Changing attitudes or just a practical measure? Unisex toilets are becoming more common in many countries
A few months ago, I was about to walk into the women’s changing rooms at the local swimming pool with my young son when a new notice caught my eye. Translated from the Portuguese original, the text read as follows: “Children who need help to get dressed may only be accompanied by one person. Children who are over eight years old must go to the changing room that corresponds to their gender.” I stood in the doorway and chuckled to myself, “Surely,” I thought “it should read sex” and then hurried my son inside – he was already late for class and still only eight years old.
A few weeks later, I was having breakfast listening to the news on a nationwide radio and my ears popped up (or at least they would have, if I were a rabbit) when I heard a journalist introduce a piece on “gender changes.” A doctor was interviewed who stated that it was not possible to change minds but it was possible to change bodies. “Surely,” I thought aloud once more, “the journalist should have said sex changes.” Only a few days ago I also heard another reporter on the national radio refer to same-sex marriage as marriage between people of the same gender.
Gender has, in my opinion, become such a mainstream word that in some contexts, at least here in Portugal, it has become a misplaced substitute for sex. It as if people feel that it is no longer safe or politically correct to say the word sex unless they are referring to the sexual act, which isn’t usually spoken much about in public anyway.
So what is the difference between sex and gender? We could say that sex refers to the biological body and that gender refers to cultural interpretations of biological differences which produce differentiated social roles and attributes for the sexes.
Sounds easy enough, or does it? Consider the following example from my experience in Cape Verde with students who were affiliated to a research centre on gender and family. We were a small group of about ten people sitting around a table and I wanted the group to split into two, to discuss the difference between sex and gender. The group was comprised of around eight women and two men who happened to be sitting together. So the issue was raised by one of the female students: do we separate the men in order to have a more balanced distribution of… (I think both the words sex and gender were cautiously avoided) or is it alright for both of them to be in the same group? We came to a group decision that it was okay for the men to stay together. What do you think?
[Read the rest of the article]: Sex changes and changing roomsAuthor informationElizabeth ChallinorResearcher, Centre for Research in Social Anthropology (CRIA/UM), PortugalAn aspiring screenwriter who became an anthropologist so he could one day turn his ethnographies into a Latin American version of 'The Wire'. He is currently working on an ehtnography of social class in Bogotá, Colombia, entitled 'The Law of the Most Alive'.Original article: Sex changes and changing rooms©2013 PopAnth - Hot Buttered Humanity. All Rights Reserved.
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