Debunking Sex and Gender

Written by Sophie Dufresne, BWES Member

We often hear the arguments “gender is a social construct” and “sex is biological;” however, what if I were to say both are constructs?

Contrary to popular belief, sex is actually not the basis of gender. It may come as a shock to some, but gender is the basis of sex. The well-reputed Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “gender” as “the behavioural, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex.” Moreover, it defines “sex” as “the state of being male or female.” These definitions reflect the general presumption that sex is the basis of gender since sex is supposedly innate and gender is supposedly a mere reflection of sex. However, this is a completely false understanding of both terms.

Western educational institutions indoctrinate students with the idea that there are two genders because there are two sexes. However, the concept of “sex” is as much of a construct as gender is. We are not born with a “sex,” as previously defined; we are born with body parts that form our anatomy and are thus gendered to conform with societal gender norms and expectations.

Body parts (and chromosomes) are grouped and labelled “male” or “female” to justify the claim that gender is biological; that there are only two biological sexes (as the two terms are often used synonymously by those who do not understand the difference between them). And who can argue with biology, right? Gender is thus the basis of sex, as it is used to define sex, which, in turn, is used to define gender, as sex is seen as the basis of gender. This is the famous circular firing squad of the right.

“Modern biology” supposedly accounts for intersex individuals by recognizing “at least five different groupings of human sex chromosomes, anatomy, and hormone physiology,” according to a blog article from the academic journal Public Library of Science (PLOS). However, many biologists still view “intersex” as a medical disorder and view sex as completely binary. P.Z Myers, an American biologist who founded the scientific blog Pharyngula, controversially claimed in said-blog that “when a population is identified as a discrete binary of two kinds of individuals, male and female, my usual thought is that the next step is to pair up individuals in bottles and do a genetic cross. That’s not how we treat human beings in our communities.”

His point was that classifying humans based on their genitalia is crude and unnatural, for sexual identity is much more fluid than a rigid binary of two extremes. Unsurprisingly, conservative scientists to the likes of Michael Egnor, an American award-winning neuroscientist, labelled this worldview as “the ideological corruption of modern biology” and accused Myers of “imposing his own ideological bias on biological science.”

A common assumption is that since sex and gender are not binary, they are spectrums. However, the concept of “spectrums” is flawed because it is not well defined. It is seen as an alternative to the binary view of gender and places non-binary individuals as “somewhere in the middle,” when some identify as “outside the spectrum,” making the spectrum theory much more limiting than inclusionary.

A third spectrum that is often talked about is the “gender expression spectrum,” which places “feminine” on one end and “masculine” on the other. But what does it mean to be “masculine” or “feminine”? It means to either conform as your assigned gender at birth or to conform as the “opposite” gender. Note the quotation marks. Men and women are not “opposites” because gender is not a spectrum. The belief that they are opposites dates back to when the woman's role in society was to be the housekeeper and the man's role was to be the provider. Men were seen as strong, dominant, assertive, brave, and women were seen as the “opposite”. Nowadays, you would hear a man laughed at for “being a girl” if he displayed any weakness, seeing as these gender roles and expectations are still present in society.

Since men and women are not opposites, gender cannot be a spectrum because spectrums have opposite ends, and this idea of “opposite genders” is harmful to all genders. Finally, since sex is as fluid as gender and gender expression, which one having little influence on the others, it is safe to assume that both sex and gender are social constructs.