Summary Of The Five Sexes: Why Men And Women Are Not Enough

Gender plays a big role in society. By definition it is the state of being either male or female. Each gender is set to a certain amount of expectations and norms linked to how they should behave and portray themselves. Sex however is different; it is the way of defining men and women based on their biological and physical attributions. Throughout the years opinions and outlooks on sexuality/gender have changed drastically. People are more open-minded and accepting of the change. There are many reasons for this change; one being that the number of women in the workplace has increased. Aside from this, there are also many articles that share a viewpoint on the different attitudes and experiences of both men and women of all circumstances and …show more content…
This is regardless of the fact that society labels those biologically with a penis to be male, and those with breasts and a vagina as female. Sterling disputes that this is not enough to classify one, that there are too many intersexuals to broaden the label down to two classfications. She states, “Western culture is deeply commited to the idea that there are only two sexes. Even language refuses the other possibilities; thus to write…I have had to invent conventions—s/he and his/her—to denote someone who is clearly neither male nor female or is perhaps both sexes at once” (Sterling 20). She starts off by talking about intersex and how that alone classifies a whole nother gender type. She talks about how the standard use of the term intersex applies to having a saturation of both male and female characteristics. Sterling talks about how sex is an ample continuance and that although there are three major subgroups she insists that that is still simply not enough. That there should be atleast five different categoried when it comes to describing ones sex. She declares that there are the two obvious groups being male and female, and then what she calls the true hermaphrodites. This is the gender known to have one female sex organ and one male sex organ. Then she states that another category is the male pseudohermaphrodites, who are males with testes, no ovaries, but some type of female organs. The last category she states is the female pseudohermaphrodites. They include ovaries, no testes, but some kind of male organs. She explains these genders in detail by stating, “The embryonic gonad generally chooses early in development to follow either a male or a female sexual pathway; for the ovo-testis, however, that choise is fudged” (Sterling