Hi friends! It's been a long time since I've discussed sex and gender from a sociological perspective and considering the recent controversy, I thought it was time to explain the differences.
I have to say as always, I have a Masters in Sociology and a BA in both sociology and psychology, so that's my credentials. I studied this for a really long time. I also have given a few lectures on sex and gender in some Human Services classes and unfortunately, I don't have my lecture slides anymore as I think I must have gotten rid of them when I left NZ, but here we are! If any of my previous students happen to have those lecture slides, please let me know! I do remember some students coming up to me after and saying how they didn't realise there was so much more than just the binary, and that's what I really loved about giving those lectures.
And I definitely miss how much confidence I had when I used to give lectures and take tutorials - I even told two students to shut the f*ck up once or leave my class because I was trying to help my students write good essays. I remember a lot of people used to say I wouldn't be good at tutoring OR giving lectures because of how soft-spoken I am, but I actually think I was quite good at it and it's one job I really enjoyed. Anyway, I'm already going off on a tangent so let's get into the topic, shall we?
I also apologise if this is information overload.
Check out my previous sociology post "The Sociology of Rage Bait (+ A Deep Dive into TradWives)".
Now, this is probably going to be a controversial topic so no hateful comments will be responded to. And yes, everyone is entitled to their own opinion on this, but I just want to share my knowledge with you. And my knowledge is from an open-minded sociological one, not an essentialist one - as those ways of explaining knowledge or epistemologies can be problematic.
From a sociological perspective, both sex and gender are social constructs. Now, to make this a bit easier, sex can be seen as the biological features a person has and gender is the social construct that is associated with such features. But both sex and gender ARE social constructs.
Sex is a social construct!
A social construct is something that was termed by Thomas Luckmann and Peter Berger in their book The Social Construction of Reality (amazing book BTW) in 1966. In their book, they discuss meaning and knowledge IS something that is socially created. This means that people in society give meanings to certain things to help make sense of such things. I'm going to take something out of my masters thesis here to explain. I don't think I've ever cited myself before, but here we go! According to Stead (2004, p.391), social constructionism “emphasizes that knowledge is socially constructed through discourse and is contextually embedded. Multiple realities are recognized as being constructed and negotiated in historical time. Knowledge is therefore also a cultural process of meaning-making, as knowledge is not considered to transcend cultural meaning.” Meanings of the social world are said not to be discovered but instead constructed by humans interrelated with our ideas, language, politics, history, and society. Knowledge is co-constructed rather than individually constructed and this way of socially constructing meaning is a by-product of human existence (Butowksi et al., 2019). This means that the context we find ourselves in influences our perception of the world (Ibid). - from my thesis.
Western society is indoctrinated with the sex and gender binary, it stems as far as pink for girls and blue for boys (although that is starting to change). However, in our current society, when a baby is born, they are either categorised into male or female based on their biological features. And this goes even further if a baby is intersex, often doctors will strongly encourage (I don't want to say forced, but it kinda is forceful) that baby to become either male or female. Yes, the genital mutilation begins then. This may lead to plenty of problems down the line - a person not knowing they were born intersex and may not be comfortable in their assigned gender or sex and never know why, issues of sterilisation and/or infertility, surgery without your consent, feelings of distrust, increased cancer risks, body image, gendered treatment and more.
In New Zealand specifically and, this is the same in Australia (and I assume the USA) - when a baby is born intersex, the sex/gender re-assignment surgery occurs. So if a baby is slightly more "male" presenting e.g., the clitoris is too long, they will be turned into a male, and so on. One notable NZ-American psychologist known as John Money (1921 - 2006) believed that gender was "malleable" in the first two years of life aka if a person's sex/gender was changed, they'd fit that gender as an adult. But we know that gender isn't fixed or malleable in this way.
I want to turn to an amazing article by Dreger & Herndon (2009) who discuss when exactly Mr. John Money became a notable figure or authority for intersex children in New Zealand.
Dreger & Herndon (2009) discuss how people with "sex abnormalities" weren't really taken much notice of, historically, not until they would walk into a doctor's office with a completely different problem and then the doctor noticed their sex differences and decided to take actions into their own hands. But other than that, the majority of intersex people went unnoticed - that was until the 1950s.
"But surgical “normalization” did not become the standard of care for intersex children until the 1950s, when the psychologists John Money, Joan Hampson, John Hampson, and their colleagues at John Hopkins University developed what came to be known as the “optimum gender of rearing” model, which held that all sexually ambiguous children should — indeed must — be made into unambiguous-looking boys or girls to ensure unambiguous gender identities" - (Dreger & Herndon, 2009, p.202).
I can't even with this.
They go on to say "The optimum gender of rearing (OGR) model was based on the assumption that children are born psychosexually neutral at birth — that gender is primarily a product of nurture (upbringing), not nature (genes and prenatal hormones) — and that having a sex anatomy that appeared to match one’s gender identity is necessary to a stable gender identity. Money and the Hampsons believed that children could be steered one way or the other so long as the steering began before the age of two, give or take a few months."
A lot of the time, babies would be turned into females more often than males because the surgeons found this easier to do and could do it so that it looked more "natural" - it's honestly disgusting that this happens. We know that gender isn't malleable at all (as aforementioned).
I wish I had a whiteboard right now to help explain my point but with the concept of sex, there is a plethora of sexes out there. Let me try and put a diagram in somehow.
So in western society, there is the concept of both the sex and gender binary. If someone is female, then they are associated with being a woman, and if someone is male, then they are associated with being a man. Plenty of us fit into these categories, including myself. However, there are A LOT of people who don't actually fit either of these categories. There ARE so many sexes and sooooo many genders. But people love to categorise don't we?
Here's my diagram + voiceover. I'll pop this into my YouTube video as well.
In western society, when someone is born, they are either categorised into the male category or the female category AND if they don't fit one of those, they are turned into either male or female by invasive (and often unneeded) sex reassignment surgery (Breen & Roen, 2021). Breen and Roen say that it is estimated that at least 1.7% to 4% of people in our world are INTERSEX. So what is intersex? Let's make it easy to understand.
We have the sex binary, male and female but sex is a spectrum, there are copious amounts of people who don't fit the "norm" of either male/female biological features. Web MD (2024) describes intersex as an
"umbrella term for people who are born with one or more traits in their chromosomes, genitals, hormones, or internal reproductive organs that don't fit the typical male or female patterns. Some of their traits might not match the sex they were assigned at birth or may combine traditionally understood male and female traits. While intersex traits are often noticed at birth, the differences aren't always obvious then. People might discover they have intersex traits at puberty or in adulthood, sometimes as a result of medical testing for infertility. In rare instances, such differences are found in autopsies, after people have died."
There is male, female which is what people in western society believe to be the "sex binary" - but it's not a binary at all. It's a spectrum - shown above by my scribbles on the diagram.
So now that we've covered sex and intersex and how effed up the whole genital mutilation thing is, lets discuss gender!
Gender is also a social construct!
The World Health Organization (WHO) describes gender as "the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviours 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."
In Western society, a lot of us use a gender binary (have I mentioned that I hate binary systems?) Now this binary can be explained similarly to the sex binary and often someone's sex is used to define their gender. For example, if someone is a female, they often identify as a woman, and vice versa, for men. However, we need to unpack this a bit more as gender is a spectrum, yes you have men and women and many people who choose to identify as such but you also have a plethora of other genders, those who choose to be non-binary (aka no gender) and those who are a different gender altogether to man or woman.
Gender is socially constructed because often as people in society, when we see a stranger walking past us, we use gender cateogorisation to deduce whether they are a man or a woman. This is problematic because they might be nonbinary or intersex, we don't know and it's not really our business to know what body parts a person has.
I also want to briefly mention transpersons here too, as according to Wikipedia, a "transperson" is "someone whose gender identity differs from that typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth." Additionally, a transperson may refer to someone who doesn't identify as their perceived gender or sex. It's another one of those umbrella terms.
I also want to mention again how indoctrinated our society is with the sex and gender binary - think about public bathrooms, it's always male, female, family, and disabled - it's not often that you get universal bathrooms - although in Melbourne there are quite a few. And again, changing rooms in public places. And I know people will argue about safety, which yes, that's a fair argument but the best thing that would help limit crime in public bathrooms is to have lockable stalls in every single bathroom, no matter what sex or gender it's labelled.
Furthermore, both sex and gender binaries are something that needs to be critiqued because it may create institutionalised structures of power and lead to discrimination and harassment of those outside of the "binary" system. A binary system leads to a "this or that" way of thinking, often where people see the world in black and white and any other shades or abstract ways of thinking are shoved to the side.
It's even more problematic when we think about gender stereotypes, women as emotional and men as the aggressive ones. Someone isn't emotional because they're a woman and someone isn't aggressive because they're a man. This is a problematic way to explain and accept problematic behaviours.
Both sex and gender are not fixed, they are fluid and they can change at any time. If a person identifies as a she/they/he, then you use those pronouns.
Let's talk about misinformation, Imane Khelif & Cyberbullying
Now, let's talk about that Olympic Boxer shall we? Because there is a plethora of misinformation going around about her.
Who is Imane Khelif? Imane Khelif is an Algerian professional boxer. Imane versed another boxer at the Olympics known as Angela Carini. Angela abandoned the match and her coach claimed that it was because she did not feel safe. Angela did not shake Imane's hand following the abandonment of the match. This stirred up quite the controversy with Imane's "alleged" gender. I want to point out here that Imane Kheliff was assigned female at birth, identifies as both female and a woman, and is in no way a transperson (not that her body parts or what goes on inside her body is any of our business).
Angela Carini has apologised to Imane Khelif and said "I want to apologize to her and everyone else. I was angry because my Olympics had gone up in smoke. I don't have anything against Khelif. If I were to meet her again, I would embrace her."
The false allegations that came out about Khelif were fueled by her disqualification in the 2023 IBA Women's World Boxing Championships due to a failed unspecified gender test. However, there has been no medical evidence published that she has XY chromosomes (the male chromosomes) or any extra testosterone in her body. She was 1000% born female. You can read more about Imane discussing her sex "here." In that article, it also claims that Carini ended the match because of a "severe pain in her nose." Sidenote, I can't believe so much misinformation and so many people are misgendering a person for literally no reason other than her being kinda strong.
Some notable figures who have bullied Imane online have been as follows:
Harry Potter Author J.K Rowling said "A young female boxer has just had everything she’s worked and trained for snatched away because you allowed a male to get in the ring with her." and a lot more but I honestly don't want to repeat it.
Donald Trump said, "I will keep men out of women's sports!"
Logan Paul said, "This is the purest form of evil unfolding right before your eyes. A biological man was allowed to beat up a woman on a global stage, crushing her life's dreams while fighting for her deceased father. This delusion must end." This is not the first time Logan Paul has been the centre of controversies - remember the forest incident?
JD Vance claimed that Imane was a transperson and blamed Kamala Harris, saying "This is where Kamala Harris's ideas about gender lead: to a grown man pummelling a woman in a boxing match. This is disgusting, and all of our leaders should condemn it."
Let's talk about this for a moment. Imane was born female, identifies as her assigned sex at birth and her gender identity is that of a woman, and we have no proof that she has any other chromosomes other than XX and people are STILL calling her a man? I don't want to sound too bias here but I probably already have. Even if she was trans, it wouldn't be posssible considering that in Algeria, being trans or even being attracted to the same sex is illegal. Also, hypothetically, if Imane had any sort of condition like PCOS meaning she did have higher levels of testosterone, she's still a woman, having something like that doesn't automatically make you a man.
In recent news, a cyberbullying lawsuit has been filed as Imane herself has faced a lot of bullying on the platform X (previously Twitter). This lawsuit claims that Khelif has been victim of misogynistic, racist, and sexist cyberbullying. I don't know what's going to happen with this but I sure am excited to find out.
25/08/24 - Khelif's Lawsuit update - J.K Rowling has clapped back after a 2-week silence following the lawsuit (she did delete 27 tweets about Khelif apparently though). The update can be see in the following screenshot
TBH, I don't think tweeting about something you're currently under investigation for is a smart move, Miss Rowling.
I want to leave you all with one last thing, a list of gender identities "here." Please take the time to read these.
In conclusion, let's learn to be more mindful of what the terms sex/gender are and think of sex and gender as both social constructs and both spectrums.
Thank you so much for watching + reading!
Much love,
Ash xoxo
If you are interested in learning more, I am going to pop some extra YouTube videos and references here.
References
Berger, PL & Luckmann 1966, The social construction of reality: a treatise in the sociology of knowledge, 1st edn, Doubleday, Garden City, New York.
Brickell, C, 2003. Performativity or performance?: clarifications in the sociology of gender. New Zealand Sociology, vol.18, no.2, pp.158-178.
Butwoski, L, Kaczmarerk, J, Kowalczyk-Aniol, J & Szafrańska, E 2019, ‘Social constructionism as a tool to maintain an advantage in tourism research,’ Tourism Geographies – An International Journal of Tourism Space, Place and Environment, pp. 1 – 22.
Clarke, A 2020, 'Social Media: A New Religion?' Masters Thesis, University of Canterbury.
Dreger, AD & Herndon, AM 2009, 'Progress and politics in the intersex rights movement: Feminist Theory in Action,' Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 15, no.2 pp. 199 - 224.
Stead, GB 2004, ‘Culture and career psychology: A social constructionist perspective,’ Journal of Vocational Behavior, vol. 64, pp. 389 – 406.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex_rights_in_New_Zealand
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_construct#cite_note-:0-1
Very interesting read! I am also a psychology major and love my sociology classes I took. Currently working on my MSW. Was refreshing to read more in this topic.
Coming from a conservative background, I was taught that there are only two sexes and gender roles. However, I’m all for different perspectives and I genuinely wish for a happy future for my boys.
Thank you sharing such important words. It's disgusting how intersex people are treated. And how Khelif was treated during the Olympics.
I love this topic. It's so important that people start expanding their opinions on this and understanding how important this topic is!!
It's great to see you back discussing such an important topic. Your background in sociology and psychology brings valuable insights to the conversation.