A major culprit of the mixup between sex and gender comes from the way the concepts are connected. Sex is a category determined by biology, which labels someone as female, male, or intersex. Gender is a category that is culturally developed and understood to be descriptive of what a female- or male-appearing person may or should look and behave like in society. Traditionally, females who conform to those cultural ideas are socially labeled girls and women, and the males are referred to as boys and men.

Now, as people’s understanding of gender continues to evolve so have the categories, which have expanded to include other concepts, such as transgender, nonbinary, and genderfluid. On that note, it’s important to point out that gender–like most concepts in society–is fluid; ideas, definitions, and beliefs are constantly changing because people’s thoughts, behaviors, and patterns fluctuate and evolve. So, gender is also relative because it depends on how the social ideas related to it are perceived and represented by individuals.   

A few things worth doubling down on so far; gender is based on self-representation; sex does not determine gender, and vice versa; gender is a social construct. 

A sidebar on social constructs

Another key ingredient that adds to the confusion is the notion that gender is a social construct, which refers to a concept that exists as a result of human interaction around it and a consensus that the thing exists. In sociology, the theory of knowledge known as social constructionism “examines how individuals develop their knowledge and understanding of the world” through social processes and interactions. In other words, people agree–to different extents–on an idea and, after some time, they start to perceive it as an objective “truth” until “finally, in the last stage, the idea becomes ‘internalized’ in the consciousness of the society, and future generations more or less take the idea for granted as an objective truth, as the idea already exists in the world they were born into.”

The tricky part is that these socially constructed concepts tend to derive from (over)generalizations that can lead to limiting expectations and stereotypes. For example, the assumption that females are more adept at caretaking because they carry and give birth to offspring has led to a cultural association with female-appearing people having a natural, strong maternal instinct. In turn, this places an expectation for female-appearing people to display nurturing by being primary caregivers and homemakers in order to be considered as fulfilling their socially expected roles as “women.”

Money is another example of a social construct that’s a little easier to make sense of. Money has no real inherent value, in essence it is a piece of paper. But humans have agreed to place a monetary value on said pieces of paper. The concept of money exists and is upheld because people in society are in some consensus about its existence, appearance, and what it represents. And, even the concept of money has and continues to change, with cryptocurrency as the latest evolution. 

Why understanding the difference matters

It’s dangerous to assume that concepts in society–like sex and gender–are fixed or objective truths. There is extensive sociological research that says otherwise. For any concept you can think of there will always be people who have different ideas, perceptions or beliefs around it, but that’s normal and not inherently problematic. Problems arise when people persecute others to the point where discrimination and human rights violations occur just because they don’t have the same beliefs.  

Difference is inevitable the same way that change is, so we should all be making room for them.