Psychology applied to the difference in behavior between men and women has always been a field of study that has sparked many controversies. This is due to the social repercussions that defending one view or another about what it means to be “male” or “female” can have.
Next we will examine what are the distinctive elements of two of the most used concepts in this field: the differences between sex and gender.
From the beginning of history it is known that Society expects different things from men and women and that in turn men and women behave differently (to a certain extent).
However… is this distinction between ways of thinking and acting that can be recognized between men and women the result of their biology, or is it simply their effort to adapt to socially assigned roles? This is one of the fundamental questions that many researchers in biology and in anthropology and psychology have tried to answer.
To begin to understand the most accepted differences about what sex and gender are, let’s first look at a first, relatively simple definition of these concepts.
sex is the set of biological characteristics which allows us to differentiate the two types of subjects involved in sexual reproduction. Thus, this category refers to a categorization that depends on the way in which some forms of life have to perpetuate themselves, creating new generations.
On the other hand, sex is made up of characteristics that are relatively easy to isolate from the rest of the organism, and observable in a laboratory environment with the appropriate instruments. Furthermore, sex is found in places on the body and physical elements that are known in advance.
Gender, on the other hand, is something dynamic, which is expressed through actions, behavior. This means that it cannot be known faithfully by carrying out objective measurements, since it depends on a perspective provided by language.
Gender is, to some extent, a psychological and symbolic phenomenon. What many experts and scientists are wondering about is, as we will see, whether there is also biology behind it, or whether sex and gender are totally dissociated and only seem to be united because of a type of social pressure inherited through generations.
The main differences between sex and gender
Now that we know what we are talking about, let’s look at the differences between sex and gender.
1. Gender is a social construction, sex is not
It is necessary to qualify this, since any concept (be it a tree, mountain or river) is a social construction. However, while sex refers to biologically developed elements with little ability to alter them, Our ideas and expectations do intervene in gender.
For example, certain androgynous traits in women, such as uniform thinness throughout the body, may seem unfeminine today, but in the 1920s they were feminine and sexually attractive. However, our assessment of things and our expectations do not change the fact that the vast majority of people are born with a penis or vagina, these being attributes that contribute to identifying someone’s sex.
2. Gender is exclusive to animals with abstract thinking
While we can locate sexes even in plants and fish the genus is only present in animals with a relatively high capacity for abstract thought, the highest representative of which is the human being (in the past, perhaps, other species of the genus homo).
This is because gender is, at least partially, a social construction, as we have seen, and to develop social constructions it is necessary to build semantics and symbol systems about what is feminine and masculine.
3. Gender can be on a continuum, sex cannot
As gender is mediated by culture, it is possible to see how feminine and masculine differ between people, depending on their opinions. In turn, a person may feel neither feminine nor masculine, which means that their thinking applied to self-image does not clearly categorize what one is. This, far from being something purely subjective, It is evidence of verbal behavior (thought) fleeing from closed categories of the male/female type.
Sex, on the other hand, can sometimes present itself in very unusual ways, but in general, there is a very limited group of criteria that allow it to be assessed: genitals, type of gonads and chromosomes, mainly.
4. Sex cannot be performative
As we have seen, gender is at least partly symbolic. That means that it is expressed in movement, what we do, while sex is static, it depends on quickly objectifiable elements that are found in material elements. This makes the genre can be “negotiated” in conversations and in the way we relate with the rest.
For example, if a man crossdresses at a bachelor party and tries to act feminine, it is generally understood that he is doing comedy. However, in another context, that same action can be directly the expression of the genuine desire to be part of the female gender.
5. Sex entails a different reproductive role
This is one of the fundamental differences between sex and gender. A woman, regardless of perceptions of her relative to her gender, has a different reproductive function than a man: going through pregnancy, etc. Gender can lead to experiencing this fact in one way or another, but it does not change it.
