Sex and Gender

A) Sex is biological/physical aspect of the human body being male or female. Also it has do with what sex organs a person has, the different chromasomes and genes that differentiate bethween male and female. It is basically what determines what physical differences/ sex you are genetically, male or female.

B) Gender is more of a cultural, less biological, self proclaimed way of being male of female. A person is born with, and in a sense will always be the same sex(even with sex change) but with gender one can choose whether they think that they were really meant to be a girl or vice versa. If one decides that they were really meant to be the sex other than what they are, they can get a "sex change." Although in the outside, physically, they may look to have changed sex, they will biologically always be what they were born as.

C) I feel that they best and most apparent example of sex and gender would be a transvestite. For some people, while growing up they feel as if they should have been born as the other sex. They show more feminine or masculine traits because they feel they were meant to be that sex. In these cases a person could get a sex change. Which would physically change what sex that person was by giving them the opposite sex organs ( a male to a female or female to male). After this transformation the transvestite is now physically the other sex, but surgery is not capable of changing DNA and genes around yet so the person is only the other sex on the outside, they will always be whatever sex they were born with, despite the physical differences.

D) I believe that sex/gender dichotomy is very useful in today's society and culture. It is best to refer to a person as what gender they perceive themselves to be. For example, at school or work it is best to refer to someone with the sex that they have been changed to (transvestite) him or her/she or he, or perceive themselves as, no matter what their biological sex is.

E) I am very open to the matter, and i think that the difference between sex and gender are very important. I feel that if we have the technology to help someone with their gender issues surgically than we should. If a little girl is born and grows up to be more ont he tom boy side, and later on in life she decides that she really feels that she should have been born the other sex ( a boy) then she should be able to do something about it, and get a sex change. Although having a sex change does not fully mean that the sex of that person has changed, they will forever be what they were born as because of genes and chromasomes, but i am sure that it makes a substancial difference in the life of that person, they are finally who they really feel they should be. With all of this in mind i am still really not sure if sex influences gender, i believe it has many different cases. For someone like i described in my above example, i dont believe that sex is inluencing their gender, but for othe people, sometimes i think that people get really confuse about what gender they are and dont really no. In this case if kind of feel that it is different. Over all though i feel that a person sex doesn't really influence their gender to that great of an extent. In the "olden days" sex might have influenced gender much more, because things like that were not as accpted in culture back then, but in todays culture people usually dont hink to much of it.

F) i thought that Dr. Archers notes and the link called sex and gender were the most helpfull for me :)