Differences Between Gender, Sex, and Sexuality - Paper Example

Introduction

The words sexuality, gender, and sex can be confusing to a majority of people in the society. As much as sexuality, gender, and sex may look or sound similar, they are completely different words with distinct meaning. Human beings often use these three words when they think about themselves and more importantly when they think about their identity. Sexuality, gender, and sex are more multidimensional than how they are usually generalized and hence it is therefore important to look at each term deeply and by identifying several examples in order to understand what they really mean.

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From a definition point of view, Sex is said to be one's biological status which can be either male or female. Sex is also concerned with individual hormones, genes, and physical characteristics such as having breasts, a beard, a vagina or a penis (Oakley, 2016). Sex can also be said to be the organization of an individual brain, their internal reproductive organs and the genetic makeup that categorizes them to either male or female (Westbrook & Schilt, 2014). However, there is more to sex than being male or female since some individuals have physical features, hormonal and genetic characteristics that are typical to both female and males. These individuals are called intersex since their biological sex has not been clearly defined as to being male or female (Siann, 2013). As much as many individuals see sex as natural ways to differentiate male and females, intersex individuals have shown that there is more to sex than the two categories. Since nature of life is so unpredictable, cases of human beings who are intersex have been increasing over the years and unlike before when the society could not accept or understand such individuals, things have changed now and more and more intersex individuals are coming out (Newman & Karen Cross, 2018).

Gender, on the other hand, is described as a set of external characteristics and behaviors (for instance one's speech pattern, social interactions and dress code) that an individual exhibits that are usually considered to be feminine or masculine (Newman & Karen Cross, 2018). Gender unlike sex is not based on science but is mainly influenced by physiological and biological characteristics humans display as females and males. Society often expects individuals to behave and look in a certain way as per their biological sex orientation. Naturally, females are expected to look and act in a "feminine" way while their males counterparts are expected to act in a more "masculine" way (Connell, 2014). However, individuals are born and brought up differently and some while some express femininity and masculinity differently where some may show more femininity than others or masculinity than others. The gender identity that most individuals display or adhere to is usually enforced into them while they are young or develops unconsciously (Connell, 2014).

Unlike sex, gender is greatly influenced by the society and some concepts of gender have been instilled in our lives, for instance, the color pink has been designated for girls while blue is more common among the boys. Other gender concepts instilled in humans include the length of our hair where men are expected to have short hair as compared to women, also, there are specific jobs that a man is thought to perform better in as compared to women and also there some interests and behaviors that the society expects each gender to embrace. Additionally, unlike sex, gender is a social construct meaning it is something that humans must learn and thereafter perform as opposed to sex which we are born with (Westbrook & Schilt, 2014). Just because we were born with dissimilar chromosomes, sociologists believe that we were not naturally programmed to behave and act in a "feminine" or "masculine" way (Brownell & Besnier, 2013). Unfortunately, because of the social perception of gender, privilege, and power is not shared equally among different sexes as men still receive more privilege in place women even though the narrative is slowly changing.

Sexuality illustrates whom an individual is attracted to romantically and sexually (Siann, 2013). sexuality is a key and central part of every human being and include includes their sexual orientation, gender identity, biological sex and sometimes reproduction and pregnancy (Brownell & Besnier, 2013). Nevertheless, even as much as sexuality can include all of the above dimensions, not all of them will be expressed or experienced. Major factors that influence sexuality include spiritual, religious, legal, ethical, cultural, political, economic, social, psychological and biological factors (Siann, 2013). Individuals have different sexuality where some are heterosexual that is, being attracted to individuals of the opposite sex while others are attracted to individuals of the same sex (Westbrook & Schilt, 2014). Depending on their sex, individuals attracted to the same sex can be either gay (male to male) or lesbian (female to female). However, there are some other individuals who like both genders and that is both male and female there are known as bisexual while others find sexuality to be too complicated and prefer to stay on their own.

Conclusion

Unlike sex, sexuality is not defined during birth and usually develops as one reaches the adolescent stage (Oakley, 2016). Sex, however, does not always determine sexuality for instance if one is transgender, it does not mean that they are bisexual, gay or lesbian. Gender and sexuality are in most cases confused to be one and the same thing, however, they are different in that gender is more concerned with being what you are as while sexuality is concerned with whom one wants to be with.

References

Brownell, S., & Besnier, N. (2013). Gender and sexuality. The Handbook of Sociocultural Anthropology, 239-58.

Connell, R. W. (2014). Gender and power: Society, the person and sexual politics. John Wiley & Sons.

Newman, T., & Karen Cross, M. (2018). Sex and gender: Meanings, definition, identity, and expression. Retrieved from https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/232363.php

Oakley, A. (2016). Sex, gender and society. Routledge.

Siann, G. (2013). Gender, sex and sexuality: Contemporary psychological perspectives. Taylor & Francis.

Westbrook, L., & Schilt, K. (2014). Doing gender, determining gender: Transgender people, gender panics, and the maintenance of the sex/gender/sexuality system. Gender & Society, 28(1), 32-57.