Sex or Gender?

This is one of the biggest questions that have always troubled my tiny cranium. Yeah, as I may put it, is it sex or gender? Why is it in all forms we have to fill up a column titled ‘sex’? Why not gender? Why are little kids taught their gender is male or female and not sex? Why? Why? Why?

Is it because at the mention of the word sex, people’s minds usually conjure up the verb form of the word and not the noun? It’s been a puzzle to me ever since I found out that both gender and sex actually do mean the same. I remember, me all of eight years after reading my birth certificate, calmly walk to my dad and said, “Nana what does sex mean?” Well my old man, being the dad he always is simply, looked at me and said,” It means that you have to write if you are a girl or boy?” Now, that was quite enough for my eight year old brain.

Time passes along, and I reach age 10. I was in the company of a then 12 year old guy (whose name has been hidden for obvious reasons, let’s call him S). We were both looking at a college application his elder brother was supposed to be filling. S’s eyes immediately fall on the word, well you know, SEX. And all that comes out of that mouth is ‘ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo’. I was puzzled, and I stared and stared at him. I went back home. I was restless, until dad finally asked me what was itching me. I told him, what took place. He doubled up with laughter, and said I’ll learn about it in school. I was not satisfied, I confronted S. I demanded an explanation.

Now, S’s blatant truth totally shattered my, I was born ‘cause of the stork’ theory. It shook my little head, and made me question my own existence. At first I refused to believe him, than I asked him, If his mum and dad ‘did it’ too?
As you can imagine, my little head, had horrible visions of Ben and Jerry ‘doing it’. It shook my core, I could not summon up the courage to ask dad, and to confront him. As I grew older, I was subjected to much more usage of the verb form of the work in question.

That also brings me onto one other topic, why do we have to mention our ‘sex’ or ‘gender’? Like anyone cares, anyway I was thinking that all those applications must change that column to ‘orientation’, so then we will not have Naz Foundation, coming up with another of the PILs, to say that applications are violative of article 14 of the Constitution. So yeah, now India officially recognizes 6 genders, or may I say, sexes, Male, Female, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexuals. Instead of two columns we shall now have six columns on any applications.

In the past people used to be scared of their offsprings running away, with their opposite sex, now even a two boys, seen together can land them in huge trouble! I still get troubled reactions from little cousins, when I use the word ‘sex’. They look at me like I have committed a sin, and I need to be purged in holy water. While these I must say, are the very kids who watch, Johny Bravo in Hindi, and guess what? No sniggers when, Johny says,’Hey sexy’. When I say it, it’s all;’Akka said the S word’.

In a country life ours where three to four of our kids are the average in every house, I don’t get how people often consider sex as taboo. We have mythical lore which talks of Pandava having 100 sons, and people giving birth due to the fruit of life. How do they think kids happen? Do they seriously believe that kids are dropped from heavens? I have thought about it, every single day since I found out what the verb form signifies. Is’nt our land considered to be the land of the ‘Kama Sutra’?
Let’s just hope that there will come a day, when children all over India will say, my sex is male or female or whatever else.


[This post was not intended to hurt the feelings of any LGBT person, If it does so, my sincere apologies. ]