Beyond Biology: Understanding Sex, Gender, and Their Defining Characteristics

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Beyond Biology: Understanding Sex, Gender, and Their Defining Characteristics

Advanced Social Psychology · Chapter 6: Gender, Race, and Reducing PrejudiceSection 6.1 · lesson 33 of 8511 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

An analytical distinction, and the two errors it exists to prevent.

  • Separate sex from gender, and say why the split is analytical
  • Identify the biological dimensions of sex and intersex variation
  • Locate identity, expression, and role in a multidimensional model
  • Evaluate binary and spectrum models against the evidence

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Gender, Race, and Reducing Prejudice

Beyond Biology

Few distinctions in contemporary social psychology are as consequential as this one. And few are as contested outside the field. The distinction between sex and gender. This section treats it the way the discipline does. As an analytical tool. A tool that exists to prevent two specific errors, in opposite directions. We will look at what biological sex actually is, dimension by dimension. Then at how gender decomposes into at least four separable parts. Then at two theoretical accounts, from West and Zimmerman, and from Butler. And we finish with what the evidence says about binary and spectrum models. Throughout, the aim is to specify which features are explained at which level.

The Distinction

Two Errors It Exists to Prevent

Start with the two definitions, because precision here saves a lot of trouble later. Sex is conventionally defined as a set of biological characteristics. Characteristics typically used to classify individuals as female, male, or intersex. Gender refers to socially constructed roles, behaviors, expressions, and identities. Of women, men, and gender-diverse people. Now the crucial qualification, which is easy to skip. The distinction is analytical rather than absolute. Biological and social factors influence each other across the lifespan. And the boundary between them is itself a target of empirical inquiry. Conflating the two invites two characteristic errors. The first is biological essentialism. Treating culturally specific gender norms as expressions of fixed biological imperatives. The second is sociological reductionism. Treating biological variation as if it had no role at all in gendered experience. Advanced students are expected to navigate between those poles, using evidence.

Not One Variable

Sex Is a Bundle of Dimensions

Take biological sex first, on its own terms. It is not a single variable. It is a bundle of partially correlated dimensions. Chromosomal sex, typically XX or XY. Gonadal sex, meaning ovaries or testes. Hormonal sex, the relative levels of estrogens, androgens, and progestogens. Internal reproductive anatomy. External genitalia. And secondary characteristics that develop at puberty. In the modal case, all of those align. But they do not always align, and that is the whole point of listing them. Partially correlated is the key phrase in that sentence. It makes sex an empirical question about a person, rather than a single lookup.

Intersex

The Dimensions Can Diverge

Intersex variations are the cases where those dimensions diverge. Cases in which sex characteristics do not fit typical binary classifications. They are documented, named, and quantified. Congenital adrenal hyperplasia is one. Androgen insensitivity syndromes are another. So are chromosomal variations such as XXY and X naught. How common is this? Roughly one point seven percent of births. That is Blackless and colleagues' inclusive estimate, from the year two thousand. What this establishes is worth stating carefully. Even biological sex is not strictly dichotomous. And that conclusion is drawn from the biology itself. It is not imported into biology from social theory.

Joel Et Al., 2015

Brains Are Mosaics, Not Types

Now the brain, where a lot of public argument concentrates. Comparative neuroscience does find differences associated with sex. Modest, distributional differences in average brain structure and function. The question is what those averages imply about any individual. Joel and colleagues answered that in twenty fifteen. Individual brains are overwhelmingly mosaics. Mosaics of features statistically more common in one sex or the other. They are not internally consistent male or female brains. A brain with several typically-male features usually has typically-female ones too. This is a general statistical point, and it is worth internalizing. A real average difference at group level can coexist with almost nobody matching the type. So the mature view comes down to three adjectives. Biological sex is multidimensional, mostly bimodal, and incompletely deterministic.

Decomposition

Gender Has at Least Four Parts

Now gender, which decomposes into at least four analytically distinct elements. Collapsing them is the source of most confused arguments about the topic. Sex assigned at birth is the classification recorded from observed external anatomy. Gender identity is the person's internal sense of their own gender. Gender expression is the outward communication of gender. Through appearance, behavior, and language. And gender role is the set of behaviors, attitudes, and responsibilities. The ones a culture associates with each gender category. Caregiving and breadwinning are the source's examples. The reason the decomposition is worth the trouble is independence. Each component can take a value without fixing the others. So a study that measures one and reports it as another is measuring the wrong thing.

The Vocabulary

Alignment, and Its Absence

Three terms follow directly from that decomposition. Gender identity is the internal sense of being a woman, a man, both, or neither. Or another category altogether. Cisgender individuals have a gender identity that aligns with their sex assigned at birth. Transgender individuals do not. Non-binary identities fall outside the woman and man binary altogether. Now notice what those first two terms are actually doing. They describe a relation between two of the four components. Identity, and assignment. They are not extra categories of person, stacked on top of the model. That is a small point of precision, and it prevents a common confusion.

West And Zimmerman, 1987

Gender as Something Done

Two theoretical accounts have shaped how the field thinks about gender. West and Zimmerman published the first in nineteen eighty-seven. They treated gender as something that is done, rather than possessed. It is an ongoing accomplishment of situated conduct. Something produced in interaction, moment by moment. And crucially, that conduct is accountable. Accountable to the sex category assigned to the person. Other people hold you to it, and that holding is part of the mechanism. One consequence follows immediately. Gender cannot be finished. It has to be continuously produced. Which is why norm violations get noticed so quickly. On this account, asking what someone's gender is asks the wrong sort of question. The interesting variable is what they are held accountable for.

Butler, 1990

Performativity

Judith Butler radicalized that position in nineteen ninety. Her account is called gender performativity. The claim is precise, and it goes further than West and Zimmerman. Repeated, stylized acts produce the appearance of something underneath. The appearance of an underlying gendered substance. And that substance does not exist independently of those acts. So compare the two accounts directly. West and Zimmerman said gender is accomplished. Butler adds that the thing it appears to express is itself a product of the accomplishment. Both treat gender as a social practice rather than a fixed property. And here is a point that is routinely missed in summaries. Both remain compatible with the existence of stable individual gender identities. Saying identity is produced is not the same as saying it is not real.

The Public Argument

Binary, Spectrum, or Both

Public discourse frames the question as binary versus spectrum. The empirical picture is more nuanced than either answer. And the two answers turn out to be describing different things. Distributions of many sexed biological features are bimodal. Two peaks, with overlap, and intermediate cases. That is neither a clean binary nor a smooth spectrum. Distributions of psychological gender are multidimensional instead. A person can score high on both instrumental and expressive traits. That is Bem's concept of androgyny. A person can identify with a category outside the binary. Or occupy a stable position along several axes at once. So the advanced move is to stop treating these as competitors. Binary and spectrum describe different levels at which gendered life is organized.

Variation

Biology Underdetermines the Arrangement

Anthropological and historical scholarship documents substantial variation. Variation in how gender gets organized across societies. Many societies recognize more than two gender categories. The hijra of South Asia. The two-spirit traditions of several Indigenous North American nations. The fa'afafine of Samoa, and others. And even where binary categories are present, their content varies. Tasks classified as men's work in one society are women's work in another. Now draw the correct inference from that, because it is easy to overreach. This does not imply that biology is irrelevant. It implies that biology underdetermines gendered social organization. Leaving substantial scope for cultural elaboration on top of it.

Consolidate

Three Implications for Research Practice

Three implications follow for advanced research practice. First, measure sex and gender separately, wherever that is possible. And the instruments should accommodate non-binary identities and intersex variation. Second, beware the single dichotomous variable. Analyses that treat sex that way risk obscuring more informative structures. Continuous and multidimensional structures, which carry more information. Third, cross-check any claim that a gender difference is natural or universal. Check it against developmental, cross-cultural, and historical evidence. Before accepting it as biological. Five terms to carry forward. Sex and gender, held distinct but not treated as sealed off from each other. Gender identity, and intersex variation. And performativity, Butler's account of gender produced through repeated acts.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Beyond Biology: Understanding Sex, Gender, and Their Defining Characteristics

What is the difference between sex and gender?
Sex refers to biological characteristics used to classify people as female, male, or intersex, while gender refers to socially constructed roles, behaviors, expressions, and identities. The distinction is analytical rather than absolute, since biological and social factors influence each other across the lifespan. Keeping the terms separate helps avoid two errors: biological essentialism, which treats cultural norms as fixed biology, and sociological reductionism, which ignores any role for biological variation.
How common are intersex variations?
Estimates depend heavily on the definition used. Blackless and colleagues (2000) gave an inclusive estimate of about 1.7 percent of births, counting conditions such as congenital adrenal hyperplasia, androgen insensitivity, and chromosomal variations like XXY and 45,X. Narrower definitions, such as the one in Leonard Sax's 2002 critique, produce far lower figures. Either way, biological sex involves several dimensions, chromosomal, gonadal, hormonal, and anatomical, that usually but not invariably align.
Are there male and female brains?
Research finds modest average differences in brain structure between the sexes, but individual brains rarely fit a consistent male or female type. Daphna Joel and colleagues' 2015 study found that most brains are mosaics, mixing features more common in females with features more common in males. A real group-level average difference can coexist with few individuals matching the type. Joel's analysis has been debated, but it highlights the gap between group averages and individuals.
What is gender performativity?
Gender performativity is Judith Butler's 1990 theory that repeated, stylized acts create the appearance of an underlying gender rather than expressing one that already exists. It radicalized West and Zimmerman's 1987 idea of doing gender, which treats gender as an ongoing accomplishment in interaction that others hold a person accountable for. Both views treat gender as social practice, yet both are compatible with stable individual gender identities; being produced is not the same as being unreal.

About the Advanced Social Psychology course

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Advanced Social Psychology (Psychology 310) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
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