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Original poster

Are 'sex' and 'gender' interchangable / rude words in other languages?

36 replies

raisinsarenottheonlyfruit · 27/11/2017 17:45

Long before trans ideology was a "thing", people in the UK started using the word 'gender' when they mean 'sex'.
e.g."gender reveal baby parties" when really they mean "sex".

Obviously a significant reason for this is that people see the word "sex" as rude and "gender" as a polite alternative.

Is it the same or different in other languages?

Do you know the words for 'sex' and 'gender' in any other languages? What are they? Are either of them considered rude? Do people say 'gender' when they really mean sex in that language? Or vice versa?

On another thread, we were wondering if there's any link between people using these words interchangably and how quickly the TRA idea that gender=sex is accepted in countries.

If we get a few examples we could have a look at Google Trends and see if we can see any diffence between countries for the rise of terms related to TRA ideology, which could be really interesting.

OP posts:
zzzzz · 27/11/2017 18:39

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Original poster
raisinsarenottheonlyfruit · 27/11/2017 18:37

pisacake interesting! So in Indonesian, the word for sex literally means ""type of genitals"? If so, there's no room for ambiguity there then is there?

I'm curious, has there been a similar rise in trains rights activits and the associated ideology in Indonesia?

OP posts:
picklemepopcorn · 27/11/2017 18:36

30 years ago I believed sex was a verb and gender a noun. I think I was wrong.

OlennasWimple · 27/11/2017 18:35

I always think of and her mother struggling to say the word "sex" when I read "gender" on a form when it should really say "sex"

pamish · 27/11/2017 18:34

Spanish seems to mix up him and her when translated into English - I spend time with Spanish-speaking people and their English both spoken and written often used Him for women. Maybe it's dominant in the language?
.

Original poster
raisinsarenottheonlyfruit · 27/11/2017 18:32

Ontopofthesunset that's interesting! I'm surprised it's so recently been the seen as the same word.

But - feminists were talking about gender and sex being different much earlier that, weren't we/they?

Thinking aloud... there was utopian 70s feminist fiction like Women On The Edge of Time by Marge Piercy for example, where everyone was called "per" rather than him or her and didn't have male / female genders, I can't remember the exact language used though, but surely that's based on an idea that sex and gender are different?

(Frustrating! An interview with the author here but no mention of gender / sex!)

When did sex and gender start meaning differen things?

OP posts:
pamish · 27/11/2017 18:31

When did the first Gender Studies course replace Women's Studies?

Elendon · 27/11/2017 18:30

French has distinct gender nouns with the prefix la and le.

Gender was always distinct from biological sex.

And I do agree that the mention of the word sex regarding identifying biological class brings out a certain prissy attitude, but especially with men. They get all in a fluster with it. Women are much more stoical and pragmatic in the biology.

pisacake · 27/11/2017 18:08

In Indonesian there is 'jenis kelamin', where 'jenis' means type. Kelamin is used in other contexts, e.g., 'penyakit kelamin' is 'veneral disease' (penyakit = sickness or disease), 'alat kelamin' (alat means tool or part) is 'genitals'.

There is no word for gender, because gender is a made up modern concept, so they have adopted 'gender' directly from English, e.g., 'kesetaraan gender' means 'gender equality'.

Ontopofthesunset · 27/11/2017 17:55

Well, remember, the use of the word 'gender' to mean something separate from grammatical or biological gender is relatively recent because, historically, the word 'gender' did just mean 'sex' when not applied to grammar.

My large Collins Dictionary from 1991 (so just over 26 years ago) gives the following meanings of 'gender':

  1. a set of two or more grammatical categories into which the nouns of a certain language are divided, sometimes but not necessarily corresponding to the sex of the referent when animate
  2. any of the categories, such as masculine, feminine, neuter or common within such a set
  3. (informal) the state of being male, female or neuter
  4. (informal) all the members of one sex: the female gender.

Not a squeak about identity or social constructs or any of the things that in the intervening 26 years gender appears to have come to mean.

So to old people like me who grew up with one meaning of the word, it's pretty strange to be told constantly by teenagers that 'gender' and 'sex' are two different things. They may be now, but they weren't for most of my life.

MrGHardy · 27/11/2017 17:55

In German I am only aware of the word Geschlecht used for both, but probably more meaning sex. One might add soziales Geschlecht when differentiating.

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