1. Sociology 1301: Introduction to Sociology
Sex, Gender, & Sexuality
Sociology 1301: Introduction to Sociology

2. Sex, Sexual Identity, Gender – What’s the Difference?
Biology
Science
Physical Elements & Characteristics
Sexism
Roles
Identities
Perceptions
Expressions
Heterosexism
Attraction
Desire
Physical & Emotional
Sexual Identity
Sex, Sexual Identity, Gender – What’s the Difference?
Developed by Owen Marciano and Jessica Pettitt and NYU’s Office of LGBT Student Service’s
OUTspoken Peer Educators.

3. Definitions
Sex: the natural or biological differences that distinguish males from females.
Sexuality: refers to desire, sexual preference, sexual identity, and behavior.
Gender: denotes a social position, the set of social arrangements that are built around sex.
Gender Roles: sets of behavioral norms assumed to accompany one's status as a male or female.

4. Birth Sex
Gender Identity
Gender Expression
Sexual Orientation
Female
Girl/Woman
Feminine
Heterosexual
Male
Boy/Man
Masculine
Heterosexual
Dominant Constructions of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality as Fixed and Binary Relationships
© Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, Second Edition, Routledge, 2007

5. Gender/Sex/Sexuality Binary
Binary: an either/or category, like either black or white, with no shades of grey between two mutually exclusive categories. Socially constructed.
Male
Female
Sex Binary
Masculine Male
Feminine Female
Gender Binary
Heterosexual
Homosexual
Sexual Orientation Binary

6. Sex Binary
Male
Female
Sex Binary
Intersex: A person born with both male and female physiological or anatomical sex characteristics.
There are around 17 different types of intersex conditions.
Statistics from the ISNA (Intersex Society of North America)
Total number of people whose bodies differ from standard male or female – one in 100 births
Total number of people receiving surgery to “normalize” genital appearance – one or two in 1,000 births
Source:

7. Gender Binary
Masculine Male
Feminine Female
Gender Binary
Transgender: An “umbrella term” for someone whose self-identification, anatomy, appearance, manner, expression, behavior and/or other’s perceptions of challenges traditional societal expectations of congruent gender expression and designated birth sex.
T.M. Witten, Executive Director of the TranScience Research Institute, focused on the broader transgender spectrum and found that, of a random international sample, 8 percent of respondents self-identified as something other than strictly "male" or "female.“
Sources: (definition of Transgender)
Witten, T. M. (2003). Transgender aging: An emerging population and an emerging need. Review Sexologies, XII, no. 4: 15-20

8. Works Cited
Adams, M., Bell, L.A., Griffin, P. (Eds.) (2007). Teaching for diversity and social justice (2nd Ed.). NY: Routledge.
Conley, D. (2008). You may ask yourself: An introduction to thinking like a sociologist. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Hartmann D. & Cornell S.E. (1998). Ethnicity and race: Making identities in a changing world. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Jackson, B. & Hardiman, R. (1997) Conceptual foundations for social justice education. In M. Adams, L. A. Bell, & P. Griffin (Eds.), Teaching for diversity and social justice: A sourcebook (pp ). New York: Routledge.
Massey, G. (Ed.) (2006). Readings for sociology (5th Ed.). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
McIntosh, P. (1988). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Excerpted in Working Paper 189, White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women’s studies, Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College Center for Research on Women.
Omi M. & Winant H. (1986/1989). Racial formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s. New York: Routledge.