Gender: History, Theory and Usage of the Term in Sexology and Its Relationship to Nature/Nurture

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Abstract
A person's sexual status is conventionally defined on the criterion of the external sex organs, and this criterion is presumed to be concordant with the other criteria of sex. When the sex organs are deformed, as in hermaphroditism, or mutilated, their sex role is to some extent affected, whereas all the other manifestations of the person's masculinity or femininity may be intact. Gender, not sex, is the umbrella term which refers to the totality of masculinity/femininity, genital sex included. Gender role and gender identity are two sides of the same coin, gender-identity/role (G-I/R). G-I/R may differentiate to be discordant with one or more of the basic sex variables which are now listed in the definition of sex in Dorland's Medical Dictionary. G-I/R is the product not of either nature or nurture acting alone, but of both in interaction at crucial periods of developmental differentiation. The new paradigm is nature/crucial-period/nurture, not nature/nurture. Social scientists and sexologists are among those who, for the most part, have not made the paradigm shift.

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