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The second aspect of identity that we want to explore is gender. Before going any further, however, it is important to recognize that almost every part of the discussion below is controversial. There is no neutral terminology available. Every way of talking about this material is ‘theory-laden’: it assumes a particular way of understanding the subject matter. We have therefore had to make choices. We have chosen to use a set of terms and distinctions that are used in many scientific and academic discussions in this area, and that are important to many trans people (that is, people who identify as transgender – see below).¹¹⁷ They are regarded by many trans people as necessary to do justice to their experience, and as avoiding assumptions that are seen as discriminatory. There are, nevertheless, serious discussions about many of these terms and distinctions. Some in the church, and in wider society, defend them; others dispute the understandings of gender that they appear to assume. We will highlight some of the questions this raises along the way, and return to them later in the book. We don’t want the choices we have made in this section to pre-empt those discussions.

Since the 1970s, it has become common to distinguish gender from sex. In this context, ‘sex’ has to do with biology, and specifically to the ways in which bodies are sexually differentiated. ‘Gender’, on the other hand, has to do with culture and experience, and specifically to the ways in which sexual differentiation is responded to and experienced. It can refer to someone’s sense of their own identity, or to other people’s ways of categorising them.

When we look more closely, all the parts of these initial definitions quickly get more complicated. On the biological side, to talk about ‘the ways in which bodies are sexually differentiated’ can refer to a number of different things. To give a simplified list, it can refer to:

• a person’s chromosomes;

• aspects of their body that develop while they are in the womb, including: genitals, internal reproductive organs, brain structure, balance of hormones;

• the ways in which any of these aspects of their bodies develop through childhood and beyond, especially during puberty.

The relationship between these different aspects of sexual differentiation is sometimes more complicated than people expect – as we will be discussing in the material on intersex in the next chapter.

Gender can be similarly complicated. In recent discussions, the word ‘gender’ can refer to any of the following:

• The way in which a person is categorized at birth. Parents or medical professionals typically identify where a baby fits within the standard gender categories prevalent in the society around them: ‘It’s a girl!’ It is increasingly common to call this ‘gender assigned at birth’.

• The way that someone currently understands themselves: their sense of where, if anywhere, they currently fit within their society’s gender categories, or of their lack of fit with those categories. This is often referred to as ‘gender identity’.

• The ways in which someone expresses or performs gender, in behaviours and adornments that have gender associations. This is often referred to as ‘gender role’.

• A society’s expectations for how people will look and behave, and the conscious and unconscious evaluations that will tend to be made of people, based on what is known or believed about those people’s gender.

With all of these, there are complex discussions about where the distinctions people use come from. When we categorize babies at birth, when we develop an understanding of our own gender identity or perform gender roles, when we make stereotypical assumptions about people, we are always responding to what we see and know in ways that are shaped by our whole history and all our social interactions, in the way outlined at the start of this section on identity.

The first of the points above illustrates something of the controversy that exists in this area. It has only fairly recently become common to speak about gender being ‘assigned at birth’. Some would argue that what happens at birth, except in relation to some intersex individuals, is a straightforward recognition of biological sex. Others insist that what is happening is the assigning of an individual, on the basis of just some of their biological features, to one of the two gender categories that we stereotypically divide our world into.