Gender

Sex = the biological classing of the body (chromosomes, anatomy); gender = the social roles, expectations and identity attached to it.

The biological features a body is classed by — chromosomes, anatomy, hormones.

The social meanings, roles and identity attached to being a man, woman or neither.

The view that men and women each share a fixed inner nature (an 'essence') set by biology, so gender follows sex.

The categories are messier than two clean boxes — intersex traits, and people whose gender doesn't match their assigned sex.

The traits pinned to each gender keep changing across time and place — a fixed essence shouldn't wander like that.

Once sex and gender are apart, 'gender simply follows biology' stops being obvious — opening the constructionist debate.

How much of 'being a man' or 'being a woman' is the body (sex), and how much is what society and the self make of it (gender)?

The gender role is built by a society's practices and expectations, not simply given by nature (constructed does NOT mean unreal).

Being a woman is a role you're shaped into over time by society, not a fact simply handed to you at birth.

In her book *The Second Sex* — the pivot of the modern sex/gender debate.

The way repeated rewards, corrections and examples train us into a role until it feels natural.

Repeated from birth, the role sinks below notice and feels like it was simply you all along — which is why essentialism seems obvious.

Feeling natural is exactly what successful conditioning produces, so the feeling can't settle whether gender is born or made.

Argue a DEGREE: a real bodily base, heavily overwritten by social shaping — mostly, not purely, constructed.

Essentialism: gender is born. De Beauvoir: gender is built — and built to feel born.

A society's picture of what a man or a woman should be like — it both describes a supposed nature and distributes roles.

Built pictures (caring vs bold, and so on) used to sort people into roles — who leads, cares, is paid, serves.

They're framed as complementary opposites that balance to make a whole — a pair that completes, not a ranking.

A frame can sound equal yet still distribute unequally — so test how the roles actually fall out.

Treating people unfairly on the basis of their sex or gender — from open barriers to the quiet steering of chances.

Forms of oppression (sexism, racism, class) overlap and combine into a distinct experience you'd miss looking at gender alone.

Roles that are made — not fixed by nature — can be judged, defended and changed; that's what lets us ask if they're fair.

Arguing the claim both ways with more than one view and reaching a reasoned conclusion — not describing.