Sex vs Gender: An unanswered paradox.

Abstract

The origins of bodily sex are well understood, but consensus on any origins for gender is absent. While gonadal sex and sexual orientation are accepted as emanating from genetic and hormonal templates, the existence of gender, when acknowledged, currently has so far originated either from strictly social origins, a nebulous ‘somewhere’ in the brain or from some combination of sources. We propose gender identity emanates from previously unrecognized universal early stable dimorphic sex differences in cognitive signalling relevant to reproduction, and removed from the behaviors widely accepted as a sex/gender mosaic. The neural networks associated with these behaviors thus provide a biological or anatomical location for gender as opposed to sex.