Explaining gender vs sex to dd

I had a simile chat with my DC. In essence I said, similar to chicken drizzle cake, that sex is what you are born with and can't be changed and gender is about choices we make. I didn't talk about expectations of society and some people but rather asked them some true or false questions such as:
Do only women have long hair?
Do only men fart?
Can some women be taller then some men?
Can only women have babies?

That sort of thing.

The only difficulty they had is when I asked about breastfeeding and my eldest DC said he'd been told in PSHE that men can breastfeed as they can use a fake breast and feed the baby via it .

I showed them a Venn diagram to kick off the discussion.

Blowfishlady - I have had this on school forms and also crossed out gender. We also had sex assigned at birth , again I had to cross this out ....this is coming from a council, who makes cuts to services for elderly and disabled but happy to waste money on pronoun badges

@PetraDelphiki

gender is the reason thousands of babies are aborted before birth.

gender is the reason you need to show your daughter how to walk with her keys poking out between her fingers.

gender is the reason she'll be called frigid if she refuses sex; or a slut of she has sex.

gender is the reason why your daughter will be routinely expected to do domestic unpaid labour.

gender is the reason why, if she has children, she'll be sneered at whatever her choices (but the father will be lauded as a hero for occasionally changing a nappy)

I've discussed sex and gender with my 10 year old son many times. I've explained that sex is either male or female and that this is the same for all mammals (biological reality). I've explained about the tiny percentage of people who have intersex conditions.

I've told him that post-puberty men are generally physically stronger and larger than women, humans are just like other mammals in this respect. That male and female skeletons are different. He knows that our brains are the same and that both boys and girls are capable of being rocket scientists and fire fighters and prime minister but that woman over the centuries have been denied these opportunities because of their sex.

Around gender we have always discussed how it's the way society tries to control the behaviour of people women We have watched children's toys adverts and then discussed why they are trying to enforce a particular set of behaviours or expectations on one sex or the other.

He knows that mum doesn't have a gender and he knows that he doesn't have to have one either however much people may try and force him to. Much like our conversations about religion really I use the way my parents treat him and his male cousin differently from his female cousin and I explain that this is exactly what I mean by gender, i.e. that one child is supposed to behave in a particular way because of their sex.

At the moment it's not an issue but I'll carry on having these discussions as he gets older. I'm not positioning this to him as a feminist issue as much as a human one.

In three years time all this confusing talk may have died down. We live in hope.

Ok, then that is an example of gender being the traditional term for sex in many spheres of activity. So neither new nor bonkers.

I am willing to bet you've been filling in similarly worded forms for years and never really noticed. It's only recently that the word gender would have leapt out as having a distinct meaning that might be important.

lottie they weren’t asking for it in addition to sex. So the forms would have bits to fill out saying NameAgeGender_ etc.

Blobfishlady were they definitely asking about gender in addition to sex? Not as a synonym for sex?

As mentioned, it is standard in biology (and I suspect medicine) to use the work gender biologically, so meaning sex, rather than socially. This may be changing of course.

I do think there is a huge section of the population who use gender as a 'polite' version of sex, equivalent to using lady for woman, because sex also refers to... sex!

This is all in preparation for about 3 years time when she will get the talk at school from gendered intelligence (yes really)...I want her to be properly ready to rebut the girl/boy brain born in the wrong body stuff!!

Maybe present her with the facts- all the facts- and then she can decide what her opinion is based on those.

depends on

I tell my children that sex is objective (physical, material, real). Gender is subjective (depends of personal views or circumstances, ideas, thoughts or beliefs).

@UpstartCrow - thank you. Actually having a similar conversation with my 11 year old dd. She thought the word sex was comical and is more comfortable with the word gender. Trying to explain they are two different things.

Thanks upstart. Sorry, didn’t want to derail but not important enough to warrant its own thread.

Actual roffle!

::::::PSA:::::::

*Gendered behaviour is different in different cultures

Gendered behaviour is not fixed, it changes across time and culture.*

This is really important. Are there any mnetters more knowledegable in cultural anthropology and similar disciplines who would be willing to draw up a list of examples for us all to use?

Its people being bonkers. The correct term is 'sex'. Everyone has one no matter how they present, feel, or identify.

In the last few months I have been asked to confirm ds’s gender twice - once for registering for school and once for registering at GP’s. Both times I crossed it out and wrote sex, it wasn’t commented on at all (as far as I know). Is gender the standard term now? Or is it just people being bonkers?

#TGLWGH

Also to take it down to a easy simplistic level possibly for younger children I’d use the blue/pink programming that is aimed at children as a great example - they see it really quickly particularly once the girls start hating pink! This also blends quite nicely into the blue/ pink colouring of the transgender flag - nice clear message!

From what I understand of it, the new emphasis on gender is strongly reactionary, a force for social conservatism.

We've had decades of slow progress in the direction of 'your sex does not determine your destiny (inequities of reproduction notwithstanding)', so freedom to behave as you wish, do whatever you want with your life and change your mind and alter your body, should you wish, as you go along.

Now, a reactionary movement seems to be promoting the idea that gendered stereotypes should be destiny. That you must identify your gender early and stick to a narrow form of stereotypical behaviour for the rest of your life. Problematic in many ways but also confounding logic in the sense that social attitudes, so a society's gender stereotypes, are forever changing.

Sex is biology.
Gender is the way we are expected to behave based on our sex.

The genderists can't agree on what gender means so you've got no chance!

The original meaning was sex role/ stereotypes blue boys pink girls that's easy enough.

If you want to try and cover off what she might hear on the net re "internal gender id" etc is trickier as it's bollocks.

Gender is the way people are socialised to behave according to their sex.

Gendered behaviour changes over time according to fashion.

Gendered behaviour is different in different cultures

Gendered behaviour is not fixed, it changes across time and culture.

Sex is fixed.

Females are female all the world round, across all time.

But how they are treated, what they can wear, how free they are depends on the culture of where they live. For example, it was only this year that women in Saudi Arabia were allowed to drive. They are treated differently to males because of their sex.