That whole comment above made me laugh and cringe in disgust at the same time.

The sex/gender distinction can be useful, but it’s getting lost because so many people haven’t really thought it through. And a lot of people just don’t know what they’re talking about. Somewhere in Gender Outlaw says that people need to get it through their heads that “sex” means something you do with another person, not that thing/place between your legs! But Bornstein is wrong. “Sex” meant that thing/space between your legs long before it meant copulation, and it still carries that older meaning. Ambiguity in language, as in sex/gender, can be confusing, but that’s the world we live in; we need to learn to deal with ambiguity, how to parse it, how to live with it.

its like what kate bornstein (great writer about transgender issues) asks:

“how are you so sure that you’re a man?” …going past the typical, gendered response, we are kinda left with appealing to sex. ‘im a man because of the things between my legs’ sounds like a pretty lame response. but is it possible that aspects of our sex can lead to completely different experiences, thus reinforcing the gender binary?

can sex (as distinct from gender) lead to an actual notion of woman/manhood? i think so, maybe a little.

I would go further and say that sex is actually a construction of gender (which can get a little confusing). But especially when you take into account that not all “male genitalia” look or even function the same, and likewise for “female genitalia,” and that in fact not all bodies can clearly be categorized in this “natural binary,” it has to be questioned just how “natural” sex is.

I think that sex is in fact just another way to bind people to the gender identities…a man who becomes a woman is therefore perpetually a “man who became a woman” instead of just being a woman. And if a person has always been informed by their affinity for a “feminine” gender expression, why should they have to answer to their sex category assigned at birth?

I do love your use of the “bro” concept, it’s so au courant.

Sex as a “biological fact” isn’t exactly that, but it is so in such a great number that it is almost the same. People will always grasp onto what they can themselves experience and see rather than having to stop and think about it, and for the vast majority the two are the same. Gender presentation is distinct from sex, but derives from it, in the common mind.

@billy: maybe they’re just trying to figure out who has to prep first and whether you’ll be fucking, getting fucked or want it all. It’s only personal if you make it. “Masculine” presentation combined with conservative politics usually yields a sub bottom with twisted tastes ;-). People are going to make whatever assumptions they will anyway, so why not use it as a teachable moment?

It would be interesting to hear a trans perspective on this though. Does throwing gender out the window marginalize the experiences of trans-individuals or would it be more liberating?

Exactly. It’s so common to label things as masculine or feminine, but if we really stop to think about it, how stupid is that?

Physical acts have no gender…it’s not innately masculine to change a car battery (or be a top), nor is it intensely feminine to cook (or be a bottom). Those are acts, things, and shouldn’t reflect some sort of automatic social assumption of gender.

But we do it anyway. For my part, I’ve stopped saying ooooh you’re so butch when someone does something traditionally thought of as masculine. And then in my head I substitute the word femme for butch, and see how it makes me feel and think.

Just little steps re-educating myself, I suppose. But it’s a start.

However, despite the real world experiences, I do think that gender is better than sex on a form such as that. Specifically, one cannot self select their sex. For a transgendered person, asking their gender is a better option. Someone living as a woman, for instance, will always be genetically male and may also not have undergone sex reassignment surgery. It seems ridiculous to me to require them to identify by their male sex rather than their female gender.

With the advent of the “straight-acting gay” and the “lipstick lesbian” many gay people have started to try to separate gender issues from homosexual issues, even though homosexuality is at its core a fundamental violation of gender norms (dominant men sleep with subordinate women, etc.) around. No matter how “masculine” of a gay man you are, you have to deal with gender issues, whether you like it or not.

Also, it’s been suggested by a lot of scholars that taking away the sex/gender question on forms or allowing people to make one up (the way sometimes people can fill in their own racial category on some forms) would be one step towards greater equality for sexual minorities. Interesting stuff to think about.