ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews biological sex and the extent to which everything ‘lines up’. It discusses intersex, transgender and cisgender and considers the relationship between gender and sexuality. In the 1990s, to unearth the hidden assumptions about gender differences, psychologist Sandra Bem proposed three lenses: biological essentialism, androcentrism, and gender polarization. Biological essentialism puts focus on differences in reproductive biology as the primary signifier of gender difference. Reproductive or sexual anatomy and/or chromosome pattern and/or hormonal activity do not fit standardized definitions of biological maleness or femaleness. Biological sex is defined by chromosomes, hormones, the function of the reproductive system and the sex of the internal accessory organs – the embryonic forerunners of the reproductive structures. Regardless of the chromosome carried by the sperm, the genitals of the embryo are indistinct until about the seventh or eighth week, and even after that it takes a trained eye to tell the difference.
