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The symbol of the Roman god Mars (god of war) is often used to represent the male sex. It also stands for the planet Mars and is the alchemical symbol for iron.. Male (symbol: ♂) is the sex of an organism that produces the gamete (sex cell) known as sperm, which fuses with the larger female gamete, [1] [2] [3] or ovum, in the process of fertilisation.
Androgyny is the possession of both masculine and feminine characteristics. [1] Androgyny may be expressed with regard to biological sex or gender expression.. When androgyny refers to mixed biological sex characteristics in humans, it often refers to conditions in which characteristics of both sexes are expressed in a single individual.
[2] [3] [4] It is distinct from the definition of the biological male sex, [5] [6] as anyone can exhibit masculine traits. [7] Standards of masculinity vary across different cultures and historical periods. In Western cultures, its meaning is traditionally drawn from being contrasted with femininity.
The English term "man" is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *man-(see Sanskrit/Avestan manu-, Slavic mǫž "man, male"). [4] More directly, the word derives from Old English mann. The Old English form primarily meant "person" or "human being" and referred to men, women, and children alike.
Robert Stoller, whose work was the first to treat sex and gender as "two different orders of data", in his book Sex and Gender: The Development of Masculinity and Femininity, [47] uses the term 'sex' to refer to the "male or the female sex and the component biological parts that determine whether one is a male or a female". [48]
Sexual dimorphism is the condition where sexes of the same species exhibit different morphological characteristics, including characteristics not directly involved in reproduction. [1]
Male expendability, the relative expendability argument, or the expendable male hypothesis, is the idea that the lives of male humans are of less concern to a population than those of female humans because they are less necessary for population replacement.
Gender-based medicine, also called "gender medicine", is the field of medicine that studies the biological and physiological differences between the human sexes and how that affects differences in disease. Traditionally, medical research has mostly been conducted using the male body as the basis for clinical studies.