just in one place at one time, but in multiple societies at different points in history
- Note: Non-academic and non-expert, but still useful
Oláh et al. 14
- Gendered behaviours and associated responsibilities have seen some changes even in recent times. For example:
  - Women have consistently become more involved in working for money and bringing income home (pg 11)
  - Women are now having a much greater presence in higher education, out-graduating males in college (pg 17)
  - Fathers are now more expected to take a role in childcare, though in most instances mothers do the majority of childcare work (pg 29)
Haig 04
- As late as the 1960s, “gender” was rarely used in the social sciences nor in the scientific community in general, back when we didn’t know as much about sex and gender as we do now
- When it was introduced it was done specifically with a gender-sex distinction in mind: “Money (1996) later wrote that he imported the term gender into sexological science “to make it possible to write about people who came into one’s office as either male or female, but of whom it could not be said that their sex role in the specific genital sense was either male or female insofar as they had a history of birth defect of the sex organs.”
  - Yes, Money did introduce the word - “Excluding grammatical uses, most, if not all, of the gender-containing titles in SCI and SSCI from the 1960s appear to have derived the term from Money.”

Gender Across Cultures

A substantial number of cultures have had and/or continue to have non-binary, gender-fluid, or third gender identities within their gender constructs.

Public Broadcasting Service: A Map of Gender-Diverse Cultures
- Nice interactive, gives briefs on a variety of cultures across all continents except Antarctica

Gender Equality Paradox

Gender essentialists claim that gender differences in career choice remain even in highly egalitarian countries - named the gender equality paradox. This claim is founded on a poor study which the academic community rejects and ridicules. See the wikipedia page**

Richardson et al 18
- A peer reviewed paper published by the same journal cites conceptual and empirical problems with the “gender-equality paradox in STEM” hypothesis.
- The researchers revealed that the Soet et al. 18 paper had omissions and inconsistencies in their research, namely inconsistent and undisclosed modification of the source data and a poorly conceived methodology. This warranted a correction from Stoet et al by the publisher.
- The authors conclude a “nonsignificant correlation between nation-level gender equality and women in STEM when measures of gender equality and STEM achievement were changed indicates that the association is sensitive to choice of measures of gender equality, range of countries, and STEM achievement.”
  - National-level indicators of gender equality are a poor metric for discerning causal relationships between gender equality and percentages of women in STEM.
Breda et al. 20
- Researchers empirically show that there is a much stronger correlation between the strength of gender stereotypes in math-related fields and differences in intention to study math-related fields between boys and girl
- The paper explains the gender-math stereotype as a combination of various theories:
  - A way for dominant groups to differentiate themselves
  - According to evolutionary theory, social differentiation to achieve more cooperation between individuals by creating smaller subgroups with clear boundaries
  - Members of wealthier and more egalitarian countries tend to fall back to gender-essentialist norms for self-identification and self-expression
  - The importance of math between developed and developing countries
  - The strength of parent involvement in education creating more chances for spreading gender-stereotypes

Additional Resources:

Explanations for low representation of women

Addressing Misconceptions about Gender and Sex

1. “But sex is determined by chromosomes! XX for women and XY for men.”

What about people with XXX, or XYY, or other combinations? These people do exist. The XX/XY dichotomy doesn’t include these people, and thus does not reflect the real world fully and accurately. The XX/XY dichotomy is still useful for everyday use as it includes most people, but if we’re looking for accuracy over convenience, we can’t ignore those who have uncommon chromosome sets.

2. “Intersex people are too uncommon to be relevant, so they don’t count.”

The frequency of intersex people is unclear for a number of reasons (opening up for a wide range of estimates), but let’s settle for a broad definition: “people whose bodies differ from standard male or female”. The Intersex Society of North America (linked earlier) suggests that this applies to 1 in every 100 births. While that may seem like a small number at first, if we scale that up to all of humanity we end up with nearly 80 million people. That’s larger than most countries are - certainly not an insignificant number.

Other estimates go even higher, going up to 2% of births - that’s about as common as red haired people are globally, or how common Jews are in the US population.

It’s important to emphasize that intersex is not just defined by one trait like ambiguous genitalia, but is rather defined by a broader grouping of abnormal sex characteristics. Some of the lower range estimates may have only considered one or two traits rather than expand their scope to account for the whole range of intersex people. As quoted from here, “Some groups use an old prevalence statistic that says we make up 1 in 2000, or .05%, percent of the population, but that statistic refers to one specific intersex trait, ambiguous genitalia, which is but one of many variations which, combined (as they are in medical diagnostics and coding), constitute the 1.7% estimate by esteemed Professor of Biology and Gender Studies, Anne Fausto-Sterling, of Brown University*. A similar, slightly higher, statistic was also reported in, “How Sexually Dimorphic Are We?”, by Blackless, et al, in The American Journal of Human Biology.”

Even if intersex people only make up a fraction of a % of all people, that still doesn’t mean that we can just ignore them - to give an example, Jews for example make up around 0.2% of the world population, but nobody says that Judaism is somehow “not a religion” or that it shouldn’t be accounted for in a religious analysis of society.

3. “Intersex people are all infertile, so they don’t count.”

Infertility doesn’t automatically exclude you from being of a sex or etc - for example, many women struggle with infertility (though it is a somewhat vague term) yet we don’t consider those women to not be women or to not be of any sex.

Regardless, not all intersex people are sterile, and in fact plenty of intersex people end up going through forced sterilization during their lifetimes, implying that they were not sterilized prior to going through the forced sterilization process.

4. “Can you name all the genders? If not, your take is invalid.”

This question is a bit dishonest. It’s like taking a color wheel and asking for a number for how many colors there are.

Gender as a concept (socially constructed and something which varies based on the specific person) is comparable to emotions and personalities. Basically, there’s ways to express yourself which are basically qualitative, not quantitative - emotions and personalities, and of course, gender. How many emotions exist? How many personalities? There is no true answer to how many personalities exist or how many emotions exist. These are qualitative ideas, just like gender.

Yes, people do try to categorize ideas like emotions and personalities, just as people categorize gender. Here’s an emotion color wheel which does just that. This doesn’t mean that there is a fixed number of emotions or personalities.

This comparison is further strengthened by the role they all play in personal identity. Personalities, emotions, gender, etc all have a role in shaping who you are as a person and how you interact with the world around you.

If you’re confused about how the word “gender” is being used in this context, you might want to see “Gender and Sex are Different” section of this webpage for clarification. “Gender” is being used to refer to the socially constructed and cultural side of the coin, while “sex” refers more strictly to the biological side of the coin.

5. “Gender and sex are basically the same thing because they have a correlative or causative relationship, or because they’re intertwined, etc.”

Gender and sex are very obviously connected to each other, but being related to each other doesn’t make them literally the same thing. You could say that education and income have a causative connection - people with higher education levels are more able to reach well paying jobs as they’re more qualified for them - but that doesn’t mean that education and income are the same thing.

In fact, the idea that “sex determines your gender” already assumes that assumes gender and sex are two distinct things, that this one distinct thing determines this other distinct thing - this completely undermines the idea that they’re the same.

6. “Men are men and women are women. That means a man can’t be a woman nor vice versa.”

“Men are men and women are women” is tautological and therefore meaningless. It’s like saying “the sky is the sky and blue is blue”, it doesn’t really mean anything.

Someone using this argument might then clarify “what I’m trying to say is that it’s impossible to change the sex you’re born as”. The problem is that trans people are not changing their sex, they are changing their gender. This usually loops the conversation back to whether or not there’s a gender-sex distinction, which in turn is addressed in the “Gender and Sex are Different” section of this webpage.

7. Other things WIP

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/old-school-parenting-modern-day-families/201907/time-move-beyond-gender-is-socially-constructed?amped some more points here to address down the road
The sex-binary based on SRY take (briefly addressed here)