The very notion of a man and a woman is not “an absolute based on genitals”, the Supreme Court said on Tuesday while discussing the ambit of gender and whether it expanded beyond the biological sex of a person.

In a day-long hearing on the pleas seeking legal validation for same-sex marriages, a five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud took note of submissions in favour and against the petitions, and one of them was that even the Special Marriage Act has terms like “a man and a woman” and hence using term ‘person’ instead may unsettle existing statutes.