This is one of my pet peeves. We all say that Gender and Sex are separate, and then we turn around and say they're the same thing! In my mind male and female are body terms, and man and woman are gender terms. I realized that our language confuses them, but I don't. I am a man, but I was born in a female body. Most men are born into male bodies, but some men aren't. Just because I'm a man, does not mean my body is male. Surgery and hormones can make my body look more male, but I would not be the same thing as male. Confusing gender with sex sets up a situation where we are saying: "you have to be male to be a man". And that enforces body image types... "you have to look male to be considered a man". I don't agree with this.
Male and female do both have more of a medical connotation, but when "men" and "male" have been conflated for so long, there's not really a solid definition as "man" or "biologically male", so people are going to use them slightly differently. It's messy, but it's not necessarily nefarious.
Sex and gender are separate, but not everyone describes gender as "man"/"woman"/"other" and sex as "male"/"female".The thing is, if I call myself female, 90% of people are going to assume I am a woman. Therefore I call myself male. I also don't like to call myself female because even I hear female and picture a woman, and that feels wrong to me. I do not consider "male" to mean "typical man's body" or "born with a penis". I consider it to be a synonym for man. If I was talking about someone's sex, I would say something more like "AFAB bodies" or "male genitalia" or whatever, I wouldn't just say "female"/"male". Between how you and I describe it, it's merely a lexicon difference. Our concepts are probably the same.
agree with systemglitch but also it's definitely hard to define male/female sex so rigidly, as intersex people exist and are not even a tiny portion of people.
I'm not trans personally. But in my opinion, the main reason It's important to distinguish the two is for medical reasons. People with vaginas have completely different medical issues than people with penises, regardless of gender identity. You should be honest with your doctor about your body to not avoid confusion. However, aside from that, it shouldn't matter what you call yourself to other people. It's just arguing semantics at that point. As for intersex people, most are more binary than you think. Most intersex people strictly have either a penis or a vagina, have normal secondary sex characteristics that match their genitals (for the most part). But have slight differences such as the opposite chromosomes, an enlarged clitoris/micro penis, or different gonads. Many of the differences are invisible. My uncle has klinefelter but he looks and functions like a 100% cis male, so that's how he refers to himself. It's important to not use them as a gotcha in these conversations as most of them hate it, most of them consider themselves a binary sex with minor differences, and most of them do not link themselves with the LGBT community.
Thing is though, I wouldn't tell my doctor "I am 'female' and I am a man". I'd just say "I'm a transgender man". Presumably though they would already know, since it would be written in my medical history, which they have access to (and, if they are a decent doctor, would have read - nearly every time I see a doctor they mention things written in my medical records). But yeah the main reason people say "gender and sex are separate" is because if gender and sex are the same thing, trans people don't exist. Which obviously isn't true.
That is a very confusing subject. I usually just say genders are male, female, trans, or genderfluid. I try not to complicate things with sex and just leave those as whatever you are physically, either male, female, ore some other variation.
I used to be very on board with the whole "sex and gender are separate" idea, but the more I live and learn, the less of a distinction I see. Usually people try to make the distinction by saying sex is the body and gender is the mind, but, hello!, my mind is part of my body! Save for perhaps some very specific religious beliefs, there is no way to have an identity that does not have a biological component. Every thought and feeling I have has a biological component. Personally, I usually use gender to refer to the whole shebang and say that gender has a shitload of components - chromosomes, genitals, hormone levels, brain structures (including the still scientifically poorly understood parts that control our identity!), secondary sex characteristics, as well as social and legal aspects. And when there's a conflict between these components, the brain always trumps all others.
Sex refers to chromosomes: XX or XY (or potentially more, though those are somewhat uncommon.) Gender refers to how somebody identifies themselves. Gender identities include male, genderfluid and agender, etc. Gender expression encompasses the way you present yourself externally, and includes feminine, androgynous, etc. There are other aspects to gender but those are the main ones, I believe. "Male" strikes me as just a more formal word for "man". I am a man, a male. I identify as such. Yes, I was born in a female body, but I am a male. That is my gender identity.
This is where making defined boxes gets so messy. If we're talking actual definitions: Man/Woman refer to gender, which is refers to "brain sex" (or preception of self). Generally assumed to match your sex (pfft...). Male/Female refer to sex, which refers to "body type". Except of course we know that there aren't only 2 sexes, because intersex people exist. Sex is usually based on 5 physical attributes: testes, mamory glands, penis, clitoris, and uterus. On chromosomes, there's generally accepted to be 5 types now. XX, XXY, conjoined XY ('hermaphodiac', medical term, I know...), XYY, and XY. You have 46 chromosomes. Less than .02% of people have homogenously sexed chromosomes. You have a mix of all of these. The language is fundamentally wrong, there's no science to prove it. Society doesn't like being wrong so it doubles down hard on it (to the point where men and women's shirts can't have buttons on the same side, like whaaaa-?!). The more they can make male=man and female=woman, the easier it is to pretend they were right. Being mad at people for not knowing something that society doesn't want them to know is a little harsh. Just educate them, explain why it's problematic, and move on.
