Correcting gender to sex on threads

I've started correcting people on this as the sloppy use makes communication really difficult given the current climate. Sometimes it is not clear what the person is actually trying to communicate because of the way they're using "gender". It applies in conversation, and in the media. So it is my own personal mission from now on to question and correct when I come across it. Even if I just become a PITA I'm going to stick with it. I regret not doing so in hospital recently where the admission form asked my gender. They clearly did not want to know my gender. They wanted to know my sex. How can medics be prissy about the word sex????

I recently had to do some e-learning (NHS) and was really shocked that it stated several times that "Gender" is a protected characteristic under the equality act. I emailed them to correct them that "Sex" is the protected characteristic and that "Gender Reassignment" is a separate one entirely! This is in official training!!!!! Is it all a massive conspiracy???!

I think it started the ball rolling when sex became a verb, which was D.H. Lawrence's fault.

I'm sure you're right about the Victorians and one of the reasons it wouldn't have been a problem then is that nobody talked about sexual intercourse openly. I wish we could get back to the proper use of both words.

It probably changed when people started writing “yes please” on forms that asked for sex

I think it should be done using some discretion. But it can often be done in a light way.

Most people don't know they are making an error and they might have even been called out on using sex in the past. A lot of people these days feel worried most of the time about using the wrong words.

We had this in primary sex ed recently. I emailed to correct. Introducing the idea of same sex couples but calling them same gender couples!

I correct them, it really annoys me.

Ironically, Victorians had no issue using the word 'sex'.

They used both words correctly, and in the original sense: sex referred to the two groups of humans, females and males, and gender referred to the grammatical differences in certain non-English languages.

I’m certain half the reason the word gender became such a thing was because people didn’t like using the word sex.

It's happening more and more because even the NHS uses gender rather than sex on all their medical forms. Of all the areas of public sphere, medicine is surely THE most important area to record sex rather than gender identity - due to male and female bodies being so radically different, and our medical needs being so different. Yet, even the NHS has fallen for pomo queer-theory reality-denial.

I reckon a campaign should be for each of us to write into our local NHS Trust and ask them to use the word sex, not gender, on all their forms.

I'd like to know too, when 'sex' was dropped in favour of 'gender'. It's so prissy and 'Victorian' (Fetch me my smelling salts, someone said 'sex'! ), yet it must have crept in in the 70s/80s/90s when we were all supposed to be so up-front and looking at prudishness as a thing of the past.

So how did it come about?