Sex and gender are both words that come unexplained to most of the people in the world and, even so, affect every single activity we make and the way other perceive such activities. As we have seen in class, “sex” has a biological meaning and “gender” has a social meaning, but both are oriented to give us a guideline about how we can difference and divide people in two big categories, according to their physical characteristics, these two categories, which are socially constructed, are “men” and “women”. There is a problem with categories in general: they are based on items that an individual has to accomplish to be set into that category, this way everything goes right for those people who have the physical structure and psychological behavior that is socially seen as adequate for their “gender”, but when someone does not strictly fit there, then comes rejection from others and confusion to the self.

Examples of this problem may be physical, when one person is born with characteristics of both female and male sexes (hermaphrodite), or psychological, when someone doesn’t follow the behavioral patterns that has been socially assigned for him or her. This is a problematic that must be taken in consideration, not only by the scientific disciplines that are directly related to it, but also by people as members of a society that builds subjectivities.

Lina María Restrepo