Gender really a social concept

Gender is a controversial topic, beholding the argument if one can choose their own gender or if it is to be assigned to them. Yet as people bicker back and forth about the “right” and the “wrong” is this whole mess really as complex as we all believe it to be?

The definition of gender proves that the arguments are functionally irrelevant to begin with. According to the Canadian Oxford high school dictionary, gender is “one’s characteristics or traits determined socially, rather than biological, as a result of one’s sex.”

This means that gender is not the same as human biological coding of the “X” and “Y” chromosomes in DNA, which determines if you are male or female. The definition states rather, that gender is really, and completely a “social concept.”

Meaning that gender is what people think of you, and really basically boils down to stereotypes and opinion.

People shouldn’t live their lives feeling they have to be what others think they should be, and people should never try to force others to be someone they aren’t because of the way they are viewed as.

Yet just because someone feels like a man or woman, or what they may, they are biologically what their chromosomes tell them they are as far as science goes, and there is no changing that. The point is that people must understand they can’t change their biology sex, and gender is only a human concept, not a law.

Riley Roche,

Souris Regional School