LGBT Glossary

Gender

Gender is a social category that comprises a set of characteristics assigned to people at birth, based on their known biological sex. This set of characteristics are features, functions, and valuations that will depend on the space and time in question, so that gender is a social construction and not an essentialist issue linked to biological sex. This construct is learned and assimilated through socialization, and with it, we will build our Identity. It is a process that lasts a lifetime, so it will change along with your Expression.

Too Queer for your binarism. A written text on a wall in the center of Valencia, to take into account when reflecting on gender. Photo by Moscas de Colores.

Taking the simplistic Binary Sexual Model, when born, the person with Male biological Sex is assigned the Masculine Gender. With just this simple act, until recently, people always expected that his Identity would be Man, that his Expression would be masculine, and that his Sexual Orientation would be towards women.

This psycho-biological determinism, still so widespread today, has an effective control tool named Gender Surveillance, which is responsible for correcting deviations. So if a man shows a characteristic belonging to the feminine gender, it is most likely that his environment will be in charge of correcting him, through a comment, mockery, or an insult. That is why the surveillance is behind many very common insults today, such as Pussy and Tomboy.

The gender, it may be the first software installed on our hard drive, allow the simile.

We recommend you to read our article Sexual Identity, and then that of Tomboy and gender expression, articles that you can find in our blog.