Does my gerbil have a gender?

The short answer is: No. Gerbils are animals that have a sex, but not a gender.

Sex

“Sex is a trait that determines an individual’s reproductive function, male or female, in animals and plants that propagate their species through sexual reproduction. The type of gametes produced by an organism defines its sex. Commonly in plants and animals, male organisms produce smaller gametes (sperm) while female organisms produce larger gametes (ova, or egg cells).”¹

Gametes

Organisms that produce both types of gametes are called hermaphrodites. “Hermaphroditism is a normal condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which either partner can act as the female or male.”

“There have been no identified cases of a human reproducing as both male and female.”²

Earthworms and slugs are examples of hermaphrodites.

Gender

What is gender?

Originally gender was a word that referred to grammatical categories. For example, in the French language, table [une table] is feminine (or female) gender, and book [un livre] is masculine (or male) gender.

Today, however, gender is a fluid term that refers to a range of characteristics pertaining to human femininity and masculinity, and differentiating between the two. See, for example, 68 Terms That Describe Gender Identity and Expression.

“Sex is a biological concept; gender is a human social and cultural concept.”³

Gerbil’s do not have a gender. Their sex is male or female.

What about the sex spectrum?

As described above, there are two sexes observable in the animal world. Males are the sex that have the reproductive anatomy designed to produce small gametes (or sperm), and females are the sex that have the reproductive anatomy designed to produce large gametes (or ova). This is true not just for humans, but for all mammals.

There are, of course, intersex people who are born with ambiguous sex characteristics. But this does not imply a spectrum.⁴

A nickel has two sides: a head side and a tail side. But sometimes when you flip a nickel onto the table it will land on its edge. This happens roughly 1 out of every 6,000 flips of the coin. When that occurs we don’t then conclude that the two sides of the coin are somehow on a spectrum. We just know that every now and then the outcome of the flip is ambiguous.⁵

We do keep track of three nominal sides – heads, tails, and on edge – when performing coin toss experiments. But there is no third sex (let alone a sex spectrum) observable in the animal world.