3 - Re-understanding sex and gender

Summary

Recognising that sex is socially constructed is not to deny that material reality exists— simply that the meaning ascribed to biology occurs as a social process, and this has changed and continues to change over time.

Vincent (2018: 45)

In this chapter I examine how people attribute sex and gender to others, which illuminates a lot about how we think about bodies and gender. Looking at some of the specific features that are often used in attribution, I question the importance or relevance of attributing sex and gender at all. Finally, I will apply this analysis to understand the role of sex and gender in healthcare.

Sex and gender attribution

The biggest issue with the idea of male- bodiedness and female- bodiedness is the question of what makes a ‘biological man’ or a ‘biological woman’ in the first place. This sex binary also does not account for intersex people so it is already invalid as a dichotomy. If we take the binary aspect out of the equation and look at male- bodied and female- bodied as merely two possible types of bodies out of many, there is still a definitional issue. No two bodies are exactly alike so even with humans allegedly being sexually dimorphic, all male bodies are not alike and neither are all female bodies. This understanding challenges a simple model of human sexual dimorphism: ‘Biologists and medical scientists recognize, of course, that absolute dimorphism is a Platonic ideal not actually achieved in the natural world. Nonetheless, the normative nature of medical science uses as an assumption, the proposition that for each sex there is a single, correct developmental pathway’ (Blackless et al, 2000: 151).

The embracing of this impossible ideal of absolute sexual dimorphism is what provides existing definitions of these types of bodies: ‘most consider that at the level of chromosomes, hormones, and genitals, dimorphism is absolute and, by implication, such traits are discrete rather than quantitative … however, developmental biology suggests that a belief in absolute sexual dimorphism is wrong’ (Blackless et al, 2000: 163).