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Jun 11

Can you explain the difference between sex and gender? I know there's a debate about the connotation of each but I haven't found a really good explanation of their proper uses.

Anonymous

I actually just talked about that a bit over on my personal tumblr.

To elaborate a bit, there is a common idea in the Social Justice community that ‘gender is in your head, sex is between your legs’. But this definition doesn’t scan for me. For one thing, there are problems with the whole idea of sex as a biological construct. For another, the idea is outright harmful to pre/non-op trans people. It perpetuates the idea that we are ‘not really’ men/women, and that leads to policies like locking trans women in men’s prisons.

So, my answer is that gender is an identity construct, and can only be described in terms of individual identity. Sex, on the other hand, is a dangerous and harmful myth supported by oversimplified scientific-sounding explanations.

- Anna

Posted 11 months ago


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