It is not surprising that people might be confused by the concept of gender. Theorists, researchers and laypeople alike tend to use the term gender in different and often contradictory ways. As a result, quite often, we literally don’t know what we are talking about when we speak of gender.
Virtually all theorists agree that the term sex refers to the biological reproductive anatomy and physiology of individuals–chromosomes, internal and external reproductive anatomy, as well as sex hormones and their effects. Most theorists acknowledge that besides the sexual categories of male and female, a variety of intersexual forms of sexual anatomy occur. These include individuals who have ambiguous genitalia, who exhibit both male and female internal and/or external reproductive anatomy, neither male or female internal anatomy, and so forth.
The Many Meanings of Gender
While there is broad consensus about the meaning of sex, the concept of gender is an imprecise one (Gentile, 1993; Glasser & Smith, 2008). Controversy exists about the meaning of gender and its relation to the concept of sex. The introduction of gender into discussions of sexuality is a relatively recent occurrence. Around the midpoint of the 20th century, psychological theorists rarely invoked the concept of gender. While they acknowledged that there were psychological differences in how males and females, they referred to them as sex differences (Kagan, 1964). As shown in Model 1, the assumption was that there two sexes–males and females–and differences between them were a product of some combination of biological and social forces.
The Move to Gender
The concept of gender has its origins in masculine and feminine forms of the syntax used in various world languages. It was imported into psychology as researchers sought to address questions about the development of individuals who displayed ambiguous sexual anatomy. Early research by John Money seemed to suggest that when children with ambiguous genitalia were assigned a sex at birth (male or female), they were able to develop psychologically in ways consistent with that classification, regardless of their genetic or biological makeup. The distinction between sex and gender emerged from the need to differentiate the biological sex of the individual and the psychological sense of themselves as male or female that developed over time. Money and Ehrhardt (1972) would come to define gender identity as:
The sameness, unity and persistence of one’s individuality as a male, female or ambivalent, in greater or lesser degree, especially as it is experienced in self-awareness and behavior; gender identity is the private experience of gender role, and gender role is the public expression of gender identity (p. 4)
This conception would later turn out to be problematic. In the famous case of John/Joan, a normal male infant’s penis was damaged in a botched circumcision. Believing the boy could not develop a normal male identity with his damaged penis, the boy’s physicians–including John Money–advocated the option of raising the child as a girl. Over the course of childhood, the child’s development appeared to move seamlessly in the direction of a female identity, providing apparent support for the socialization hypothesis. However, in the 1990s, in adulthood, the individual rejected the female identity and identified himself as a male. The case was widely disseminated, especially after the individual in question committed suicide at the age of 38 (Jordan-Young, 2010).
Biological and Evolutionary Models
Cases like this suggested deep flaws in the socialization theory of gender identity. While Money is often seen as an unreconstructed advocate for the pure socialization hypothesis, it was in fact Money himself who began to identify flaws in the socialization thesis as early the 1960s (Jordan-Young, 2010). Drawing on research showing that sex hormones (e.g., testosterone, estrogen) influence the biological development of the body and brain, Money began to investigate sex differences in the organization and functioning of the brain.
The Social Construction of Gender
In public discussions, the term “social construction” is typically taken to mean that sex or gender differences in psychological processes are socialized rather than biologically determined. This is actually a distortion of what “social construction” means. Social constructionist models of gender built upon but went beyond socialization approaches to gender (Butler, 1999; Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2013; McNay, 2005). At base, social constructionism is a way of understanding how meanings are formed in society. In this way, to say that “gender” is a social construction is to say that the meaning of the concept of gender is constructed by people as societies evolve over time. While it is true that many social constructionists believe that what we call gender is socialized, this is a secondary assumption. The more important point is that gender is a constructed concept that is created as people interact with each other over time.
If gender is constructed in social relations, it is not something that is fixed or pre-structured. Since it does not gain its meaning from biological sex, the construction of gender becomes is from particular biological constraints. There is no biological reason to associate any given way of acting, thinking or feeling with any particular gender (Butler, 1999). As a result, institutions that socialize gender identity in terms of any established roles can be seen as a way in which society imposes its values and expectations for individuals. In this way, pre-existing systems for socializing gender are systems of power.
Gender as non-binary self-identification. The concept of gender has its origins in the acknowledgment of transgenderism–the experiences of those whose sense of gender does not fit within a dichotomous classification. If gender is distinct from biological sex, there is no reason to assume that gender should be binary. While cis-gendered identities can be claimed by persons who experience their gender as congruent with their assigned sex, an indefinite number of identifications can be articulated for those who experience a discrepancy between their assigned sex and their gender. As shown in Model 4, people can identify with various degrees of male-ness or female-ness. Contemporary non-binary gender identifications include – agender, androgynous, bigender, genderqueer, gender variant, queer, transgender (e.g., female to male, male to female), third gender, and others. These gender-identifications can be which can be understood as either stable (staying constant across time and place) or fluid.
The concept of self-identification is just as important as the notion of gender as non-binary. From some social constructionist perspectives, if gender is independent of sex, and if the experience of gender discordance arises from the individual’s experience, the criteria for gender identity reside in the individual person–not in society. Zimman (in press) states:
For trans people, one of the key guiding principles of everyday political work is the practice of gender self-determination, in which each individual is the ultimate authority on their own gender identity (p. 147).
That we can speak of a child growing up as a girl or as a boy suggests that initial sex attribution is far more than just a simple observation of a physical characteristic. Being a girl or being a boy is not a stable state but an ongoing accomplishment, something that is actively done both by the individual so categorized and by those who interact with it in the various communities to which it belongs (p. 147).
Doing gender is a form of gendered acting–a set of practices. We “do gender” whenever we act in ways that elaborate of selves in terms of gendered meanings–by the way, we dress, speak, present ourselves, or otherwise position ourselves with reference to gendered meanings.
Sex and Gender: A Trio of Troubles
Biology and Culture: A False Binary
A primary problem with prevailing concepts of gender occur with attempts to define gender in ways are independent of sex. This occurs in many approaches which seek to define gender as a product of psychological or social processes rather than biological processes. This problem is not specific to social constructionist approaches to gender. Consider the following definitions:
(1) Gender may be used to describe those nonphysiological components of sex that are culturally regarded as appropriate to males or to females" (Unger, 1979, p. 1086, emphasis added).
(2) "Sex" has come to refer to the biological aspects of being male and female. "Gender" typically refers only to behavioral, social, and psychological characteristics of men and women (Pryzgoda and Chrisler, 2000, p. 553, emphasis added).
(3) Refers to the socially constructed characteristics of women and men – such as norms, roles, and relationships of and between groups of women and men (World Health Association, 2008, emphasis added; www.who.int/gender-equity-rights/knowledge/glossary/en).
(4) Gender: the condition of being male, female, or neuter. In a human context, the distinction between gender and sex reflects the usage of these terms: Sex usually refers to the biological aspects of maleness or femaleness, whereas gender implies the psychological, behavioral, social, and cultural aspects of being male or female (i.e., masculinity or femininity.) (American Psychological Association, 2015; https://dictionary.apa.org/gender).
Although they express subtle differences, these definitions, spanning from 1980 to the present, are each based on the premise that it is possible to separate biology and culture as causal sources of psychological processes. To say that “gender refers to socially constructed roles...” is identify gender as something that by definition cannot have biological components or influences. It splits the person into two independent parts–a biological part and a social part.
The idea that one can separate the causes of human action into independent biological and socio-cultural influences is to resurrect the old and tired nature-problem – the question of whether biology (including genes) or environment (including socio-cultural processes) is more important as a causal process in psychological development.
The contemporary and appropriate response to this question is to reject the premise on which the question is based. Genes and environments do not and cannot operate independently of each other. Development is an epigenetic process. This means that in individuals, patterns of acting, thinking and feeling emerge over time (they are not pre-formed) as a result of the ways in which genes and environments influence each other over time. While development is always constrained to some degree by genetic and biological processes, it is also plastic and open-ended. For any given genetic profile, there are many possible developmental outcomes.
The diagram below shows illustrates the epigenetic process in terms of the famous epigenetic landscape metaphor. In the model, the role of heredity is represented by the landscape, which contains a series of hills and valleys. As products of heredity, the valleys for the possible pathways that development can take. Development is represented by the ball rolling down the landscape. As the ball rolls down the landscape, it reaches a series of choice points. At each choice point, development is most likely to take the deepest pathway. However, whatever is going on in the ball’s environment can move the ball from one pathway to another. While heredity makes some developmental pathways more likely than others, circumstances in the environment can move the ball from even the deepest pathways toward more shallow pathways.
For any single genetic profile, there are multiple possible developmental outcomes. What this means is that while genes and environment are not the same entities, they are nonetheless inseparable as causal processes in development. It’s not a matter of genes or environment or even some combination of genes and environment. Genes and environments influence each other; they work together. The evidence that showing the importance of biology in creating sex- and gender-related differences is overwhelming (Geary, 2010; Hines, 2018; Roselli, 2018) The evidence identifying the importance of environmental influences is overwhelming (Bornstein, 2013; Brody & Hall, 2010; Leaper & Farkas, 2015). Research that shows just how biology and environments influence each other to produce sex-linked anatomical and psychological changes exists. The results of strong and powerful, albeit still in their infancy (Dörner et al., 2007; Heywood & Garcia, 2018; Salk & Hyde, 2012).
We Don’t Self-Identify by Ourselves
In arguing that gender is a social construction that is independent of sex, social constructionist approaches run up against some difficult problems. Social constructionists who argue that gender-related actions and experiences are the results of socialization have to explain the enormous body of evidence that documents how biology influences gender-related outcomes. Ironically, an important challenge to this view comes from the experience of transgender individuals. It has been well-established that for many people, an unshakable sense of gender discordance begins early in development and occurs in spite of rather than because of socialization pressures. This finding is doubly damaging. First, it provides compelling evidence that the development of gender identity is not simply socialized. Perhaps more important, however, it suggests that whatever it is that we mean by gendered experience–the sense of being masculine or feminine–it is not something that simply comes from the “outside-in”. There is something in the content of the gendered experience of transgender individuals that precedes the meanings of gender already represented in culture. Whatever we mean by gendered experience, it cannot merely be a cultural product.
But this doesn’t mean that gender identity is something that develops simply from the “inside-out”. In fact, the idea that a gender identity is a form of self-identification raises deep problems. Although individual persons most certainly play a role in the construction of their identities, identifies are simply not the type of things that individuals can determine by themselves.
People do not form identities by looking inside of themselves and seeing who they truly are. If that were true, there would never be any way that one person could verify the identity of another. If identity were something truly private – that is, hidden from you and accessible only to me – there would be no way for you to believe me. Imagine that, in identifying myself as a staunch Democrat, I voiced highly conservative views and voted Republican in every election. Despite my avowed identity as a Democrat, you would feel that I was either in error or did not know what a Democrat is. The same is true of any sort of identity–including transgender identities. We don’t believe a transgender person is transgender simply because the person says so; we believe it because of how the person acts and responds in the world–the boy insists on being called a girl, wears long hair and dresses despite resistance from others, and so forth. If a boy claimed to be a girl but did not engage in any forms of actions that we identify as feminine, we would have a difficult time endorsing that individual’s identity.
The point here is not that transgender experience does not exist, that transgender persons are lying or mistaken. It certainly does not mean that we should not listen with compassion and credulity to the self-avowals of transgender people; we absolutely must. It is simply that no one–including the transgender person–identifies themselves by themselves. The idea that individual people have the authority to define their social identities is perhaps one of social constructionism’s greatest contradictions.
Gender Doesn’t Replace Sex
None of the above should be taken to indicate that there is no such thing as gender. Gender is a useful and important concept. The arguments made here should be taken, however, to mean that gender is not independent of sex. A person’s gender identity is necessarily organized with reference to the concept of sex and to the biological processes related to sexual anatomy and physiology. To be sure, biology is not destiny; but it is also not irrelevant.
There is nothing wrong with the idea of rejecting the gender binary. There is nothing wrong with the idea that people should be free to identify their gender in any way that seems authentic to them. There is nothing wrong with the idea that we “do gender” in our social interactions–when we explore what it means to experience ourselves in this or that gendered no non-gendered way over time. As a constructed form of identification, these are emancipating processes.
The error, in my view, is to treat our gender identities as if they replaced the category of sex–or as if they are somehow more real, true, authentic, important or definitive of who we are or who we are to others than the particularities of our biological sex. Gender identifications are modes of experience ourselves in relation to others. If we want to differentiate gender from sex, we can; but we cannot do so at the expense of sex. One category does not replace the other. They both serve important social functions. As a result, we need to determine the social functions that sex and gender play in contemporary society, and work toward constructive ways of representing ourselves in terms of both.
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