Passage Three

1．Along the primrose path of childhood children learn something fundamental．At a most basic level they incorporate that Dads and Moms are designations with very different implications．Up front，it is accepted that Dads are men and Moms are women;that Dads and Moms do different things at home and elsewhere．Simultaneously children learn that boys play rough and girls play nice and they usually like to do different things．Then kids learn that boys grow up to be Dads and girls grow up to be Moms．

2．Interestingly，this is the standard pattern children incorporate even when they know these rules have exceptions．They almost always know families where its Mom who is the outside-the-home money earner and Dad who stays home，and where boys are nice and quiet while girls are hellions．The basic stereotypes，however，seem somehow branded on their psyche in the every day course of growing up．The input is from family，friends，media，religion and even politics．And most of middleclass society colludes，in turn，to transmit social and cultural normative expectations with essentially the same rules．With a certain degree of schooling and maturity children learn that the sexes to which we are referring are male and female^[12]．It further comes to be understood that male and female are terms used to incorporate a whole catalog of physical and behavioral differences．

3．As a designation of male or female，sex，with the child's increasing sophistication and learning becomes understood as a descriptive set of terms and meanings that encompass the most common biologically accepted attributes—physical differences—of males and females;the terms imply certain gonads，internal and external genitalia，sex chromosomes and genes，sex hormones and so on．The student learns that a male is an individual that has penis and scrotum，testes，and accessory glands(prostate，seminal vesicles，bulbo-urethral glands); a female is a person with ovaries，a uterus，ovarian tubes，a vagina and clitoris．An intersexed^[13]individual is understood to have a mixture of these attributes．And these basic understandings hold for the term sex as they did for the terms Dad and Mom;wide variations and departures from the basic generalities can be known without nullifying the common wisdom．

4．The term gender first became familiar to most of us in language class when，for those of us with English as a common tongue，we learned that nouns such as table and chair could be either masculine，feminine or neuter^[14]．Of what use are such distinctions still remains lost on linguists．Why languages as different as French and German need these artifices while English and most Australoasian languages，for instance，can get along quite well without them is subject for thought．Many languages do not even have sex identifying pronouns．But understanding of gender or sex-typical behaviors(the older expression for gender specific traits)serves quite practical use．And no known language is without gender identifying nouns．

5．General usage of the term gender began in the late 1960s and 1970s，increasingly appearing in the professional literature^[15]of the social sciences．The term came to serve a useful purpose in distinguishing those aspects of life that were more easily attributed or understood to be of social rather than biological origin．

6．Males and females，as biological entities，were accepted as essentially similar cross-culturally but men and women，by virtue of the multitude of different roles they played in diversified societies，were not so easily catalogued．These anthropological life-style differences came to be accepted as social and cultural constructs．Indeed，the terms sex and gender came，for most investigators，to signify and reify these different areas of consideration;sex would refer to biological traits while gender would refer to social/cultural ones．At least this was generally so among those investigators more sensitive to biological studies．Among those more aligned with sociological and anthropological thinking these differences did not appear so clear cut．For this latter group the terms sex and gender were often used interchangeably．(Rewritten from Milton Diamond，“Sex and Gender:Same or Different?”)

Questions for Understanding

1．What is the family stereotype that is“branded”on the psyche of little children?

2．What is the general principle of the designation of male or female?

3．According to the essay，how do most people learn about“gender”? What does the word mean in that circumstance?

4．What does the word“gender”mean now in academia?When did the present usage come to be accepted?

5．Do scholars agree on the distinction of sex and gender?