Sex, Gender, and Transgender
setting the context
This is chapter 1.1 of Autoheterosexual: Attracted to Being the Other Sex. It briefly explains sex, gender, and transgender so that autosexuality and trans identity can be understood within a broader context.
It’s important to set the context before diving into the specifics of autoheterosexuality. I’ll start with sex, without which we wouldn’t exist.
Sex, or biological sex, is a system of reproduction that combines genes from two different organisms to create a new organism. The genes that each parent contributes are contained in specialized cells called gametes (pronounced “gam-eets”).
Each gamete contributes half of the genetic information needed to make a new organism. When female and male gametes merge, they create a full genome containing traits from both parents.
Before sexual reproduction appeared, most organisms reproduced asexually by cloning themselves. When sexual reproduction first came about, gametes tended to be the same size. With time, the size of gametes diverged. One type grew larger, and the other smaller.
In mammals, sexually reproducing species have a stable two-type gamete configuration. One is small, numerous, and mobile. The other is large, few in number, and immobile.
The large gametes are optimized to survive after being fertilized. In humans and other mammals, these gametes are called ova, or eggs. The sex that makes them is female.
The small gametes are optimized to find and fertilize as many of the large gametes as possible. This is why they are small, mobile, and created by the millions. In humans and other mammals, these are called sperm. The sex that makes them is male.
The size difference between female gametes and male gametes has had enormous repercussions. It’s why each sex has a different optimal mating strategy and why most animal species have two different forms based upon sex—a tendency known as sexual dimorphism.
Eggs and pregnancies take far more energy to create and maintain than do sperm, so females usually devote more resources toward offspring and are more discerning about who they choose to mate with. For human females, reproduction takes years: nine months of pregnancy and a potentially fatal childbirth, followed by a few years of breastfeeding until the child is weaned off breast milk.
By contrast, males often try to mate with as many females as possible because successful reproduction requires as little as a few minutes of effort on their part.
This unequal reproductive effort has left enormous impacts on our sexual psychology. It is why males are more likely to coerce females into sex[i]. It’s also why stereotypical males will fuck anything that moves, and stereotypical females will carefully assess their options to see if any meet their standards.
Even though there are plenty of exceptions we could point to, this sexual dynamic in animals is common and ultimately arose because gametes are different sizes. These size differences are also why animals have different female and male forms.
In humans there are two types of gametes, sperm and egg, so humans have two sexes. People whose bodies developed the type of parts that make and deliver sperm are male. People who developed the types of parts that release eggs are female.
Sperm are created in the testes, and they exit the body through the penis. People who developed testes and a penis are male.
Eggs develop in the ovaries. If an egg is fertilized by a sperm, it starts becoming an embryo and may attach to the lining of the uterus. People who developed ovaries and a uterus are female.
Genitals are highly reliable indicators of a person’s sex. Someone with a penis is almost certainly male. Someone with a vulva is almost certainly female.
It’s uncommon, but a person can possess ambiguous genitalia at birth that make it harder to discern their sex. Someone like this has historically been called intersex because they have sex traits that don’t fit binary notions of female or male.
These variations of sexual development are also called disorders of sexual development (DSDs)[ii]. Depending on how DSDs are defined, somewhere between .0018%[iii] and 1.7%[iv] of people have them.
The fact that DSDs and intersex people exist doesn’t mean sex is a spectrum. Sex is a system of biological reproduction based on gametes. In humans, only sperm and egg exist. There is no third type of gamete, so there are only two sexes.
Intersex people don’t create a third type of gamete, so they are not a third sex. Treating intersex people as an intermediary (or third) sex conflates sex traits with sex itself.
Gender
Gender is the social, cultural, and psychological domain of sex. Gender comes from the interaction between sex and culture. If biological sex didn’t exist, neither would gender.
Gender can be masculine, feminine, or somewhere in between.
Masculine describes maleness: qualities traditionally associated with males.
Feminine describes femaleness: qualities traditionally associated with females.
Therefore, gender describes sexness: qualities traditionally associated with a particular sex.
Depending on the context, gender can describe our identities, expressions, social roles, or psychological traits as they pertain to masculinity and femininity. It is how we see ourselves and each other based on the masculinity or femininity of our appearances, behaviors, personalities, and social roles.
Sex existed long before culture. Once human culture came into existence, so did gender.
Gender continually evolves in tandem with culture. It impacts how we see ourselves, how we express ourselves, and the social role we are expected to perform.
Gender identity is a sense of ourselves as masculine, feminine, in between the two, or somewhere outside the gender binary.
Gender expression is how we outwardly embody masculinity and femininity through our appearance or behavior. It’s often an external expression of an inner gender identity.
Gender role is a social role associated with either males or females. Almost every culture has a set of expectations and allowable behaviors for people based on whether they are, or appear to be, female or male. The specific aspects of these gender roles vary across cultures.
Sometimes a person’s gender identity, preferred gender expression, desired anatomy, or desired gender role are in conflict with their biological sex. Someone like this may develop gender issues: a continuous underlying liability toward preference for gender transition[v]. If their gender issues are strong enough, they may transition to a gender that aligns with their nature.
People like this are often called “transgender”.
Transgender
There is no single definition of transgender that everyone will agree upon, but there are two criteria frequently used to determine inclusion in the category: identity or transition.
In the identity definition, people are transgender if they identify as transgender, or if they identify as a gender that doesn’t correspond to their sex. In the transition definition of transgender, people are transgender if they transition to live as a gender that doesn’t correspond to their sex.
Transition usually indicates either social or medical transition. Social transition is when someone changes their name, pronouns, or stated gender identity and starts to live as a gender that doesn’t correspond to their sex. Medical transition is when someone takes hormones or undergoes surgeries to more closely resemble the other sex (transsexualism).
Desistance is when someone intends to transition but ultimately decides against it before transitioning. People who have done this are desisters.
Detransition is when someone who has socially or medically transitioned decides to socially or medically revert to living as their birth sex. People who have done this are detransitioners.
When someone identifies as nonbinary, they consider themselves to be both masculine and feminine, somewhere between the two, or somewhere outside the masculine-feminine binary altogether. The genderqueer identity label has a similar meaning.
Nonbinary is sometimes abbreviated “NB”, which is commonly written out as “enby”. “Enby” can describe either the nonbinary identity itself or the people who claim it. Enbies often use they/them pronouns. Most enbies are female[vi].
Enbies typically have a lesser degree of gender issues than people with binary transgender identities. However, some people identify as both nonbinary and transgender.
What Is a Woman? What Is a Man?
The terms “woman” and “man” have historically been used to describe someone’s sex, albeit indirectly.
If someone looked like a woman or had a vulva, they were a woman. If someone looked like a male or had a penis, they were a man.
Recently, awareness of transgenderism and feminism have increased. People have begun to place more significance on gender and less on sex.
The words “woman” and “man” are increasingly used to describe someone’s gender role, gender expression, or gender identity, rather than their biological sex. For instance, some young males are told to “man up” when they cry. This usage of “man” is describing a set of behaviors and expectations associated with the male sex, not anatomy itself.
In domains where physical differences between the sexes are the most relevant factor, “woman” and “man” usually denote sex. One prominent example is competitive sports, because male puberty confers many permanent physical changes that improve athletic performance.
Most people continue to use the sex-based definitions of “woman” and “man”. In these classic definitions, a man is an adult human male, and a woman is an adult human female.
However, people with gender-based definitions of “woman” and “man” have different criteria for belonging to these categories. They may decide that another person is a “woman” or “man” if they identify as one (identity criteria), live as one (social/medical transition criteria), or appear to be one (passing criteria). These criteria can be used alone, or in combination.
Because of these widely varying definitions of “woman” and “man”, people often disagree about whether transgender men are men or transgender women are women.
A transgender man, or trans man, is someone who was born female and 1) identifies as a man (identity criteria), 2) has socially transitioned to live as a man (social transition criteria), or 3) has undergone medical interventions to have a more male-typical appearance (medical transition criteria).
A transgender woman, or trans woman, is someone who was born male and 1) identifies as a woman (identity criteria), 2) has socially transitioned to live as a woman (social transition criteria), or 3) has undergone medical interventions to have a more female-typical appearance (medical transition criteria).
If a trans person has undergone gender-affirming medical interventions, they can be fairly described as transsexual. Transsexualism is the use of medical interventions to make a person more closely resemble the other sex.
Whether or not people agree that “trans men are men” or “trans women are women” generally comes down to the definitions they use. People who use sex-based definitions tend to think these claims are false, while those who use gender-based definitions tend to think these claims are true.
In Sum:
Sex is a system of reproduction that combines genetic information from specialized cells—gametes—to create a new organism. The small gametes are known as sperm, and the large gametes are known as ova, or eggs.
Because each sex has a different optimal mating strategy, evolution has left each sex with different physical and mental traits that correspond to these respective mating strategies. This difference in traits between females and males is known as sexual dimorphism.
In humans and other mammals, an individual’s sex is determined based on whether their bodies developed to produce sperm (male) or eggs (female). Sometimes, a disorder of sexual development makes it hard to discern an individual’s sex, but since there are only two types of gametes and sex is based on gametes, there are still only two sexes.
In contrast to sex—which refers to female and male—gender refers to femaleness (femininity) and maleness (masculinity). Thus, gender is sexness. Gender is the social, cultural, and psychological domain of sex. It comes from the interaction between sexual dimorphism and human culture. Each culture has gender roles—a set of expectations and condoned behaviors based on whether someone is a woman or a man.
Transgender people identify as or choose to live as a gender that doesn’t correspond to their sex. They may do this through identification, social transition, medical transition, or any combination of these.
[i] Thornhill and Palmer, A Natural History of Rape.
[ii] Allen, “Disorders of Sexual Development.”
[iii] Sax, “How Common Is Intersex?”
[iv] Blackless et al., “How Sexually Dimorphic Are We?”
[v] Tailcalled, “Why Do Trans Women Transition?”; Tailcalled, “Gender Issues: Continuous Underlying Liability towards Preference for Transitioning; an Umbrella Term Covering Gender Dysphoria and Cross-Gender Ideation, as Well as Possibly More Nebulous Things like ‘Gender Identity’.”
[vi] Zucker and Aitken, “Sex Ratio of Transgender Adolescents: A Meta-Analysis”; James et al., “The Report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey,” 245.