Sex Attribution / Sex Categorization
Sex attribution / Sex categorization – the sociocultural determination of an individual’s sex category.
The attribution of sex, or the categorization of a person as belonging to a particular sex category, is a basic practice of everyday interaction. It usually becomes an unreflected background of communication in all social spheres, and it does not seem possible to eliminate it. Categorization by sex is constitutive of social interaction. When such categorization becomes difficult, a communicative breakdown may occur. The possibility of categorization by sex is a precondition of communicative trust.
An individual’s biological sex does not always coincide with the sex category attributed to that person. If biological sex is defined through the presence of biological, anatomical, and physiological characteristics, then in a situation of face-to-face interaction, sex attribution occurs on the basis of other signs.
How the category of belonging to a particular sex is constituted in a given context can be understood only by analyzing the mechanisms through which a particular culture operates. From this it becomes clear that gender relations are constructs of the culture within which they function (Zdravomyslova & Temkina, 2001, p. 161).
Reference:
Zdravomyslova, E., & Temkina, A. (2001). Sotsialnoe konstruirovanie gendera: Feministskaia teoriia [The social construction of gender: Feminist theory]. In I. A. Zherebkina (Ed.), Vvedenie v gendernye issledovaniia. Ch. I: Uchebnoe posobie [Introduction to gender studies. Part I: Textbook] (pp. 147–173). Kharkiv: KhTsGI. [in Russian].
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