What is the difference between gender and sex?
1 Answer
Sex is physical, while gender is mental.
Explanation:
There is a lot, lot, LOT of controversy on this topic right now, but I'm going to try and answer anyways.
Sex is a physical trait, i.e. what reproductive organs a sexual organism has.
Most humans are biologically male or female in sex, but it is possible to be both, neither, or something else entirely through many, many different genetic mutations.
One notable example is chimerism, which is the condition of being two separate organisms combined into one, or essentially being one organism with two sets of DNA.
If part of a chimeric human's DNA has the XX chromosomes (female) and another part has the XY (male), then that human is technically both sexes, and can be called biologically "intersex".
Humans can also have XXX, XXY, XYY, XXXX, and a LOT of other chromosome combinations caused by mutations.
Gender is more of a mental thing, or how one sees oneself.
Pardon me if my information is a little outdated, but there are many conflicting studies on whether there are actual differences in the brains of different genders at birth, whether this is a result of environment, how significant these differences are, and whether or not these differences actually matter.
For example, someone can be born biologically male but actually female, born biologically female but actually male, born any gender but identifies as both/none/all/sometimes any one of these, born the same gender as they identify, or born intersex and choosing male or female.
It does get confusing. However, the easiest way to tell what gender someone is if you are confused is to ask.
