Word choices are so important. Thank you for discussing the word "gender". I liked these thoughts/explanations in particular: "Using "gender" when "sex" is actually meant can lead to serious problems. Including "gender" in policy or legal documents inevitably results in chaos, as sex and gender are not interchangeable."
And:
"A simple, broad-stroke way to remember this distinction is that sex refers to male or female while gender refers to masculine or feminine."
And finally, I hope everyone will agree: "Most people know that our sex is revealed either in utero or at birth. Nobody on earth can change sex."
EyesOpen: "A simple, broad-stroke way to remember this distinction is that sex refers to male or female while gender refers to masculine or feminine."
Quite agree. A very useful synopsis and dichotomy. Something emphasized and illustrated by a cogent analogy from the late great US Justice Anton Scalia:
Scalia: The word "gender" has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics (as opposed to physical characteristics) distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine to male."
The problem, or a major one, is that various transloonie nutcases and their useful/useless idiots insist on using "male" and "female" as genders. Kind of a bait-and-switch fraud. For example, see my article on Wikipedia's Lysenkoism which had been precipitated by their insistence that Olympian and transwoman Laurel Hubbard had "transitioned to female":
EyesOpen: "And finally, I hope everyone will agree: 'Most people know that our sex is revealed either in utero or at birth. Nobody on earth can change sex.' "
Nope, sorry. Or not entirely in any case. While it is quite true that no human can change sex -- barking mad to even suggest it, though many do -- the standard biological definitions for the sexes stipulate that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless. Technically speaking, we don't ACQUIRE a sex until puberty and can lose it any time thereafter:
Wiley: "Biological sex is binary, even though there is a rainbow of sex roles ....
Another reason for the wide-spread misconception about the biological sex is the notion that it is a condition, while in reality it maybe a life-history stage. For instance, a mammalian embryo with heterozygous sex chromosomes (XY-setup) is not reproductively competent, as it does not produce gametes of any size. Thus, strictly speaking it does not have any biological sex, yet."
Y'all are doing yeoman's work, particularly in advancing and promoting a more scientifically tenable definition for "gender". But a major part of the problem is so many ostensibly on "our" side who insist "sex" and "gender" are synonymous, or insist there's no substance to or merit in the concepts of gender or gender identity.
Relative to the latter, while I won't presume (much) to school you on the psychology, I won't tell my grandmother how to suck eggs (an interesting colloquialism), I think you, and too many others, are giving short shrift to the concept of gender identity. Even if, as I had indicated, you seem to be of two minds on the issue -- which doesn't help.
But I'd run across an article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on personal identity which might offer a useful analogy and point of reference. Paraphrasing them:
SEP (paraphrased): Outside of philosophy, the term ‘[gender] identity’ commonly refers to [the sexually dimorphic personality and behavioural traits] to which we feel a special sense of attachment or ownership. My [gender] identity in this sense consists of those [masculine and feminine traits] I take to “define me as a person” or to “make me the person I am”.
I may comment at length later, but for the moment I just wish to get a something off my chest that has come up in America's post-election recriminations.
Every pundit I have heard discuss the points of contention between Red and Blue America has identified one of them as - you guessed it - gender. (The other is race, of course.) They also mentioned "sexism" from time to time without recognizing the linguistic inconsistency.
Is it that they prefer "gender" to "sex" because they believe the latter is too crude for their audience? Or are they falling in line with gender ideology? I suspect it is the latter, but this is one area where I am clearly vulnerable to motivated reasoning. Either way, I bet that 30 or more years ago "gender" would not have been their word of choice when talking about the battle of the sexes. It's a hypothesis that is is eminently testable.
"How conflation of sex and gender became a tool of transgender ideology ....
'Sex' has a certain finality about it – it’s factually observable, confirmed in nature, essential for human function and reproduction. Gender is a bunch of oppressor-generated stereotypes, and as with all stereotypes, nobody fits squarely into its categories. ...."
Somewhat wide of the mark on a couple of points -- stereotypes aren't cut from whole cloth, they exist because many people exhibit the traits encompassed by the stereotypes -- but a good start.
But people ostensibly on "our side" who insist that sex and gender are synonymous are more a part of the problem than of the solution; they're unwitting "tools" of that transgender ideology.
Yep -- "A lot of people think that using “gender” instead of “sex” came from old-fashioned squeamishness around the word “sex.” But there was another reasonably good reason for it: the word “sex” has different meanings, so other terms are sometimes needed to ensure clarity. In the 1960s and 70s, as “sex” came to be more likely to refer to sexual activity than biological distinctions as sexual intercourse started to be more frequently discussed in public, and so it arguably made sense to start using “gender” in certain contexts instead." Cults take language and manipulate it or change the meaning to confuse adherents and keep them in the cult.
The problem there is that there's some merit in the concept of gender identity which is compounded by sloppy, inconsistent, ideologically motivated, and/or quite unscientific definitions of the term. As some evidence of a more or less scientifically tenable USE of the term, see this article in the Journal of Medical Genetics:
"Unexpected Ethical Dilemmas in Sex Assignment in 46,XY DSD due to 5-alpha Reductase Type 2 Deficiency" [apparently what Imane Khelif & Caster Semenya have]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5489130/
MedicalGenetics: "However, reports that over half of patients who underwent a virilizing puberty adopted an adult male gender identity have challenged this practice. .... More recent studies showing that over half of patients who underwent a virilizing puberty because their gonads were not removed adopted a male gender identity in adulthood have challenged this practice. .... The goals of sex assignment of rearing are to assign a sex with the greatest likelihood for concordant gender identity in adulthood. Gender identity develops over time. It is based on sex chromosomes, androgen exposure, psychosocial development, cultural expectations, family dynamics and social situation."
I can more than sympathize -- an absolute dog's breakfast with virtually every last man, woman, and otherkin having their own idiosyncratic and contradictory definitions for the term. No wonder everyone is riding madly off in all directions -- not much of a basis for any forward progress.
But you certainly cover many of the high points in a more or less coherent and cogent definition for the term. However, I kinda think you -- and Genspect -- go off into the weeds yourselves with some rather glaring contradictions, incoherent feminist ideology, and anti-scientific howlers. For instance, in the latter, Genspect says:
Genspect: "females with ... CAH ... are typically raised as girls and continue in a female gender identity in adulthood."
Yet later they say:
"... the theory of gender identity, a belief system which posits that every one of us has an invisible, unprovable and unfalsifiable gender identity. We simply don’t believe that the case for gender identity has been made ..."
So, which is it? Do CAH "girls" have a "female gender identity" or don't they? You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Further, you both say:
"Gender is a culturally variable set of behavior and personality EXPECTATIONS applied to sexed bodies."
Yet you later endorse Merriam-Webster's more rational perspective which is more or less antithetical to the above:
Merriam-Webster: "gender refers to 'the behavioral, cultural, or emotional traits typically associated with one sex.' ...."
But as you also point out, many of "those behavioural and cultural traits" are more or less bred in the bone. While they're not intrinsic to any or either sex, they are, as you've pointed out, often more typical of one sex than the other while not being unique to either.
Again, it looks like you're trying to have your cake and eat it too. And apparently to pander to various feminists in the crowd who seem to think that sexual stereotypes -- AKA "gender" -- is something hatched in the inner sanctums of "The Patriarchy!!11!!!" for sole purpose of "oppressing" women. Those stereotypes are often the result of those behavioural differences, on average, between men and women. They aren't cut from whole cloth as too many feminists seem to "think".
Finally, in the unscientific howler department, you and too many others insist -- sans any evidence at all -- on the "immutability of biological sex". Genspect further asserts, in that same unscientific howler department, that:
Genspect: "The sex of an individual is based on their reproductive anatomy and is determined by the type of gamete this anatomy is organized, through natural development, to produce. For over 99.9% of people, the sex of a person as female or male is unambiguous, determined at conception, and observable, whether prior to birth (by chromosomal analysis or sonogram) or at birth."
Absolutely no reputable biological journal says anything of the sort. In fact, standard biological definitions stipulate that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless:
Technically speaking, we are all born sexless, although most of us ACQUIRE one at puberty, and can lose it -- have our sex category membership cards revoked -- any time thereafter for one reason or another.
For some elaborations on those themes, you might want to take a gander at my open letter to the erstwhile reputable journal "Cell" -- copy to Colin Wright -- which had asked, apparently in all seriousness, "Is 'sex' a useful category?":
Some reason to argue that you and Genspect are contributing to the "reasons" that Cell has so argued by bastardizing and corrupting the biological terminology on which so much of biology and our whole "civilization" rests -- if rather precariously.
Of further relevance to the above, you might also have some interest in my comment on a post -- "Kudos to Alberta's Premier For Her New Gender Legislation — But It Doesn't Go Far Enough" -- by a Canadian doctor on gender ideology in this neck of the woods:
Word choices are so important. Thank you for discussing the word "gender". I liked these thoughts/explanations in particular: "Using "gender" when "sex" is actually meant can lead to serious problems. Including "gender" in policy or legal documents inevitably results in chaos, as sex and gender are not interchangeable."
And:
"A simple, broad-stroke way to remember this distinction is that sex refers to male or female while gender refers to masculine or feminine."
And finally, I hope everyone will agree: "Most people know that our sex is revealed either in utero or at birth. Nobody on earth can change sex."
EyesOpen: "A simple, broad-stroke way to remember this distinction is that sex refers to male or female while gender refers to masculine or feminine."
Quite agree. A very useful synopsis and dichotomy. Something emphasized and illustrated by a cogent analogy from the late great US Justice Anton Scalia:
Scalia: The word "gender" has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics (as opposed to physical characteristics) distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine to male."
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep511/usrep511127/usrep511127.pdf
The problem, or a major one, is that various transloonie nutcases and their useful/useless idiots insist on using "male" and "female" as genders. Kind of a bait-and-switch fraud. For example, see my article on Wikipedia's Lysenkoism which had been precipitated by their insistence that Olympian and transwoman Laurel Hubbard had "transitioned to female":
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/wikipedias-lysenkoism
EyesOpen: "And finally, I hope everyone will agree: 'Most people know that our sex is revealed either in utero or at birth. Nobody on earth can change sex.' "
Nope, sorry. Or not entirely in any case. While it is quite true that no human can change sex -- barking mad to even suggest it, though many do -- the standard biological definitions for the sexes stipulate that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless. Technically speaking, we don't ACQUIRE a sex until puberty and can lose it any time thereafter:
Wiley: "Biological sex is binary, even though there is a rainbow of sex roles ....
Another reason for the wide-spread misconception about the biological sex is the notion that it is a condition, while in reality it maybe a life-history stage. For instance, a mammalian embryo with heterozygous sex chromosomes (XY-setup) is not reproductively competent, as it does not produce gametes of any size. Thus, strictly speaking it does not have any biological sex, yet."
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bies.202200173
And US "biologist" -- the jury is still out on the question -- PZ Myers:
Myers: " 'female' is not applicable -- it refers to individuals that produce ova. By the technical definition, many cis women are not female."
https://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_7712765eff81140660.jpg
Thanks very much this is very helpful
👍 Ima helper. Even if it may not always be welcome ... 😉🙂
Though no comment on my top-level comment/Note? https://stellaomalley.substack.com/p/i-hate-the-word-gender/comment/75556254
Y'all are doing yeoman's work, particularly in advancing and promoting a more scientifically tenable definition for "gender". But a major part of the problem is so many ostensibly on "our" side who insist "sex" and "gender" are synonymous, or insist there's no substance to or merit in the concepts of gender or gender identity.
Relative to the latter, while I won't presume (much) to school you on the psychology, I won't tell my grandmother how to suck eggs (an interesting colloquialism), I think you, and too many others, are giving short shrift to the concept of gender identity. Even if, as I had indicated, you seem to be of two minds on the issue -- which doesn't help.
But I'd run across an article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on personal identity which might offer a useful analogy and point of reference. Paraphrasing them:
SEP (paraphrased): Outside of philosophy, the term ‘[gender] identity’ commonly refers to [the sexually dimorphic personality and behavioural traits] to which we feel a special sense of attachment or ownership. My [gender] identity in this sense consists of those [masculine and feminine traits] I take to “define me as a person” or to “make me the person I am”.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/
Thank you
Thanks for another cogent discussion! (and I think it is 'continually'. 😄 )
I think you're right!
I may comment at length later, but for the moment I just wish to get a something off my chest that has come up in America's post-election recriminations.
Every pundit I have heard discuss the points of contention between Red and Blue America has identified one of them as - you guessed it - gender. (The other is race, of course.) They also mentioned "sexism" from time to time without recognizing the linguistic inconsistency.
Is it that they prefer "gender" to "sex" because they believe the latter is too crude for their audience? Or are they falling in line with gender ideology? I suspect it is the latter, but this is one area where I am clearly vulnerable to motivated reasoning. Either way, I bet that 30 or more years ago "gender" would not have been their word of choice when talking about the battle of the sexes. It's a hypothesis that is is eminently testable.
I guess when we're confronted with it we should ask the speaker whether they mean sexism or genderism (:
You both may want to take a gander at this tweet and post from "la scapigliata,
Dr Maja Bowen (nom de plume Isidora Sanger), author of 'Born in the Right Body' ...":
https://x.com/lascapigliata8/status/957968082978340864
https://lascapigliata.com/2018/03/27/how-conflation-of-sex-and-gender-became-a-tool-of-transgender-ideology/
"How conflation of sex and gender became a tool of transgender ideology ....
'Sex' has a certain finality about it – it’s factually observable, confirmed in nature, essential for human function and reproduction. Gender is a bunch of oppressor-generated stereotypes, and as with all stereotypes, nobody fits squarely into its categories. ...."
Somewhat wide of the mark on a couple of points -- stereotypes aren't cut from whole cloth, they exist because many people exhibit the traits encompassed by the stereotypes -- but a good start.
But people ostensibly on "our side" who insist that sex and gender are synonymous are more a part of the problem than of the solution; they're unwitting "tools" of that transgender ideology.
Yep -- "A lot of people think that using “gender” instead of “sex” came from old-fashioned squeamishness around the word “sex.” But there was another reasonably good reason for it: the word “sex” has different meanings, so other terms are sometimes needed to ensure clarity. In the 1960s and 70s, as “sex” came to be more likely to refer to sexual activity than biological distinctions as sexual intercourse started to be more frequently discussed in public, and so it arguably made sense to start using “gender” in certain contexts instead." Cults take language and manipulate it or change the meaning to confuse adherents and keep them in the cult.
Stella, relative to your comments about gender identity, you might have some interest in this latest from Andrew Doyle:
"What is 'gender identity'?; Why are so many government policies based on a concept that no-one can define?": https://www.andrewdoyle.org/p/what-is-gender-identity
Apropos of which, any plans afoot to address my own comments here thereon? 😉🙂 https://stellaomalley.substack.com/p/i-hate-the-word-gender/comment/75556254
The problem there is that there's some merit in the concept of gender identity which is compounded by sloppy, inconsistent, ideologically motivated, and/or quite unscientific definitions of the term. As some evidence of a more or less scientifically tenable USE of the term, see this article in the Journal of Medical Genetics:
"Unexpected Ethical Dilemmas in Sex Assignment in 46,XY DSD due to 5-alpha Reductase Type 2 Deficiency" [apparently what Imane Khelif & Caster Semenya have]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5489130/
MedicalGenetics: "However, reports that over half of patients who underwent a virilizing puberty adopted an adult male gender identity have challenged this practice. .... More recent studies showing that over half of patients who underwent a virilizing puberty because their gonads were not removed adopted a male gender identity in adulthood have challenged this practice. .... The goals of sex assignment of rearing are to assign a sex with the greatest likelihood for concordant gender identity in adulthood. Gender identity develops over time. It is based on sex chromosomes, androgen exposure, psychosocial development, cultural expectations, family dynamics and social situation."
> "I hate the word 'gender' ..."
I can more than sympathize -- an absolute dog's breakfast with virtually every last man, woman, and otherkin having their own idiosyncratic and contradictory definitions for the term. No wonder everyone is riding madly off in all directions -- not much of a basis for any forward progress.
But you certainly cover many of the high points in a more or less coherent and cogent definition for the term. However, I kinda think you -- and Genspect -- go off into the weeds yourselves with some rather glaring contradictions, incoherent feminist ideology, and anti-scientific howlers. For instance, in the latter, Genspect says:
Genspect: "females with ... CAH ... are typically raised as girls and continue in a female gender identity in adulthood."
Yet later they say:
"... the theory of gender identity, a belief system which posits that every one of us has an invisible, unprovable and unfalsifiable gender identity. We simply don’t believe that the case for gender identity has been made ..."
So, which is it? Do CAH "girls" have a "female gender identity" or don't they? You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Further, you both say:
"Gender is a culturally variable set of behavior and personality EXPECTATIONS applied to sexed bodies."
Yet you later endorse Merriam-Webster's more rational perspective which is more or less antithetical to the above:
Merriam-Webster: "gender refers to 'the behavioral, cultural, or emotional traits typically associated with one sex.' ...."
But as you also point out, many of "those behavioural and cultural traits" are more or less bred in the bone. While they're not intrinsic to any or either sex, they are, as you've pointed out, often more typical of one sex than the other while not being unique to either.
Again, it looks like you're trying to have your cake and eat it too. And apparently to pander to various feminists in the crowd who seem to think that sexual stereotypes -- AKA "gender" -- is something hatched in the inner sanctums of "The Patriarchy!!11!!!" for sole purpose of "oppressing" women. Those stereotypes are often the result of those behavioural differences, on average, between men and women. They aren't cut from whole cloth as too many feminists seem to "think".
Finally, in the unscientific howler department, you and too many others insist -- sans any evidence at all -- on the "immutability of biological sex". Genspect further asserts, in that same unscientific howler department, that:
Genspect: "The sex of an individual is based on their reproductive anatomy and is determined by the type of gamete this anatomy is organized, through natural development, to produce. For over 99.9% of people, the sex of a person as female or male is unambiguous, determined at conception, and observable, whether prior to birth (by chromosomal analysis or sonogram) or at birth."
Absolutely no reputable biological journal says anything of the sort. In fact, standard biological definitions stipulate that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless:
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990 (see the Glossary)
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3063-1
https://twitter.com/pwkilleen/status/1039879009407037441 (Oxford Dictionary of Biology)
Technically speaking, we are all born sexless, although most of us ACQUIRE one at puberty, and can lose it -- have our sex category membership cards revoked -- any time thereafter for one reason or another.
For some elaborations on those themes, you might want to take a gander at my open letter to the erstwhile reputable journal "Cell" -- copy to Colin Wright -- which had asked, apparently in all seriousness, "Is 'sex' a useful category?":
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/is-sex-a-useful-category
Some reason to argue that you and Genspect are contributing to the "reasons" that Cell has so argued by bastardizing and corrupting the biological terminology on which so much of biology and our whole "civilization" rests -- if rather precariously.
Of further relevance to the above, you might also have some interest in my comment on a post -- "Kudos to Alberta's Premier For Her New Gender Legislation — But It Doesn't Go Far Enough" -- by a Canadian doctor on gender ideology in this neck of the woods:
https://dredles.substack.com/p/kudos-to-albertas-premier-for-her/comment/75333858