WHAT IS SEX AND GENDER? by Deborah Amory, Carol C. Mukhopadhyay and Tami Blumenfield

In this chapter, we will explore the meanings and experience of sex and gender from a global perspective. Let’s start by asking ourselves a basic question: why learn about sex and gender globally?  Don’t we all know what it means to be a man or a woman?  While the answer to that question may seem obvious to some people (“Of course I know what that means!”), the fascinating thing is that when we learn about gender cross-culturally, we discover that these are very complicated concepts.  In fact, ideas about gender differ tremendously between different cultures. In general discussions in the United States today, people will often use the terms “sex” and “gender” interchangeably.  This is incorrect, and leads to a lot of confusion. So first, we will spend some time defining these concepts, and related ones — like gender ideologies and gender roles — so that we have a very clear understanding of the terms we will be using.

SEX

Sex is generally understood in our society as the biological components (or biological package) that marks people as either male or female.  For example, ultrasounds are often used to provide an educated guess at the sex of a baby before it is even born. Chromosomes provide more definitive evidence, as fetuses or infants will typically exhibit an XX (female) or XY (male) chromosomal combination. However, scholars have moved away from labeling people “biologically female” or “biologically male,” shifting instead to terms like “assigned female at birth” and “assigned male at birth.” Terms that foreground assignment help recognize the fluidity of sex characteristics, and the fact that sex is not binary. For example, there are intersex people who do not fit neatly into the male/female categories, because there are more genetic combinations possible than simply XX or XY, and sometimes genitals are not clearly defined at birth.  Intersex individuals may display ambiguous genitalia, or possess a different chromosomal combination, such as XXY.

Research has shown that intersex people are surprisingly common. Martha Ward and Monica Edelstein estimate that such intersex individuals constitute five percent of human births.^[1] So what are cultures to do when faced with an infant or child who cannot easily be assigned a sex?” Some cultures, including the United States, used to force children into one of the two binary categories, even if it required surgery or hormone therapy. But in other places, such as India and among the Isthmus Zapotec in southern Oaxaca, Mexico, the existence of intersex people lead to the creation of a third sex and corresponding non-binary gender category, which we will discuss later in this chapter.  ^[2]

GENDER

Gender is the cultural and behavioral characteristics associated with a person’s sex, although not always corresponding to one’s sex.  Gender identity is your psychological knowledge of your gender, regardless of your biology, although assumptions are often made about person’s gender identity based on biological characteristics. Gender is  a cultural construction, which means that the ways of being, doing, and performing one’s gender identity is shaped by a particular culture. Think about how we begin to learn ideas about gender the moment a little blue or pink hat is placed on our head after birth.  We learn the “correct” and “normal” ways to behave based on the category we are assigned to (“boy” or “girl”), and then the toys we are given, the advertisements we see, the jobs we occupy, etc. One powerful aspect of culture, and a reason cultural norms like gender feel so natural, is that we learn culture the way we learn our native language: without formal instruction, in social contexts, picking it up from others around us, without thinking, in other words through enculturation. We learn very early (by at least age three) about the categories of gender in our culture—that individuals are either “boys” or “girls” and that elaborate beliefs, behaviors, and meanings are associated with each gender. We can think of this complex set of ideas as a gender ideologies. All societies have gender ideologies, just as they have belief systems about other significant areas of life, such as race, ethnicity and class. Gender is shaped by a particular culture and society through a range of practices and ideas. Laws, religion, and educational systems all play a key role in shaping how we understand what it means to be a cisgender man or cisgender woman. Whereas a cisgender person is someone whose sex assigned at birth corresponds with their gender identity (male/man, female/woman), a transgender person is someone whose assigned sex does not correspond with their gender identity. Sometimes, although not always, a transgender person will identify as a trans man (a man who was assigned the sex of female at birth) or trans woman (a woman who was assigned the sex of male at birth).

Gender roles are the anticipated cultural and social roles resulting from a society’s gender ideologies. These refer to dominant expectations about “proper” behavior, including work. For example, consider this statement: “A woman’s place is in the home.” What does that mean? Historically in the U.S., it has meant that “a woman’s place” was thought to be in their suburban home, caring for the kids, while a man’s role was to serve as the “breadwinner” for his family. You will note, however, that these gender roles were only really available to certain men and certain women, at particular points in historical time. For example, after slavery, African American women often still had to work taking care of other women’s children; immigrant women, throughout U.S. history, have also typically worked outside the home. For much of American history prior to the 1970s, it was mostly white, Anglo-European American men who held jobs that paid well enough for them to be the sole “breadwinner” of their family, and for their wives to stay at home. The point here is that we want to question our beliefs, and the various ideologies that inform them, as we learn about sex and gender from a historical, global perspective. As we shall see, things change — often rapidly — through time, and across cultures.

THE GENDER BINARY & BEYOND by Carol C. Mukhopadhyay and Tami Blumenfield

One common assumption is that all cultures divide human beings into two and only two genders, a binary or dualistic model of gender. However, in some cultures gender is more fluid and flexible, allowing individuals assigned one biological sex to assume another gender, or creating more than two genders from which individuals can select. Examples of non-binary cultures come from Native America. Anthropologists such as Ruth Benedict long ago identified a fairly widespread phenomenon of so-called “two-spirit” people, individuals who did not comfortably conform to the gender roles and gender ideology normally associated with their biological sex. Historically, among the pre-contact Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico, which was a relatively gender-egalitarian horticultural society, for example, individuals could choose an alternative role of “not-men” or “not-women.” A two-spirited Zuni man would do the work and wear clothing normally associated with women, having shown a preference for women-identified activities and symbols at an early age. In some, but not all cases, he would eventually marry a man. Most significantly, these alternative gender roles were acceptable, publicly recognized, and sometimes venerated.^[3]

Another well-known example of a non-binary gender system is found among the Hijra in India. Often called a third gender, these individuals are usually biologically male but adopt women’s clothing, gestures, and names; eschew sexual desire and sexual activity; and go through religious rituals that give them certain divine powers, including blessing or cursing couples’ fertility and performing at weddings and births. Hijra may undergo voluntary surgical removal of genitals through a nirvan or rebirth operation. Some hijra are males born with ambiguous external genitals, such as a particularly small penis or testicles that did not fully descend.^[4] Historically, as Europe colonized most of the world, Anglo-European gender systems were imposed on native peoples and local, indigenous categories for both sex and gender were either stigmatized or abolished.

In the United States and around the world, there are a growing number of people identifying as having a non-binary gender identity. These individuals may experience a gender identity that is neither exclusively that of a man or woman, or is in between or beyond both genders. Other terms used by non-binary individuals include gender fluid, agender (without gender), third gender, or something else entirely. Often, although not always, non-binary individuals will use the pronouns they, them and theirs instead of him/his/his and she/her/hers to refer to themselves and have people refer to them. This also reflects how language and communication changes with culture.

GENDER PERFORMANCE by Lauren Miller Griffith

Gender theorist Judith Butler’s term “gender performativity” references the idea that gender as a social construct is created through individual performances of gender identity. Butler’s key point is that an act is seen as gendered through ongoing, stylized repetitions.^[5] In other words, while we all make specific choices—such as how to dress for a date—people doing things in patterned ways over time results in certain versions being typified as “masculine” or “feminine.” Phrases such as “act like a man” or “throw like a girl” are good examples. Socially, we define certain types of behavior as typical of men and women and culturally code that behavior as a gendered representation. Thus, specific individuals are seen as doing things in a particularly (or stereotypically) masculine or feminine way. How do you know how “men” and “women” are supposed to behave? What makes one way of sitting, standing, or talking a “feminine” one and another a “masculine” one? The answer is that definitions of masculine and feminine vary within cultures and societies, but in every case, how people commonly do things constitutes gender in everyday life.

In many ways, the notion that gender is created and replicated through patterned behavior is an expansion of the classic idea that the very movements of our bodies are culturally learned and performed.^[6] Walking and swimming may seem to be natural body movements, but those movements differ in individual cultures and one must learn to walk or swim according to the norms of the culture. We also learn to perform gender. In Western contexts, for instance, athletic prowess is typically coded as masculine. But as Iris Marion Young noted, it is impossible to throw like a girl without learning what that means.^[7] The phrase is not meant to refer to the skills of pitcher Mo’ne Davis who, at thirteen years old, became the first female Little League player to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated in August 2014.^[8] Young’s point, by extension, is twofold: 1) “girls” only throw differently from “boys” insofar as they are taught to throw differently; and 2) what counts as throwing like a girl or a boy is a learned evaluation. Taking the idea a step further, several scholars looked at performance of gender in a variety of sports, including women’s bodybuilding, figure skating, and competitive ballroom dancing. In each case, some aspect of femininity is over-performed through blatant makeup and costuming to compensate for the overt physicality of the sport, which is at odds with stereotypical views of femininity.^[9]

LANGUAGE & GENDER

In any culture that has differences in gender role expectations—and all cultures do—there are differences in how people talk based on their gender identity. These differences have nothing to do with biology. In the United States, men are generally expected to speak in a low, rather monotone pitch; it is seen as masculine. If they do not sound sufficiently masculine, American men are likely to be negatively labeled as effeminate. Women, on the other hand, are freer to use their entire pitch range, which they often do when expressing emotion, especially excitement. When a woman is a television news announcer, she will modulate the pitch of her voice to a sound more typical of a man in order to be perceived as more credible. Women tend to use minimal responses in a conversation more than men. These are the vocal indications that one is listening to a speaker, such asm-hm, yeah, I see, wow, and so forth. They tend to face their conversation partners more and use more eye contact than men. This is one reason women often complain that men do not listen to them.

Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., has done research for many years on language and gender. Her basic finding is that in conversation women tend to use styles that are relatively cooperative, to emphasize an equal relationship, while men seem to talk in a more competitive way in order to establish their positions in a hierarchy. She emphasizes that both men and women may be cooperative and competitive in different ways.^[10] 

Other societies have very different standards for gendered speech styles. In Madagascar, men use a very flowery style of talk, using proverbs, metaphors and riddles to indirectly make a point and to avoid direct confrontation. The women on the other hand speak bluntly and say directly what is on their minds. Both admire men’s speech and think of women’s speech as inferior. When a man wants to convey a negative message to someone, he will ask his wife to do it for him. In addition, women control the marketplaces where tourists bargain for prices because it is impossible to bargain with a man who will not speak directly. It is for this reason that Malagasy women are relatively independent economically.

In Japan, women were traditionally expected to be subservient to men and speak using a “feminine” style, appropriate for their position as wife and mother, but the Japanese culture has been changing in recent decades so more and more women are joining the work force and achieving positions of relative power. Such women must find ways of speaking to maintain their feminine identities and at the same time express their authority in interactions with men, a challenging balancing act. Women in the United States do as well, to a certain extent. Even Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of England, took speech therapy lessons to “feminize” her language use while maintaining an expression of authority.

SEXUALITY by Deborah Amory

Sexuality refers to “what we find erotic and how we take pleasure in our bodies” (Styrker 2008, p. 33).  Sexuality and sexual practices vary across time and space, and so must be considered socially constructed.  Sexual orientation refers to the ways in which we seek out erotic pleasure, or how our sexuality is “oriented” towards particular types of people. In other words, are sexual orientation is who we are attracted to at any given moment in time. Sexual orientation is not fixed, but can change. Gilbert Herdt’s work among the Sambia in Papua New Guinea counters the idea of sexual orientation as fixed (e.g., heterosexual, bisexual, gay) and provides a counter-example in which personal sexuality varies for boys and men by stage of life.^[11]

Heteronormativity and Sexuality in the United States by Carol C. Mukhopadhyay and Tami Blumenfield

Heteronormativity is a term coined by French philosopher Michel Foucault to refer to the often-unnoticed system of rights and privileges that accompany normative sexual choices and family formation. For example, a “biologically female” woman attracted to a “biologically male” man who pursued that attraction and formed a relationship with that man would be following a heteronormative pattern in the United States. If she married him, she would be continuing to follow societal expectations related to gender and sexuality.

Despite pervasive messages reinforcing heteronormative social relations, people find other ways to satisfy their sexual desires and organize their families. Labels have changed rapidly in the United States during the twenty-first century as a wider range of sexual orientations has been openly acknowledged, accompanied by a shift in our binary view of sexuality. Rather than thinking of individuals as either straight OR gay, scholars and activists now recognize a spectrum of sexual orientations. Given the U.S. focus on identity, it is not surprising that a range of new personhood categories, such as bisexual, polisexual, pansexual, queer, questioning, lesbian, and gay have emerged to reflect a more-fluid, shifting, expansive, and ambiguous conception of sexuality, sexual orientation and sexual identity.

Sexuality Outside the United States by Carol C. Mukhopadhyay and Tami Blumenfield

Same-sex sexual and romantic relationships probably exist in every society, but concepts like “gay,” “lesbian,” and “bisexual” are cultural products that, in many ways, reflect a culturally specific gender ideology and a set of beliefs about how sexual preferences develop. In many cultures same-sex sex is a behavior, not an identity. Some individuals in India identify as practicing “female-female sexuality” or “male-male sexuality.” Whether one is “gay” or “straight” may not be linked simply to engaging in same-sex sexual behavior. Instead, as among some Brazilian males, your sexual identity and status in a sexual relationship, literally and symbolically, depends on whether you are the inserter (macho) or the penetrated (fem).^[12] Which would you expect involves higher status?

Even anthropologists who are sensitive to cross-cultural variations in the terms and understandings that accompany same-sex sexual and romantic relationships can still unconsciously project their own meanings onto other cultures. Evelyn Blackwood, an American, described how surprised she was to realize that her Sumatran lover, who called herself a “Tombois,” had a different conception of what constituted a “lesbian” identity and lesbian relationship than she did.^[13] We must be careful not to assume that other cultures share LGBTQQIA+ identities as they are understood in the United States and many European countries.

Furthermore, each country has its own approach to sexuality and marriage, and reproduction often plays a central role. In Israel, an embrace of pro-natalist policies for Jewish Israelis has meant that expensive reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization are provided to women at no cost or are heavily subsidized. An Israeli gay activist described how surprised queer activists from other countries were when they found that nearly all Israeli female same-sex couples were raising children. (This embrace of same-sex parenting did not extend to male couples, for whom the state did not provide assisted reproductive support.) The pro-natalist policies can be traced in part to Israel’s emergence as a state: founded in the aftermath of persecution and systematic genocide of Jewish residents of Europe from 1937 through 1945, Israel initially promoted policies that encouraged births at least in part as resistance to Nazi attempts to destroy the Jewish people. The contexts may be less dramatic elsewhere, but local and national histories often inform policies and practices.

In Thailand, Ara Wilson has explored how biological females embrace identities as toms and dees. Although these terms seem to be derived from English-language concepts (dees is etymologically related to “ladies”), suggesting international influences, the ubiquity and acceptance of toms and dees in Thailand does diverge from patterns in the United States.^[14] In China (as elsewhere), the experiences of those involved in male-male sexuality and those involved in female-female sexuality can differ. In her book Shanghai Lalas: Female Tongzhi Communities and Politics in Urban China, Lucetta Yip Lo Kam discusses how lesbians in China note their lack of public social spaces compared with gay men.^[15]

From these examples, we see that approaches to sexuality in different parts of the world are transforming, just as gender norms in the United States are undergoing tremendous shifts. Anthropologists often cross boundaries to research these changes, and their contributions will continue to shape understandings of the broad range of approaches to sexuality.

LGBTQQIA+ IDENTITIES & ACTIVISM by Carol C. Mukhopadhyay and Tami Blumenfield

By 2011, an estimated 8.7 million people in the United States identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender.^[16] These communities represent a vibrant, growing, and increasingly politically and economically powerful segment of the population. While people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, and/or asexual—or any of a number of other sexual and gender minorities—have existed throughout the United States’ history, it is only since the Stonewall uprisings of 1969 that the modern LGBTQQIA+ movement has been a key force in U.S. society.^[17]

Like the U.S. population overall, the LGBTQQIA+ community is extremely diverse. Some black Americans prefer the term “same-gender loving” because the other terms are seen as developed by and for “white people.” Emphasizing the importance and power of words, Jafari Sinclaire Allen explains that “same-gender loving” was “coined by the black queer activist Cleo Manago [around 1995] to mark a distinction between ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ culture and identification, and black men and women who have sex with members of the same sex.”^[18] While scholars continue to use the terms gay, lesbian, and queer, “same-gender loving” resonates in some communities.

Not everyone who might fit one of the LGBTQQIA+ designations consciously identifies with a group defined by gender or sexual orientation. Some people highlight their other identities, such as their ethnicity, religion, profession, or hobby—whatever they consider central and important in their lives, rather than their gender identity or sexual orientation. This freedom to self-identify or avoid categories altogether is important. Most of all, these shifts and debates demonstrate that, like the terms themselves, LGBTQQIA+ communities in the United States are diverse and dynamic with often-changing priorities and makeup. Some scholars argue that heteronormativity allows people who self-identify as heterosexual the luxury of not being defined by their sexual orientation, and therefore LGBTQQIA+ people should not have to do so. ^[19] Only when labels are universal rather than used only for non-normative groups, they argue, will people become aware of discrimination based on differences in sexual preference.