by René Esparza

About René Esparza

René Esparza is an assistant professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of the forthcoming manuscript From Vice to Nice: Race, Sex, and the Gentrification of AIDS.

Sex

The English word sex has multiple origins, from Old French sex and Latin sexus (possibly from sec_ā_re, “to cut”), and locates the first English usage in the fourteenth century, referring to the divisions of humans and many other living organisms between male and female on the basis of genitalia and other physical organs involved in reproductive functions.