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Abstract
Many psychologists, particularly feminist psychologists, have drawn a distinction between the termsex and the termgender. The purposes of this paper were to review the history of this distinction and to illustrate the varied and inconsistent ways in which these terms are used. Historically, this distinction began with John Money and his colleagues in the 1950s (Money et al.1955a,b,1957); they used the termsex to refer to individuals’ physical characteristics and the termgender to refer to individuals’ psychological characteristics and behavior. Two decades later, Rhoda Unger (1979) argued that the widespread use of the termsex implies biological causes and promotes the idea that differences between women and men are natural and immutable. She proposed the use of the termgender to refer to traits that are culturally assumed to be appropriate for women and men. Her work was influential in prompting a widespread shift from the use of the termsex to the use of the termgender in psychological texts. Nevertheless, current definitions ofsex andgender vary widely. Some authors use the terms interchangeably. Of those who distinguish between the terms, most construegender as more related to cultural influences andsex as more related to biology. There are numerous inconsistencies in authors’ definitions, however. Additionally, in some cases, there appears to be a mismatch between how researchers definesex orgender and how they measure it. It seems likely that the distinction between the termsex and the termgender may become less meaningful and important over time.
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Department of Psychology and Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Kansas, 426 Fraser Hall, 1415 Jayhawk Boulevard, Lawrence, KS, 66045-7556, USA
Charlene L. Muehlenhard
Department of Psychology, University of Missouri–Saint Louis, 325 Stadler Hall, 1 University Blvd., St. Louis, MO, 63121, USA
Zoe D. Peterson
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Muehlenhard, C.L., Peterson, Z.D. Distinguishing BetweenSex andGender: History, Current Conceptualizations, and Implications.Sex Roles64, 791–803 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-011-9932-5
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