The Sex and Gender Spectrum

Our society reinforces the idea that gender is a fixed set of traits determined from birth. However, gender is a social construct and evolves over a person's life. Gender is a complex interrelationship between body, identity, and social gender.

The sex and gender spectrum exist because sex and gender aren't fixed binaries. Instead, sex and gender exist along a continuum.

When you look at the science behind it, sex is bimodal rather than binary. The physical traits associated with males and females form two clusters. However, there are also people who have both of these traits, like intersex people.

A person's gender identity is their internal experience of their gender. Reports say that most children have a stable sense of their gender identity by 4. People don't choose their gender because it arises out of their own experience.

Social gender refers to one's gender expression and its social context. Gender expression is how we communicate our gender through clothing or mannerisms. The social context is important because it is here that gender gets validated.

Almost everything in society has an assigned gender. Gendered clothes, colors, and toys teach people about gender since they were born. Ironically, the colors of pink and blue have nothing to do with gender. In the 1940s, manufacturers settled on pink for girls and blue for boys, so they could sell twice as many toys/clothes.

Gender roles pressure children to conform to roles they might not identify with. It misrepresents their identities and stigmatizes them. Regardless of age, a binary view of sex and gender is problematic because it erases the people who exist between and beyond the binary.

To learn more, view: The Gender Spectrum: A Scientist Explains Why Gender Isn’t Binary