Gender is a construct of society's stereotypes, and not the difference between someone having a penis or vagina. In America today media is everywhere and the stereotypes of genders are portrayed constantly; anti-stereotypes are becoming more common in today's society too, especially in places like San Francisco, where it has become normal to come across people who are non-conformist to stereotypical gender roles. The resent increases in freedom of sexuality in the United States has had an adverse affect on the general awareness of the differences of gender and the sex of one's body. Same-sex couples, feminist, and the double-standards we live by, are all contributing to questions of gender.
What is gender? Certainly, it is not physical. Gender may be often associated with sex but it is quite different. Gender is really something constructed by every person for every person. Often people judge other people as being part of one gender as opposed to another, but what is important to realize is that these terms are all relative. Perhaps not very relative to most Americans; however, it is certainly relative to people from other cultures in other parts of the world and even other Americans who's sexually is not that of the norm.
Same-sex couples are a great example of how stereotyped gender roles do not work when associated with someone's physical sex. Many people have heard terms like "masculine-, "feminine-, and "queen-. These are terms that define behaviors, not physical sex. In a gay relationship it can be clearly seen that one person often takes a role of a specific gender. For someone going through conforming one's sexual identity in a relationship like this it can be quite confusing. As a gay person trying to figure out the gender to which you belong could easily be one of the most extreme defining points of the meaning of gender. .