what is gender?

Question

am doin a college course in social science and some info about gender and perception

Answer 1

In our Western idea of the body, there are only two genders: masculine and feminine, just as there are only two genital/birth sexes, male and female. Many people confuse gender and sex. Visit the website below, lots of info, so it should help you. You can also think about how the community relates various jobs to a particular gender, rather than the other; the question of one gender being more aggressive than the other, the emotional behaviour that's related to one, not the other, etc. The second site is worth a visit too.

Answer 2

The concept of "gender" has not been well defined and is not well understood. The definition of gender has even been the subject of exhaustive debate, including at a special United Nations session in connection with the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

Gender is often confused with sex. However, sex generally refers to biology and anatomy. People are said to be of the male sex or the female sex, as determined by three sets of characteristics: external sex organs, internal sex organs, and secondary sexual development at puberty. The word sex is also used to mean sexual intercourse or activity.

By contrast, gender refers to a set of qualities and behaviors expected from a female or male by society. Gender roles are learned and can be affected by factors such as education or economics. They vary widely within and among cultures. While an individual's sex does not change, gender roles are socially determined and can evolve over time.

Gender roles and expectations are often identified as factors hindering the equal rights and status of women with adverse consequences that affect life, family, socioeconomic status, and health. For this reason, gender, like sexuality, is an important element of family planning and reproductive health services.

Answer 3

Etymology: Middle English gendre, from Anglo-French genre, gendre, from Latin gener-, genus birth, race, kind, gender -- more at KIN
1 a : a subclass within a grammatical class (as noun, pronoun, adjective, or verb) of a language that is partly arbitrary but also partly based on distinguishable characteristics (as shape, social rank, manner of existence, or sex) and that determines agreement with and selection of other words or grammatical forms b : membership of a word or a grammatical form in such a subclass c : an inflectional form showing membership in such a subclass
2 a : SEX b : the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex

Answer 4

My opinion is that gender is your sexuality but not your toal being. The human race is body, soul, and spirit. I am taking psych, and we dicussed the way society is conditioned as children to believe their role and follow a conditioning rather than their true self because we are raised to believe that gender is pre-defined and how gender charactaristics are supposed to behave . I still say gender is only one part and the charactar of a human is in the soul/spirit realm.

Answer 5

Contrary to popular belief, gender is not the physical sexual identification of an individual. It is how the person perceives themselves to be. Some humans feel they have been trapped in the body of the wrong sex. Hence the rise of "sex reassignment therapy." (This is what is commonly called "sex change surgery"; however this is an oversimplification.)

And, no, the person in not gay. They perceive themselves usually as a straight person in the wrong body.

In short, gender is one's sexual perception of themselves, whereas sex is how one is physically born. I hope this helps.

Answer 6

Gender, the physical classification by the identification of either male or female reproductive organs to class a living object as either male or female.

Answer 7

–noun
1.Grammar.
a.(in many languages) a set of classes that together include all nouns, membership in a particular class being shown by the form of the noun itself or by the form or choice of words that modify, replace, or otherwise refer to the noun, as, in English, the choice of he to replace the man, of she to replace the woman, of it to replace the table, of it or she to replace the ship. The number of genders in different languages varies from 2 to more than 20; often the classification correlates in part with sex or animateness. The most familiar sets of genders are of three classes (as masculine, feminine, and neuter in Latin and German) or of two (as common and neuter in Dutch, or masculine and feminine in French and Spanish).
b.one class of such a set.
c.such classes or sets collectively or in general.
d.membership of a word or grammatical form, or an inflectional form showing membership, in such a class.
2.sex: the feminine gender.
3.Archaic. kind, sort, or class.

Answer 8

Gender is a SOCIALLY constructed way to differentiate men from women. Don't mistake it with sex, which is the BIOLOGICAL differention based on reproductive organs

Answer 9

I would highly recommend you to read that book: As Nature Made Him, by John Colapinto

It's the story about a boy who was raised as a girl. Nature vs nurture.

Answer 10

On a basic level it's just male/female, but while 'sex' is more implicit, gender could mean how you mentally class yourself.