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To the Editor: In their Commentary "Gender Verification in the Olympics," Dr Simpson and colleagues¹ were imprecise in their use of "gender," given that the topic at hand is clearly "sex," not gender. Certainly, gender long ago subsumed sex as a generic reference in popular culture to all manner of traits associated with the 2 basic sexual divisions. However, proper use of technical terms is not a trivial matter, especially in scientific and clinical publications.

Confusion of sex for gender blurs significant aspects of their respective meanings.² The former denotes objective biological capacities and constraints of a physical organism. The latter denotes more subjective features of sociocultural roles acquired in specific cultural and social milieux. These are not trivial differentiating concepts but, in fact, are analogous to and as important as genotype and phenotype.

Commonly, gender and sex characteristics closely converge; however, individuals sometimes experience marked contradictions.³ Moreover, gender . . . [Full Text of this Article]

RELATED ARTICLE

Gender Verification in the Olympics
Joe Leigh Simpson, Arne Ljungqvist, Malcolm A. Ferguson-Smith, Albert de la Chapelle, Louis J. Elsas II, A. A. Ehrhardt, Myron Genel, Elizabeth A. Ferris, and Alison Carlson
JAMA. 2000;284(12):1568-1569.
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