SEX AND GENDER: The Trouble with Sex and Gender.

Over the years, many scholars and anthropologists have studied and analysed the key concepts of sex and gender. However, much debate and argument still surround the topics of its roots and origins, its place in society and whether it is still useful to the work of anthropologists today. One opinion that is accepted by some, is that 'sex is biological and something that we are born with, while on the other hand, gender is something that is constructed and culturally learned during our lifetime'.

However, this was not always the case, the term gender did not become widespread until around the 1970s and before then the term sex was used to describe both the biological features and constructed and learned behaviours. One example of this is in the early literature of Margaret Mead where she used the term 'Sex differences'. These sex differences that Mead referred to would later become known as gender roles in the world of anthropology and sociology.  

Dr John Money believed that the theories of sex and gender were very useful topics to study in order to learn about how our social conditioning effects our behaviour and how our gender was believed to develop from these behaviours. During the 1960s Dr John Money held the belief that a persons gender developed from their cultural surroundings even more than their biological make up. Money carried out many studies to back up his theories, including one that involved a two year old boy who suffered an accident while doctors tried to circumcise him, and in the end, had to have his penis and testicles surgically removed. Dr Money conducted a study lasting several years in order to prove that this boy, now called Brenda, could grow up to be a girl in the right conditions. Money claimed that Brenda had accepted her gender situation and suggested that this validated his work. However, Brenda's family claim that while growing up, Brenda became a toy boy and enjoyed playing with boys and toy soldiers.

Money claimed that Brenda adjusted to her female gender role and the case backed up his arguments. However, as the years went on and Brenda became older she changed her name back to Bruce, got married, adopted children and fulfilled her gender role as a man. This contradicted Dr Money's argument that gender is culturally learned and points to the theory that gender may also be biologically created in the womb before birth, with biological compounds like hormones being introduced. Nevertheless, many people agreed with Money, one of these people was British sociologist and feminist, Ann Oakley. Oakley claimed that the terms sex and gender can be useful to distinguish between the biological sex organs that people are born with, like the penis, and the term gender, which would mean masculine or feminine. She agreed with Money when it came to gender, and she claimed that masculine and feminine qualities would be formed by cultural surroundings and the upbringings of those children. However, she claimed that 'Case studies of individuals, though fascinating, can not alone support sweeping generalizations about the lack of identity between sex and gender'.

During her ethnographic work with on the Samoa islands, Margaret Mead studied adolescence girls and boys in order to find out if social norms and attitudes among the Samoa people effected the gender roles of those people. She claimed, 'I have tried to answer the question which sent me to Samoa: Are the disturbances which vex our adolescents due to the nature of adolescence itself or to the civilization? Under different conditions does adolescence present a different picture?' During her work she discovered that the people of the Samoa islands were not biologically driven, but were more driven by culture, surroundings and family, and are indeed 'cultural animals'. During Mead's work studying adolescence among the Samoa islands, she concluded that they did not suffer a traumatic experience during adolescence and this was put down to the fact that they embraced their sexual freedom. She compared the Samoa islands to the United States, where many young people coming of age went through a difficult time and claimed that the difference was in their upbringing and culture rather than genes and biology.

Mead's works proved to be ground breaking and very useful among anthropologists the world over, as it helped open new doors to the understanding of differences between genes, biology and upbringing and culture. On the other hand, anthropologist Derek Freeman did not agree with Mead that nurture had taken precedence over nature among the Samoa people. Freeman also claimed that is was difficult to gather information about sexual activity from the Samoa people and Mead may have been given misinformation. He also claimed that Mead's idea of a peaceful and calm climate for an adolescence growing up on the Samoa islands was unfounded as they also had their strict guidelines. Freeman goes on to say 'Mead's central conclusion that culture, or nurture, is all-important in the determination of adolescent and other aspects of human behaviour is revealed as ungrounded and invalid.' The Mead-Freeman argument brought the question of sex-genes and nature-nurture to the fore in the world of anthropology and helped people to create a deeper understanding of the complexities of the subject.

In her book, French feminist philosopher Simone De Beauvoir used gender as a useful pivotal point to constructively criticise women's role within society. She talked about women being the 'second sex' within society and she exposed much of the hidden oppression of women in a male dominated community. She was also very critical of women for not rising to their true potential within society and humanity as a whole. De Beauvoir claimed that women play a subservient role within society, not because they are born that way biologically, but because they are socialised that way. According to De Beauvoir, women and men are born equal and it is society that makes them different, as she underscores 'One is not born, but rather, becomes a woman'. She also claimed that this can all be avoided if boys and girls are educated together and in a different way to the current education system, which she thought upheld the sexual viewpoints and discriminations that still exist in society. According to De Beauvoir's theory, Women are measured against a yardstick that is held up by men. She claims that these images of the feminine virgin and the shy beautiful female are simply a myth, created in a male world.

De Beauvoir claimed that the problems facing the female were not all about the nature-nurture debate, and how a woman is born equal and then through society becomes subservient to the male. They were also about the production-reproduction argument and the females role as an equal alongside her male counterpart. Foe example, through society a woman will become enslaved to her reproductive system and will be expected to have babies over and over, and this will hold her back from becoming a fully fledged and equal member of society. She is very harsh on women for allowing themselves to become subservient to men, on the other hand, she is also very harsh on men for upholding the institutions which allow gender inequalities to become the norm. De Beauvoir's work has been very useful, as it gives a feminist viewpoint on sex and gender, and how some myths that have been perpetuated by society are used to uphold inequalities.

During the early 1900s anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski carried out ethnographic fieldwork on

the Trobriand island people. He believed that in order to study a people, one must go and live among those people. During his study of sexual activity among the Trobriand island people, he discovered that many of the young people enjoyed an open and free sex life with many partners before getting married. Malinoski also discovered that this was not at all a savage way of life as some might claim, but he compared this to the way of life some people adopt in western culture, he claimed that the Trobriand island people were not savage but instead they were misunderstood. Malinowski claimed that the Trobriand island people upheld a matrilineal society and that the father has no part to play in the child's life. He goes on to say 'These natives have a well established institution of marriage, and yet are quite ignorant of the man's share in the begetting of children'. Malinowski claimed that in order to uphold the matrilineal society the Trobriand island people deny the child any connection to the father. Instead they claimed that the spirit of an ancestor comes through during sexual intercourse and becomes born again through the woman, while the man simply opens the way during intercourse.

Malinowski's studies have been useful in the understanding of sex and gender as it clearly shows us that our beliefs and rituals can effect our role in society and override any biological facts that may have taken place. Over the years, the anthropologists and scholars who have studied the topics of sex and gender have been as varied as the theories and concepts that have manifested from these studies. What ever side of the debate you side with, there can be no doubt that both biology and cultural surroundings play a part in who we are and the position we could potentially hold with in our community or society as a whole. Both our biology and cultural surroundings can also contribute to our behaviour and our lifestyle choices from the cradle to the grave. From the life of so called savages to the modern scientific world, sex and gender are topics that permeate our society and will continue to do so. From love making to pregnancy, from marriage to death our biology will in some cultures, go hand and hand with our cultural learnings and upbringing. While in other cultures biology will have no part to play in our evolving lives whatsoever. As study continues on this subject the deeper our understanding on it will become.