Many people seem to think that sex and gender are synonymous: men are biological males and women are biological females. According to the World Health Organization, “Gender refers to the roles, behaviours, activities, attributes and opportunities that any society considers appropriate for girls and boys, and women and men. Gender interacts with, but is different from, the binary categories of biological sex.” Biological determinism is the view that biology is destiny, and many have set to counter this by distinguishing between sex and gender. In general, sex refers to the biological anatomy and the male/female categorization assigned to an individual at birth, and gender refers to an individual’s concept of themself or their gender identity.
Judith Butler is a philosopher and gender theorist whose views on the distinction between gender and sex are well known in the academic world. Her theory of gender performativity is among the most controversial and complex. The key to Butler’s argument is that “gender is not an essential, biologically determined quality or an inherent identity, but is repeatedly performed, based on societal norms.” This repeated performance of gender also creates the idea of gender itself, as well as the illusion of two natural, essential sexes. In other words, rather than being women or men, individuals act as women and men, thereby creating the categories of women and men. Gender is not binary, but a spectrum: you do not have to be 100% a man or 100% a woman.
Butler distinguishes "between sex, as biological facticity, and gender, as the cultural interpretation or signification of that facticity." She goes on to argue that “perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.”
Butler’s views, which have become well accepted in the world of academia, allow us to consider the role of gender in society and in our lives. The ways that gender is institutionalized in society are complex, but the sooner we begin to understand and acknowledge the differences between sex and gender the more we can progress as a society.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1999.
Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. Routledge, 2009.