Sex vs Gender: Are We there Yet? A Biological Location for Gender, not Sex.

Research to date has left unexplained what may seem indefinable – gender identity. This article synthesizes important research that has not previously presented a case for a biological location of gender in the human phenotype. While gonadal sex and sexual orientation are accepted as emanating from genetic and hormonal templates, gender’s existence currently has so far emanated from a nebulous ‘somewhere’ in the brain. Recent hypotheses have argued there is no natural dichotomy of gendered behavior and proposed a merging of otherwise distinct categories for sex and gender into a mosaic of sex/gender. However, this seems to detour around non-physical behavior relevant to reproduction. This paper makes an original case for non-physical behaviors relevant to reproduction as the neurophysiological sense of gender and specifically centred within the reproductive axis. This fits in well with current understandings of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences on identity diversity.