What Is Gender?
What does it mean? How is it enforced?
“Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviors and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other.” (World Health Organization)
Gender vs. Sex
Sex describes the grouping of biological features, like reproductive functions, and chromosones. Gender refers to characteristics and roles assigned to these groupings based on their relation to reproductive labor. When biology is gendered, we claim gender to be innate, as if it's a natural thing as opposed to an imposed contruct.
Traditionally, gender has been determined by means of reproduction. For example, actions like childcare and home-making, and an individuals relation to them, are supposedly determinate of gender. Women are expected to be motherly and often their value is reduced to simply be incubators. Men are expected to be strong-willed, ambitious, and often aggressive.
In recent decades, gender norms and expectations have been noticeably challenged. We see androgynous and queer people in everyday life, or even merely just people existing on their own terms. And while behaviorally, that may manifest itself in various ways, gender manifests itself physically as well.
When I say gender is physical, I don’t mean genetic attributes. Our modern understanding of gender challenges the idea that it is absolute and determined by anatomy. However, gender is still enforced physically by the way our bodies are gendered. Our anatomy is gendered from birth, our clothes are gendered, our behaviors are gendered, and we live by a set of gendered expectations that keep us subject to patriarchal oppression. Not only this, but it is clear that gender is enforced physically through sexual violence as well, with 91% of victims of rape & sexual assault being women or those outside of the gender binary and 99% of perpetrators being cisgender males (US Department of Justice).