Explainer: Making sense of gender

Terms such as ‘trans’, ‘genderfluid’ and ‘non-binary’ seem to be everywhere. If you’re a bit baffled by it all, we’re here to help.

What do we mean by gender?

We tend to use the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ interchangeably, but they’re actually different things. Sex is about our visible biology: when we’re born the doctor looks at our bits and proclaims “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” That’s our sex.

Gender is different: it is the label you’re given –boy or girl, man or woman – and the rules you’re expected to follow. The rules vary from place to place, from culture to culture and from era to era: boys don’t cry, girls are nurturing, those jobs are for the boys, girls should and shouldn’t do certain things… that’s gender.

Largely the judgement of your gender will be based on what your sex appears to be, based on things like your clothes, your haircuts and other visual cues. For most of us, our gender matches our biological definition. That’s often called ‘cisgender’, where ‘cis’ means ‘on the same side as’.

However, some people’s gender doesn’t match their birth sex, and those people may be transgender, nonbinary or use other terms to describe themselves.

What does transgender mean?

Transgender is when the gender everyone thinks you are – such as man or woman – doesn’t match who you know you are. For example, you might have been born in an apparently female body but your mind strongly disagrees. People who take steps to fix that, for example by changing the clothes they wear or even undergoing surgery, are typically called transgender or trans for short. Trans means ‘across’, and trans people cross from one gender to another. What does non-binary mean?

For most of us, gender is a binary: there are only two options, man or woman. But not everybody feels they fit into those categories. If you imagine gender not as a binary but as a spectrum, most people are at one end or the other – but some people are much closer to the middle. That’s non-binary. Non-binary people don’t feel they can categorise themselves as either a man or a woman, but somewhere in between the two.

What

about

genderfluid and other terms?

Genderfluid is a bit like non-binary but it’s less fixed: genderfluid people may feel closer to male or female at different times. And you might see the terms ‘gender expansive’ or ‘gender non-conforming’. They’re used to describe people who don’t stick to traditional gender roles, so for example someone born male with a very feminine presentation might still feel 100% male but enjoy expressing himself differently from most men. Here to stay

Society’s oppression – from opinion to the law –meant that these variations were very much hidden in the past, and in many societies still are. Times have changed though, and younger generations are not only accepting of non-traditional gender definitions, but rail against a world where appearance, behaviour, places and products are meant only for one narrowly defined gender.