Sexuality and Gender

The meaning of the terms sexuality and gender, and the ways that writers have theorized the relationship between the two, have changed considerably during the twentieth century. The traditional approach to understanding sexuality and gender has been primarily concerned with establishing biological bases for human behavior. Such analyses are generally referred to as essentialist. Other more recent approaches, although not necessarily denying the role of biological factors, have emphasized the importance of social and cultural factors; what is commonly referred to as the social constructionist approach. Rather than regarding these as polar opposites it may be more helpful to think of a social constructionist/essentialist continuum along which theories may be placed. Different approaches to understanding sexuality and gender are outlined, including feminist analyses and queer theory. An important contribution to analyses of sexuality and gender has been the distinction between sex and gender: sex being the given upon which gender is superimposed. New understandings of gender question this sex/gender binary claiming that it is through understandings of gender that we interpret bodily differences as differently sexed. Finally, different ways of theorizing the relationship between sexuality and gender are outlined.