Sex

Sex is a medical term used for the classification of people as "male" and "female", usually as a birth assignment based on the appearance of an infant's external genitalia. However, sex is more complicated than that. A person's sex is a combination of bodily characteristics including: chromosomes, hormones, internal and external reproductive organs, and secondary sex characteristics that develop during puberty. The common division of sex into strictly "male" and "female" ignores natural sexual variations that do not easily fit into one of the two categories, such as various intersex traits. Problematic and medically inaccurate language for sex includes phrases like "biologically [fe]male", "genetically [fe]male", or "born a [wo]man]". Such phrases over-simplify the complexities of people's biology and regard birth assignments as more important than gender identity.

Like gender, sex is not a binary term, and more like a spectrum. For instance, the term "Chimera" in genetics means that an organism or tissue has at least two different sets of DNA. The term is derived from the creature in Greek mythology that was part lion, part goat, and part dragon. People who are chimeras may not know they have two different sets of DNA until they are genetically tested for a different reason. An example is a pregnant 46-year old woman who wanted to get her fetus screened for genetic abnormalities. The fetus was fine, but the follow-up testing revealed that she had sets of DNA from two separate individuals. It was then, partway through her fifth decade and pregnant with her third child, that the woman learned that part of her body was chromosomally male.

See also

• Birth assignment
• Cisgender
• Gender binary
• Intersex
• Transgender