‘Transgenderism’: A clarification on gender

THE EDITOR, Madam:

In the article ‘Transgenderism is redefining reality’ published in The Sunday Gleaner on December 3, 2023, my medical colleague Dr Garth Rattray wrote extensively about sex, ‘trans’, and gender. However, he failed to clarify for readers the difference between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, and even erroneously used the term ‘biological gender’.

For the reading public, the term ‘sex’ is determined anatomically and has a scientific basis which Dr Rattray expounded on. In contrast, ‘gender’ does not have any anatomical basis, and all recognised descriptions, including by the World Health Organization (WHO), refer to it as a social construct. The WHO states that gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed.

The WHO further states that gender varies from society to society and can change over time; gender interacts with but is different from sex, as the latter refers to the different biological and physiological characteristics of females, males and intersex persons, such as chromosomes, hormones and reproductive organs.

It also elucidates that gender identity refers to a person’s deeply felt, internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond to the person’s physiology or designated sex at birth.

CONFUSING ONE WITH THE OTHER

We should also examine the origins of the word ‘gender’ (etymology). Research reveals that it comes from the Middle English gender, gendre, a loanword from Anglo-Norman and Middle French gendre. This, in turn, came from Latin genus, meaning “kind”, “type”, or “sort”.

The Oxford dictionary states that gender is the distinction of sex, and there are three genders – the masculine, the feminine, and the neuter (L. Murray, English Grammar 24. 1857). Science Direct informs that there is often confusion between biological sex and gender, but that unlike biological sex, gender is not biologically determined but is associated with social roles and constructs and does not always match expectations associated with assigned biological sex.

All the above, therefore, should clarify the concepts that readers should have when they read or hear the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’.

DR DERRICK AARONS, MD, PHD

Consultant Global Bioethicist and Family Physician