BBC news article talks about the "gender" of horses

And as a side issue, I've genuinely wondered how biology teachers and animal breeders would get on without being able to talk about 'sexed' species and their dimorphic nature.

So, if the beeb can talk about the sex-specific issues of these beautiful animals (i.e. Males natural born moor frequently than females, more females needed to keep the breed alive), would it be too much to ask that the lived-experience of the adult humans can also be reported based on their sex?

‘Gender’ is also used meaning ‘biological sex’ in law in the UK. It’s a mess. It’s nonsensical.

Here’s an example. Embryos obviously have no gender. They have a sex. Very serious inherited medical conditions and disabilities arise obviously do not arise because of sex-stereotypes, ie gender. Yet...

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2008/22/schedule/2/crossheading/embryo-testing-and-sex-selection

It would be an ethical nightmare for humans, but would presumably be good for eg dairy farming..

So the technology exists to sort horse sperm into male or female before conception. Can this be applied to other species?

Anyone else see a potential problem with this being applied to humans? I can see it would be useful if you have a sex linked genetic condition, but in some countries sex selective abortion and infanticide are skewing the birth rates.

A Suffolk Punch foal is the first in the UK to have been born using technology to determine its gender.

Has science produced the first horse that can talk, thus allowing someone to ask the horse how it identified? If so it's even more impressive that it could answer questions while still in utero, clearly it's destined to grow up to be the Steven Hawking of the horse world.

Pondering while I was gardening -I suppose there might be a distinction between a sex stereotype and a gender stereotype.
A sex stereotype might be that men are stronger than women. Statistically at a population level that's true, because humans are physically dimorphic with a bimodal distribution of strengths , but for individuals it isn't (the distributions overlap) . Whereas a gender stereotype such as 'soccer is a girls' game' or 'soccer is a boys' game' is merely a cultural norm, applied to one sex or the other the opposite way round on each side of the Atlantic.

I'm so pleased that someone at the BBC saw sense and changed the wording. When I saw 'determine its gender' at about 6am this morning I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

For your 2) Why not 'Sex stereotypes/ roles etc'?

If the term 'gender' had never been invented then that's probably what we'd call them, and everything would be clearer. However, as unfortunately it has, 'gender stereotypes' shows what 'gender' relates to.

I think the way we handle it is to keep asking, "When you say gender, do you actually mean sex? They mean different things, you know."

Rinse and repeat until people get it. You can't have a discussion if people don't share a vocabulary. 🤷🏼‍♀️

I almost put in a complaint about this earlier, I see it's now been updated! The quote is the quote, but when they used the phrase "determine its gender" immediately before "sex-selection" it stood out as just idiocy...

I heard it on BBC Radio4 News at 12:00. The news reader did not quote anyone, just talked about the foal's "gender" then went straight on to mention "sex-sorted sperm technology".

It irritated me so much I was going to put in a complaint but I suppose that if the News Reader was reflecting what the stallion-owner said then there is not much point: it gives the BBC the perfect get-out.

I had no idea that the Suffolk Punch was so rare now BTW. Beautiful animals.

To be fair, it’s a bit like the biological inaccuracy of saying your animal has been ‘neutered’

Gender and sex used interchangeably was fine, until this was exploited to infringe on and attempt to erase sex and sex based rights. It's no longer fine, its important to separate the two: fixed fact and personality based choices likely to be fluid to some extent over a lifetime for everyone.

I'm afraid anyone talking to me about gender in horses is going to get me mentally assigning frost gendered/goliath gendered/bifluid demiboi pansexual gendered randomly to horses, because that's what gender now means as entirely separate to 'this is a male or a female horse'.

1. Sex - biological reality
2. Gender stereotypes/roles etc - societal expectations, constraints, conditioning, sex-based oppression,

Then arising form that we have
3) gender nonconforming - the common state of not fitting into the constraints of (2)

Hence
4) gender critical - the realisation that (2) is a problem, so seek to eliminate stereotypes and just let people be themselves

Or
5) the opposite, in which stereotypes are celebrated, gender nonconformity is therefore made into a problem for the person. ' Gender identity' is seen as more important than biological reality.

Something like that, anyway.

I use veterinary management software at work and the sex section states ‘gender’. I’d never seen it as anything other than interchangeable language in that setting. Does adding ‘identity’ to gender make a difference? It’s all very confusing.

Actually I'm fairly sure I remember one of the Canadian court cases establishing that 'prancing' in a Diva way was proof of gender identity.

I've never actually seen a human prance, but horses might do better at this. We don't have a definition on 'Diva' yet though.

Now fascinated on how we explore the gender identity of horses. Do we wave pink bridles and blue bridles? Fluffy blankets and macho blankets? Gaze preference? Whether they show a girlish flouce or a higher pitched neigh? How does one even start imposing truly stupid and regressive human stereotypes on horses?

@ErrolTheDragon I used to use the word 'gender' like that too as did many people.

Thats interesting - they've changed it to sex, its just the quote from the owner of the stud that uses 'gender'.

To be fair, they are quoting the guy that owns the stallion services business. (Although I don't understand why he used the word "gender" at all).

I’d love to see an article on the history of gender, if any journalists are watching, I think many would find it useful and interesting.