How Sex Became Gender

Abstract

This article argues that ‘sex’ which had been commonly assumed in the West to refer to a permanent set of biological and behavioural traits particular to men and women, is gradually being replaced in general usage by ‘gender’. Though feminist theorists attempted to attach a constructivist meaning to gender, a generation of developmental theorists, clinicians and analysts has imbued the term with the determinism and biological qualities formerly ascribed to ‘sex’. The triumph of this materialist conception of gender is not assured, but it threatens our ability to think about gender identity as a historically-constructed category.