SEX VS. GENDER

Let’s talk about sex. This is a human sexuality class after all. Now, I’m not talking about the act of sex. I’m talking about the sex of a person. What even is sex? What even is gender? How are the two even related? Well, the word sex, as I see it, is related to the physical being that a person is. This is determined by the genitals they are born with. Gender is how and who a person feels they are on the inside. There are many different sexes and there are many different genders. The most common sexes being male, female, and intersex (which used to be referred to as hermaphrodite). Intersex may mean someone is born with testes and a vagina or a penis and ovaries or any combination of the two or neither.  As for genders, the most common were the same for a long time. It used to be that there wasn’t a difference between sex and gender and you were either a male or a female. Now, there are multiple genders besides just male and female. The majority of the “out of the norm” gender identities fall under the realm of “genderqueer”. Genders such as andrognye, which is feeling both like a man and a woman, feeling like neither a man or a woman; which is known as agender or non-binary, as well as the feeling of moving between the genders of male and female which is known as gender fluid. (Genderqueer 2011).

With every gender, comes the roles we are supposed to commit to in order to fill society’s expectations. There is the masculine role for males and the feminine role for females. Males are supposed to be strong, not show emotions, like and talk about sex, and be leaders. Whereas women are shown to be dependent on men, weak, and emotional. When it comes to sex for women, we are told to stay “pure”, to not acknowledge our sexual desires, but men are encouraged to sexualize and objectify women’s bodies. The double standard surrounding sex effects almost all aspects of our everyday lives. Young girls see posters of stick thin super models emanating sex appeal, but are slut shamed if they wear a short skirt. Girls are taught how to avoid rape, “don’t wear this”, “don’t drink that”; but boys aren’t taught not to rape. Boys are taught from a young age that masturbation is natural, sometimes even necessary, but girls are taught to suppress those urges and some don’t even know what a clitoris is until their twenties. The gender bias and gender roles humans are forced into are becoming less strict and more interchangeable, I’ll give you that. With the number of stay at home dads increasing by almost 1 million between 1989 and 2012 (Dads 2014), and more women in the workforce and fighting for women’s rights’ we’re headed in the right direction, but we’re not quite there yet.

1.      Growing Number of Dads Home with the Kids. (2014, June 5). Retrieved October 9, 2015.

2.      Reason Foundation. (2015). Everything's awesome and Camille Pagila is unhappy! The author sexual personae talks about feminism, rape, academia, and Hilary Clinton. Contemporary Women's Issues.

3.   What is "Genderqueer"? (n.d.). Retrieved October 9, 2015.