Question

What is the difference between gender and sex? How are we, both children and adults, shaped by gender socialization?  What happens to those who do not fit society's definitions of what it means to be a man or woman, boy or girl?

Answer 1

The difference between sex and gender is that sex is the biological traits and characteristics such as anatomy, harmonal composition, chromosomes etc, while gender is more like character or role that a person plays in a society, the way they identify themselves belonging to the expression of a particual gender group of society. Gender socialization is the process by which children or grown ups also are taught how they should be acting or behaving according to the gender that they are assigned according to their biological sex. We are basically taught and gender socialized into two binary gender groups that are male and female, or masculine and feminine, boy or girl. But there are people who do not identify themselves fitting into these two categories defined by the society, they are told their attitude is unnatural, immoal, and what not. They have hard time being accepted by the society, and when they are not accepted by the society they are also deprived of their many basic and civil rights.