In 1993, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) started to use gender instead of sex. This change in the meaning of gender can be traced to the 1980s. For instance, in non-human animal research, gender is commonly used to refer to the biological sex of the animals. In other contexts, the term gender is used to replace sex without representing a clear conceptual difference. Most contemporary social scientists, behavioral scientists and biologists, many legal systems and government bodies, and intergovernmental agencies such as the WHO, make a distinction between gender and sex. However, Money's meaning of the word did not become widespread until the 1970s, when feminist theory embraced the concept of a distinction between biological sex and the social construct of gender. īefore Money's work, it was uncommon to use the word gender to refer to anything but grammatical categories. Sexologist John Money is often regarded as the first to introduce a terminological distinction between biological sex and "gender role" (which, as originally defined, includes the concepts of both gender role and what would later become known as gender identity) in 1955 although Madison Bentley had already in 1945 defined gender as the "socialized obverse of sex", and Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 book The Second Sex has been interpreted as the beginning of the distinction between sex and gender in feminist theory. Most scholars agree that gender is a central characteristic for social organization. Some societies have specific genders besides "man" and "woman", such as the hijras of South Asia these are often referred to as third genders (and fourth genders, etc.). Most cultures use a gender binary, in which gender is divided into two categories, and people are considered part of one or the other ( boys/ men and girls/ women) those who exist outside these groups may fall under the umbrella term non-binary. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. The blue (right) represents the male Mars symbol. The red (left) is the female Venus symbol. And while those who have transitioned, or who are openly nonbinary or genderqueer, may feel more like themselves, it often comes at the cost of discrimination from those clinging to socially-constructed notions about who men and women are really supposed to be.Gender symbols intertwined. Transgender people may feel profoundly disconnected from their true selves. Cisgender women may worry that sexism may limit their opportunities, or that the pursuit of their goals will lead others to see them as less feminine and somehow less worthy, especially if they do not dress or maintain their appearance in the ways others expect them to. Unfortunately, socially-constructed concepts of gender can hinder people in all of these ways.Ĭisgender men may struggle to live up to notions of machismo taught to them from a young age and pervasive in the media they consume even if doing so is really just an awkward act of pretending. Many people might be happier and less anxious if they could go through life without having to worry about whether their gender was affecting other people’s perceptions of them or their ability to pursue their goals, or without feeling doubts about whether they were living up to the expectations placed on them because of their sexual characteristics. Describing gender as a social construct is neither a casual nor an ideological phrasing.
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