Authors: Serafim & Alex, transgender people
“Your gender is what’s in your pants” is an unfortunate sentiment frequently encountered by those of us who identify within the transgender spectrum. The problem stems from most people’s unawareness of the difference between gender identity and biological sex, which often leads to these two categories being used interchangeably, sometimes even in official documents (in some paperwork, birth assigned sex may be listed as “gender”). In this article, we’re going to provide clear definitions of sex, gender, and pronouns, and explain why there is no direct connection between these three categories.
So what are the definitions?
Your body’s biological state, including chromosomes, reproductive organs, and the hormones they produce, is referred to as your sex. Gender is a social construct that encompasses a range of roles, behaviors, activities, and expectations that are typically associated with either masculinity or femininity. It is important to understand the difference, given that, while some individuals’ sex and gender do align, this isn’t the same for everyone.
Sex assigned at birth (or birth assigned sex) refers to an individual’s anatomy, and is usually the categorization of an individual as male, female, or intersex, most often based on the infant’s external reproductive anatomy.
Multiple factors can influence one’s assigned sex, such as chromosomes, sex hormones, hormone expression, or internal/external genitalia.
In daily life, a common misconception is that chromosomes are binary (XX – female, XY – male), however, this isn’t always the case. Some people are born with variations like X, XYY, XXX, XXY, and many more, meaning that the person is intersex.
In many cases, these genital and chromosomal variations either get “corrected” at birth, meaning that a doctor or a parent decides to have surgery performed on the infant in order to artificially make their external genitals fit a certain societal standard, or go unnoticed for years, even a lifetime, hence a lack of documentation of intersex people which results in systemic erasure, costing the intersex community their visibility or even access to proper healthcare due to understudying.
Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, expressions, and identities of men, women, and gender-diverse people. Therefore, gender is a purely social construct exclusive to humans that can vary depending on time periods, regions, cultures, or religious beliefs, and has the ability to change over time.
Gender does not have a direct bond with biological sex. However, in a lot of cases, certain gendered roles and behaviours are forced onto people based on their birth assigned sex.
Pronouns are the words people use to refer to themselves, or to other people (like he, she, they, it). Some individuals use more than one set of pronouns (Ex. he/they, or he/she/it), others may accept any pronouns, as well as there are individuals who use neopronouns (Ex. it/its, xe/xem, ze/zir etc.).
For transgender people, pronouns are extremely important, as they shape how they see themselves and how society perceives them.
While pronouns can be tied to one’s gender expression, some individuals may choose to present themselves in a manner unrelated to their pronouns. (Ex. A person that presents feminine but uses he/him pronouns, a genderfluid person that presents in various ways etc.),making pronouns their own standalone thing, unrelated to gender expression, much like sex and gender are their own separate things that may or may not intertwine depending on how the individual identifies themselves.
