Gender, Sex, and Sexuality

Sex: This is a person's biological status, based on chromosomes (XX=female, XY=male) or secondary/primary sexual traits (penis=male, vagina=female). When discussing sex, we use the terms male and female. Some individuals are intersexed, meaning they have sexual features or chromosomes that don't clearly fall into one category or the other.

Gender: Gender is the social category that we place on top of the reality of physical differences between males and females. In some ways, this is similar to the social construction of race that we put on top of the reality of human biodiversity. Note, however, that sexual differences are usually (but not always) more cut and dry than racial/population differences. Gender includes attitudes, behaviors, roles, and feelings that a culture associates with individuals of a particular gender category. In dominant U.S. culture, we have two genders, man and woman, or boy and girl. Many cultures have three or more gender categories, often called third gender or berdache or two-spirit.

Gender Performance or Expression: A person's gender performance is the way that they perform or act out their gender role in line (or not) with cultural expectations. If a person acts the way others expect for someone of their gender, they are gender-normative. If someone acts in a way that is unexpected by their culture for a person of their gender, they are gender non-conforming. Obviously, this is a continuum, with some people acting in a very gender-normative way, others very non-conforming, and others falling everywhere in-between.

Gender Identity: A person's perception of their own identity as a man, woman, or transgendered person. A person's gender identity may be the gender that is expected by their culture for a person of their sex (for example, a female who gender identifies as a woman). If a person's gender identity is not the same as the one their culturally assigns to their sex, they may identify as trans-sexual.

Sexual Orientation: The sex of those to whom a person is sexually attracted, whether people of the same sex (homosexual orientation), people of a different sex (heterosexual orientation), both (bisexual), or none (asexual). Although U.S. culture tends to view sexual orientation as rigid and categorical, in many cultures it is considered fluid and changeable. Sexual attraction may or may not fit the cultural expectations for a person's gender or sex, regardless of a person's self-identity. In other words, someone with XY chromosomes may identify as a woman and be sexually attracted to other women.