Sex

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the article about the act of "sex", see sexual intercourse.

Biological classification

When a biologist looks at living beings (plants and animals), there will be two different kinds to tell apart:

• Those animals and plants that reproduce by growing new cells, and by splitting of the newly created organism at some point. This is called asexual reproduction. Some germs, and yeast do that, some spiders do that as well. Such organisms are usually all of the same kind, and they are called asexual (they do not have a sex)
• Other plants and animals reproduce by a union of a male organism and a female organism. Such animals or plants have a sex, its called male, or female. Animals or plants which have both sex parts are called hermaphrodite. Most snails are hermaphrodites.
• Those organisms that produce sperm are called male, those that produce eggs are called female.

Humans

A person's sex is either male or female. For example: John's sex is male. Mary's sex is female. This difference is sometimes called gender. Not all living things have a sex. There are not male or female germs or yeast. Only animals that make babies using an egg and sperm have a sex.

Most people are only one sex. Before they are born, they grow either male sex parts or female sex parts. Very few people grow none or both, but some do. It's hard for these people because they often feel sad about people seeing them as being different. These people can be called intersexed people.

Sometimes, people feel that they are the other sex. For example, they have male sex parts but they feel like a woman. If they think really carefully about this, and think they should be the other sex, they can say they are a woman, and even get their sex parts changed to female sex parts. These people are called transgendered people.