Sexes

"Sex" redirects here. For other uses, see intimacy (regarding sex acts), or romantic and sexual orientations (regarding sexuality).

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Sexes are a system of categories, a way of putting kinds of bodies into categories. Living things of many species evolved to be specialized into their own male, female, and intersex kinds, each known as a sex. A sex is generally determined by reproductive body parts. In humans, these imply-- but do not prove-- a correlation with chromosomes. In gender studies, the sex and gender of a person are thought of as two distinct things: sex is about the body, whereas gender is about the self. What most people mean when they talk about someone's sex is their assigned gender at birth.

Distinction between sex and gender

The distinction between sex and gender differentiates a person's biological sex (the anatomy of an individual's reproductive system, and secondary sex characteristics) from that person's gender, which can refer to either social roles based on the sex of the person (gender role) or personal identification of one's own gender based on an internal awareness (gender identity). In this model, the idea of a "biological gender" is an oxymoron: the biological aspects are not gender-related, and the gender-related aspects are not biological. In some circumstances, an individual's assigned sex and gender do not align, and the person may be transgender. In other cases, an individual may have biological sex characteristics that complicate sex assignment, and the person may be intersex.

The sex and gender distinction is not universal. In ordinary English, sex and gender are often used interchangeably. Some dictionaries and academic disciplines give them different definitions while others do not. Some languages, such as German or Finnish, have no separate words for sex and gender, and the distinction has to be made through context. On occasion, using the English word gender is appropriate.

Among scientists, the term sex differences (as compared to gender differences) is often used for sexually dimorphic traits that are thought to be evolved results of sexual selection.

Biological essentialism

The form of sexism called biological essentialism is the belief that your body is the main thing that makes you who you are. It is supposed to define you forever, no matter what you change about yourself, think about yourself, or anything. It says the gender you were assigned at birth must be your only real gender. Biological essentialism is used to justify most forms of sexism. It is harmful to virtually everyone, of any sex or gender. Some transgender exclusionists use biological essentialism to discriminate against gender-diverse people.

Assigned gender at birth

The "Phall-O-Meter" is a satirical measure that critiques the medical standard of assigning sex at birth solely based on the size of a newborn's phallus.

When people speak of a person's "sex", usually what they really mean is their assigned gender at birth. This is because a person's sex is much more difficult to determine than most people believe. For example, chromosomes are part of defining someone's sex, but most people never get their chromosomes tested. A baby's assigned gender at birth is based on only one thing: the presence or absence of what a doctor thinks is probably a penis. This will be the only basis of that child's legal gender. As the person grows up, the doctor's guess about their sex can turn out to be wrong, because some intersex conditions only become clear once a person has gone through puberty. Even then, the person might have unusual chromosomes or internal reproductive organs without ever knowing about it.

"Sex identity" can mean either how a person categorizes their own physical sex, or it can mean how other people categorize that person's sex.

Some activists advocate for society to cease assigning gender at birth. For example, author and lawyer Martine Rothblatt wrote: "As we gradually free ourselves from stamping newborn babies as one sex or the other, gender expectations will become self-defining and the full cultural liberation of all people can occur at last." In 2020, several MDs published an opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine stating that "Sex designations on birth certificates offer no clinical utility, and they can be harmful for intersex and transgender people. Moving such designations below the line of demarcation wouldn't compromise the birth certificate's public health function but could avoid harm."

Other phrasing

People writing about gender use several different phrases to refer to assigned gender at birth. Some of them are more accurate and respectful than others. This list gives some of these phrases.

• Assigned Gender At Birth (AGAB). Most people are either Assigned Female At Birth (AFAB) or Assigned Male At Birth (AMAB). This is an accurate and respectful phrase for many people, but should not be used before asking if the person is comfortable with it.

• Gender Assigned At Birth (GAAB) is a different word order for the above phrase, with the same meaning. This makes Female Assigned At Birth (FAAB), and Male Assigned At Birth (MAAB).

• Designated Gender At Birth (DGAB). Most people are either Designated Female At Birth (DFAB) or Designated Male At Birth (DMAB). This phrase is used interchangeably with AGAB, with much the same meaning.

• Coercively Assigned Gender At Birth (CAGAB). Most people are either Coercively Assigned Female At Birth (CAFAB) or male (CAMAB). Unlike AGAB and GAAB, CAGAB emphasizes that the gender was assigned against the person's will, and implies that the person was abused as a child. People disagree about who gets to say their gender was coercively assigned. Some say only intersex people can call themselves CAGAB, and that the coercion refers to non-consensual practices such as genital surgery given to intersex infants to make their genitals "normal." However, many children who aren't intersex also have a gender role assigned to them by means of coercion and abuse. For example, some parents put gender non-conforming and transgender children through "conversion therapy" to make the children conform to their assigned gender.

The next list of phrases gives those that aren't as accurate or respectful. Please use one of the above phrases instead of them.

• Biological sex (biological girl, biological boy) isn't a good phrase for talking about assigned gender or sex. For example, although a typical transgender woman was assigned male at birth, it could offend her to call her a biological male. She's not a non-biological woman or a robot. Because she is a woman, she might not consider herself to have a "male biology". It would be more tactful to describe her as AMAB. Even more tactful, no direct explicit reference to her assigned gender at birth at all, and simply say that she is a trans woman.

• Genetic girl and genetic boy aren't good things to call someone, for similar reasons as "biological sex". "Genetic" refers to chromosomes, but doctors usually don't check babies' chromosomes at birth. During pregnancy, some OBGYN practices offer fetal genetic testing and use the sex chromosome result to assign a gender, but chromosomes aren't part of how gender is assigned at birth. Even adults only rarely get to find out what their chromosomes are. Doctors only do that test if they think it might answer questions certain kinds of challenges with health and fertility. Intersex conditions prove that there is no guarantee that a person's assigned gender might match their chromosomes.

• Natal sex (as in natal female and natal male). This means the sex that a person supposedly had when they were born. Because of the problems in determining a baby's actual sex, a more accurate phrase is "assigned at birth" or one of its variants.

Dyadic sexes

Dyadic means "not intersex." The dyadic sexes are male and female, with no noticable intersex characteristics. Dyadic sexes should not be confused with cisgender or binary gender.

There is some controversy around the usage of the term "dyadic." Dyad means two, so dyadic promotes the idea of a dualism for sex: male and female. Although well intended, it may fall short of decons