What's the difference between sex and gender?

[RobynZ]

Isn't it the same?

Sex is your genitals. Gender is a state of mind. They very often match. Not always.

I personally don't believe in gender at all. I think it's a social construct. There is the biological reality of female/male/intersex.

Sex is your biological state of being male or female. Gender is your identity / cultural femaleness or maleness and is thought to be constructed / created... As well as partly innate.

Sex is biological, male or female. Gender is masculine or feminine. Did sex start getting referred to as gender because people were scared of saying "sex"

Sex is whether you have an inny or an outie in the groinal area, gender is whether you have two X chromosomes or an X and a Y.
Usually the same thing, but there are rare cases where male genitalia doesn't develop, leaving a male gender sexed as a female.

Gender is a sociological construct, associated with how one identifies oneself. Sex is the chromosomal, biological and genital nature of a being. Luckily for most of us, the two are usually in congruence, i.e. identifying as a woman whilst being in possession of XX genotype and female genitalia. Life is significantly harder for those individuals with unusual genotypes, atypical genitalia or identifying themselves as a different gender.
I get really irritated with the 'gender scan', both as it is incorrect terminology, and due to the fact that the 20 wk scan is primarily about detection of anomalies.

As others have said. Gender is something that develops over the course of childhood and adolescence and comes from societal norms, gender segregation and expectations that are absorbed from very early on.
Feminists tend to believe that gender is a social construct and that men and women are innately no different apart from the biological sex differences. Trans people and trans activists tend to believe that gender is an innate quality equal to but different to biological sex, which is a tricky concept for feminists and leads to a fair bit of argument.

So someone who is biologically female could identify as male and vice versa?

RobynZ

Yes. There is also how society views things. In the UK men do not generally wear skirts, it is seen as a female thing, in Indonesia men do wear skirts.

There is at least one culture where women are considered too stupid to do embroidery.

Until the 1950s boys wore pink and girls blue in the UK and the US.

Yes. There are many genetic anomalies which can lead to people being sexed at birth according to their genital appearance and finding out as adults they have functioning or non functioning sex organs of the other sex. Or people who strongly identify with the gender that is not usually assigned to their sex. Gender is a performance really, we all perform it to one extent or another.

Robynz

My child was born female but from puberty realised he was a male inside, identifies as male and is now transgender, and starting the process of gender realignment . HTH

The Genderbread Person gets these concepts across simply. If you were to mark an X on each line according to how you think and feel about yourself, it would be different to the next person who may look similar to you but identify quite differently.

Sex is what you were physically born with [and it's not always clear cut]

Gender is acquired characteristics.

In short - animals have sex, words have gender.