Abstract
The twentieth century has assisted the conceptual and practical separation of the terms sex and gender so as to have better tools to address what are considered biological factors versus social factors. The biological construction of sex has delved deeper into the body, beyond the mere genitals, to expose not only reproductive organs and gonads but also molecular components such as hormones, chromosomes, and genes. Since the scientific “discovery” of the sex chromosomes, XY and XX have become quickly adopted as canonic markers of biological sex, while at the same time it has been conceded that biological sex does not produce uniform gender identity. In this chapter I will be looking at some of the components of the biological construction of sex, such as hormones and molecular genetics.
Since the beginning of the discipline of endocrinology, there has been debate about the gendered nature of hormones themselves. The “sex hormones” continue to be referred to as such in clinical practice, largely due to their role in reproduction and development, despite their multiple non-gender-specific regulatory roles. The construction of hormones and genes on one hand shifts the biological locus of sex from chromosomes to a molecular level and on the other hand creates a context-driven medicalization of gender.
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Notes
- 1.
In reference to the Dorothy Sayers quote, “The first thing that strikes the careless observer is that women are unlike men. They are ‘the opposite sex’ (though why ‘opposite’ I do not know; what is the ‘neighboring sex’?). But the fundamental thing is that women are more like men than anything else in the world.” In Laqueur [4].
- 2.
This name, coined in 2006, still receives a great deal of criticism for using of the word “disorder,” Diamond, Reis, and others promoting instead the less stigmatizing term “divergence”; see Reis [7].
- 3.
Wolffian and Müllerian structures lead to formation of parts of the reproductive organs, named for Wolff who first describes the duct in 1759: Wolff, K. F., Theoria generationis. Doctoral dissertation, Halle and der Saale, 1759 and Müller in 1830 Bildungsgeschichte der Genitalien.
- 4.
Butler poses the heterosexual binary as inherently hierarchical and insists that the search for the gene for sex (like the chromosome for sex) imposed a gender binary on the research question from the start [10] – a binary that reflects the Aristotelian paradigm that sees “male” as active and therefore superior. For an in-depth discussion, see Holmes [11].
- 5.
Epigenetics looks at how internal environmental factors affect genetic expression and development of the organism.
- 6.
There is evidence that hormones were isolated from human urine in China in 200 BCE; see Temple [17].
- 7.
In the eighteenth century, the “discovery” of the difference of the gonads in a precise quality (type of tissue, productive cycles, although not yet hormonal secretion) shifted the discourse on the gendered body from external qualities, such as genitals, to internal qualities, such as gonads [4]. In the case of what we now consider DSD/Intersex, medical practitioners were then known to insist that one adopt the social gender indicated by the gonads [22]; however, some doctors maintained that while the gonads indicated biological sex, one should have the legal/social gender that allowed one to be heterosexual [3].
- 8.
See Pinker/Spelke debate http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.html
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Crocetti, D. (2013). Genes and Hormones: What Make Up an Individual’s Sex. In: Ah-King, M. (eds) Challenging Popular Myths of Sex, Gender and Biology. Crossroads of Knowledge, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01979-6_3
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