What Do <em>Sex</em> and <em>Gender</em> Even Mean Now?

In her first Supreme Court argument, Ruth Bader Ginsburg recalled abolitionist Sarah Grimké's words: "I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks." However, Ginsburg was advised to replace the word "sex" in her legal documents. Her secretary suggested using the term "gender" to avoid distracting associations, as Supreme Court justices might interpret "sex" differently.

The problem with the terms sex and gender is that they have never had stable meanings. Historically, sex referred to biological factors like reproductive organs while gender described socially constructed norms. Today, the distinction is unclear. Parents use gender-reveal parties to announce the sex of newborns. President Trump recently asserted there are only two genders, yet used "male" and "female" interchangeably.

California's statute defines sex as "a person's gender," which includes gender identity and expression. This semantic confusion causes problems in various fields, from academia to medicine and law. The concept of gender emerged in a 1955 study by researcher John Money to describe behaviors and roles associated with being male or female.

Money believed that biological factors, rather than nurture, primarily determined a person's gender. However, later, feminist scholars argued that gender identity was more socially constructed than biological. By the 1970s, gender became a prominent concept among feminists, used to differentiate innate biological differences between men and women from socially imposed distinctions.

Theorists like Ann Oakley and Judith Butler further challenged the idea that gender simply follows sex, arguing that both could be culturally constructed. In 1997, biologists Milton Diamond and psychiatrist Keith Sigmundson concluded that sex is a distinct category, even if it can be influenced by nurture. However, the importance of sex as a category has been contested, with some experts suggesting gender might be more significant.

Overall, the meanings of sex and gender have evolved and diverged over time, leading to confusion in various domains.