She, Her, He, Him, but not It

My sociology professor began our discussion on gender roles by saying “The hardest thing for my students to understand is that sex and gender are 2 different things.” I guess this not only applies to Sociology 101 at Stevenson University, but the larger society as a whole. 

According to my sociology textbook, sex is the biological differences between male and female. Sex is based on anatomy. Gender is the culture or socially constructed differences between males and females. Gender is based on beliefs, meanings, and practices a society associates with being masculine or feminine. 
 

This is only the second time I picked up my textbook this entire semester, but I had a very good reason to.

According to the Huffington Post, “in the first four months of 2014, 102 acts of violence against transgender people have been reported.” As staggering as this statistic is it could easily me 3 times this much. Such reports are voluntary, so many incidents go unreported. The Transgender Violence Tracking Portal says that 10% of these acts were done to minors.

This circles back to the difference between sex and gender. 

Parents need to understand that even though they gave birth to a baby that has male sex organs, that baby may grow up and identify with the culturally constructed attributes of being female. Children as young as 3 know their actions don't correspond with their sex. This freaks most parents out simply because in the society they grew up in boys had to be masculine and girls had to be feminine. Change is hard. 

The only crime here would be people not calling this transgender person out of the pronouns they identify with. Even worse, calling them the “I word.” Hate starts with misunderstanding and lack of respect. As I mentioned in an earlier post, calling a transgender person demeaning names or pronouns they don't identify with is denying them the right to be human.

I, like my sociology professor, think that hate towards transgender people would end with the basic understanding of that gender and sex are not the same.