So, I recently saw an article that stated there were only two genders and being in a Women, Gender and Power class, I wanted to see what their argument was. However, I was in for a horrible piece of writing, as not only was the use of the term gender used incorrectly, but all the content was incorrect.
It was clear that the person who had written the article had not done any research to what they were writing about, or best-case scenario is that it was a click bait. Either way, this article had so many misconceptions and I wanted to clear them up as well as clarify what the difference is between gender and sex.
Firstly, she was using gender to describe the anatomy that one is born with. This immediately irritated me to no end because gender is a role that you perform that normally is determined by the sex you identify as.
This means a female is typically seen to be weak and meek (not saying I agree with that), and a male is muscular and tough (again, not agreeing with that). Gender is how you feel it is NOT characterized by any physical attributes. Sex is the actual anatomy that one is born with. Throughout this person's whole article, she misused the terms of sex and gender stating there were only two genders but referring to a person’s anatomy.
Secondly, even if this person had used the correct terminology, they would still be incorrect in their argument that people are only born as male and female, therefore, these are the only sexes that exist. The reality is that people are born as intersex, which means they have some aspect of both genitalia.
There is an article in the book "Women's Voices Feminist Visions" by Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee, titled "The Five Sexes Revisited" by Anne Fausto-Sterling. In this article, the author states that is a minimum of at least five different sexes, with the obvious two of male and female. There is also Hermaphrodites (people born with both a teste and ovary), Ferm (ovaries plus some aspect of the male genitalia), and Merm (testes with some aspect of the female genitalia). Either way at the very least the person who wrote their article should have been able to determine that there is more than one sex.
Third, because I know some religious beliefs are that God only wanted male and female and that's how everyone is born either one or the other. However, it can also be argued that if that were the case, God wanted them to be more than two sexes since he allows intersex people to be born. Honestly there's nothing wrong with being this way, and in fact, most doctors are for not deciding a sex at birth and forcing a child to undergo a sex surgery.
Overall, this article is a great example of someone simply going by what they hear and not doing their own thinking. Please when you decide to write and publish something, make sure to do the research on it. Find contradictory points of view as well as examples that prove your point. In short, I just wanted to make sure that everyone is clarified in what was wrong with this article.