Reflective Tag

Sex is a genetic difference in a species which characterizes them as either male, female or other. Gender is more of a social or cultural difference which can be determined by your physical appearance. Gender leads to constructed gender types based off of what people perceive that gender should be like, do, wear, or who they should be attracted to. As a child most parents tend to the conform to the idea of boy and girl colors and toys so that the child can shape into the roles they are given.

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Gender has many dimensions to it such as the psychological side which is how the boy or girl feels on the inside. Then there is the social side which are the beliefs that are held with each gender and the roles and responsibilities that come with it. The behavioral side deals with how a boy or girl expresses their identity in the way they dress or act.

Gender can vary over time such as the chinese foot binding or the corsets which damaged the body in order to fit the standard for women at the time. There are also varying gender roles in our own time between different cultures such as the Muslim garments which covers the women’s faces. For the people who go outside the lines of gender ridicule and threats of violence can be accompanied. Cross dressing can be done by both gay and straight people because of either social reasons or because they like wearing those types of clothes. In Afghanistan the cultural practice called bacha posh is when in a family without boys they choose a girl to live, dress, and behave like a boy.

Sex is what a person is born as based on his or her genes while gender is a cultural thing. A person born a male can have a female gender because of the way he acts or dresses. People who are born a certain sex have a lot of pressure to fit the gender roles that are supposed to be specific to them (boy play with cars while girls play with dolls). This separation at an early age tends to brainwash the kids into believing that the gender roles they were given are what they should aspire to be. This causes the separation of males and females socially which has been shown to cause a favoritism of males over females.