Identity Embodiment and Navigation: Conflating Sex Category and Gender in Binary Paradigms

• In Event: 084 - Student Forum Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Student Forum Roundtable Session. Table 01. Gender and Self

Abstract

I analyze how society constructs biological sex and examine the ways it is conflated with gender. I use interviews from transgender individuals to analyze the forces that language, clothing, bathrooms and legal forms have on regulating and policing gender embodiment. Calling on the research of scholars who theorize that biological sex and ‘sex category’ are socially constructed, I unpack the evidence that biological sex is not inherently male or female, but rather a binary system. The influence of assigning biological sex and gender into these paradigms provides conflict for identity embodiment and identity navigation. Like transgender individuals, cisgender members of society also seek to match their sex category and gender and use the same tools to do so (specifically language, clothing and bathrooms.) The construction and conflation of biological sex and gender relies heavily on powers outside of ourselves and I end the paper proposing gender and sex category be a fluid and lived experience.

Author

• Hannah Rachel Carl, Brooklyn College University