Sex and Gender of Egyptian Mummies

Oddly, both the articles from this week's Daily Mail note that a "detailed analysis of pelvic bones and teeth confirmed the mummy is a boy despite its female adornments." As I've harped on in the past (mostly in my Bones review posts), unless the researchers have a large collection of pelvic bones and teeth from children of known sex from Roman Egypt to which they can compare, it is often little more than a guess whether the child is male or female. Since the researchers did a CT scan and had soft tissue, I would imagine this piece of data was the key to their estimation of sex. It's therefore strange that the Daily Mail chose to focus on the skeletal tissue rather than the soft tissue.
The coverage of this mummy also has some issues with the difference between sex and gender. One of the researchers who worked on this mummy told the Daily Mail, "It's a boy. It's not always obvious, and you need to know what you are looking for." I'm not in any way an expert on Egyptian mummies, but I can unequivocally state that she is right - well, partially: gender is not obvious from physical remains. But I can't say that she's right that "it's a boy" - after all, according to the article, this child was buried with feminine accoutrements. Not just in a shroud usually reserved for girls, but with breast cones. The child's sex seems clear: the child was male (if I am reading correctly that the CT scan found evidence of genitalia). But the child's gender is not at all clear. I wonder how many other Egyptian mummies have a disconnect between their biological sex and their culturally-constructed (burial-styled) gender? I recall from an art history course that the amazing Roman mummy portraits often were younger than the mummy itself and sometimes of a different sex. Are sex and gender in Egyptian mummies (especially children) otherwise known, studied, or understood phenomena? A quick google search shows that this is not the first time a mummy turned out to be male in spite of presumed feminine burial styling. How different will our study of ancient Egyptian burial practices be if we find out through subjecting mummies to new technology that they are not the sex/gender we think they are?
Comments
It's particularly fascinating to me because I'm doing a PhD in Classics focussing on sex and gender in the ancient world (more specifically I study transgendered identity, which ties in perfectly with this mummy you're talking about). Anyways, just thought I'd share how amazed I am that I found this very post without actually looking for it.
Oh, and it always drives me crazy when people confuse sex and gender, they are not the same thing!