ABSTRACT
Sex is a physical distinction; gender is social and cultural. Although masculine or feminine gender is usually associated with male or female sex, this is not an absolute correlation. In Western society a child is conscious of the gender of its upbringing well before it can talk properly, and any attempts to change the gender of rearing because of ‘mistaken’ sex-labelling (biological characteristics at birth can often be ambiguous) frequently results in severe disturbance after the age of two. Many transsexuals are unambiguously of one sex, but identify themselves as of the opposite gender. A comprehensive survey by Ann Oakley has helped to clarify the important distinction between biological sex and the enormous range of distinctions made by Western society in the name of gender-feminine and masculine.1
