Sex" is generally understood to refer to biology: genitals, gonads, hormones,
chromosomes, and physical shape. "Gender" commonly is used to refer to how those
bodies are enacted in social settings — the social beings o f men and women. That the two
terms are so often confounded shows how deeply the notion that biology is destiny isentrenched within the culture. Despite the existence of those who have intermediate bodies —hermaphroditic individuals— duality continues to be held as the reality of biology, and by extension, of social gender; those whom nature builds in-between are seen as mistakes. The fit of the two-sex system with the reality of a range o f bodies is rarely questioned. To be bom in a female body denotes a girl who will grow into a woman, who will then behave in certain ways deemed to be "normal" feminine behavior; to be bom into a male body is synonymous with being a boy who will grow into a man who will act in manly ways.