Gender as synonym for sex

*Sex Matters

Building on what @PriOn1 and @Boomboom22 say, I'm borrowing a helpful screenshot from another thread, as Sex Matter put it so clearly when explaining why you can't ban children from changing their gender (see image at the end of this post):

This is the thread that it came from for context:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4848610-sex-and-gender-a-simple-foundational-understanding

Also, to add... This thread and the one linked above are really helping me to get my approach straight for when I speak to the school about their PHSE/RSE materials. This is my thread in case it's of interest to anyone:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4848610-sex-and-gender-a-simple-foundational-understanding

My meeting has been pushed back to September (my request, and not linked to the government delay in getting advice out) so it's incredibly helpful to read more thoughts from others on the words sex and gender. I'm adding a cross reference to here in my thread to so that I can keep everything in one place.

Agree with the above. It's too late when judges are using the word interchangeably beyond the intended purpose. So we need to fully separate them. Even better of we say biological sex as no link to stereotypes or behaviour just bodies with individual personalities.

Much as it would be nice to reclaim the language, I don’t think it’s possible.

As you have observed, many people still use the two words interchangeably.

Transactivists actively encouraged that interchangeable use in law (the GRA being the obvious example) in the full knowledge that it would build in confusion.

They set about changing the meaning of the word. This was not accidental.

It is in some ways very similar to the way they are trying to change the meaning of the word woman to include some men, because changing the meaning of words used in law is a short cut and much easier than arguing for those men to gain the right to use women’s spaces through open debate and changing the law itself.

So if politicians and those high in the civil service and others in positions of power are using gender to mean gender identity and we ignore that change or spend our efforts in every case checking the language to see which it is being used as, or whether it’s deliberately being used to sow confusion, then we end up fighting an increasingly obscure argument.

Whereas if we insist that the word which has a clear and unambiguous meaning is used whenever it’s important, we can be much clearer over what we are arguing about. To which end, no it is probably not worth correcting people on threads talking about “gender reveal” precisely because it’s not important. In addition, I think many people would just roll their eyes and think it is precious, which is the opposite of what we want.

Once it is fully established in law that segregation is by sex, for example, then we can leave the words to evolve in a natural way and we might see a natural reversion to the common meaning.

But I don’t think what you are proposing is possible, OP. Language is being deliberately manipulated by those pushing gender ideology and I don’t think we can easily push back against that aspect, other than to hold firm on the meanings of words that ought to be utterly clear, such as the words women and female. Those are much more important words to protect.

I think that when gender is used, we should ask for clarity "do you mean sex or gender identity?" Using a word that can be interpreted as both is a bit too easy for people not to take advantage of. I don't think we should allow the assumption that gender automatically means identity.

Totally agree. When I talk about my thoughts on the difference between gender and sex (e.g. with friends - I'm now having tentative conversations on all this stuff), I also talk about the "old" meaning and the "new" meaning of the word gender in this way. Drawing out the need for clarification helps as a start point for me to then say "72+ genders is fine" etc for someone with a gender identity belief, because it's very clear that I'm not using it as a synonym for sex.

In fact more often than not, it's this pivotal point that has led people to say to say to me that they don't have a gender or a gender identity either. It means that they can still be kind towards those that believe that they do, while making sense of their own thoughts.

Obviously it doesn't help anyone who needs you to believe that they literally are the opposite sex. But then I'm not trying to facilitate that. I'm an advocate for third spaces for those that don't feel comfortable using facilities and services that are commensurate with their sex. If someone tells me that this invalidates their identity and that they consider me transphobic I'll say that I accept that from their perspective I probably am. Same as I'd accept being called blasphemous (from the perspective of a Christian) if I say that I don't believe God exists.

It's been pointed out to me on this board (and I agree) that there is a difference between religion and gender identity, because religion doesn't need validation from anyone else. Someone can believe in God without others needing to believe in God for God to be real to them. If someone needs me to agree that they are a woman when I can see that they are not, the fragility of their belief is their problem. Not mine. They are very welcome to believe that they are the opposite sex - and at this point they are using gender and sex as synonyms of each other. I will continue to believe that they are not the opposite sex but I will happily say that I support their belief that they are whatever gender they say they are i.e. I will make it clear that the words have different meanings for me. But my support does not extend to supporting them to cross other people's boundaries or describing body functions or parts with "gender-neutral" language (periods, penises, smear tests etc). I'm yet to test this specific point of conflict out in real life but I'm getting increasingly confident about doing so if required.

I believe that they changed a lot of forms to stop people writing "hilarious" things such as "lots please". I can see how that would get wearing.

That's the real purpose of this thread, isn't it? To continue a debate from another thread, not to address the question raised in the original post.

Tedious.

I think, if we could go back in time, that keeping hold of gender in the traditional sense, and forcing the use of "gender identity" when that was what was meant, would make the biggest change to where we are now.

By thinking gender is synonymous with identity rather than the perception and consequence of your sex, we handed TRAs the default position in a lot of legislation.

I think that when gender is used, we should ask for clarity "do you mean sex or gender identity?" Using a word that can be interpreted as both is a bit too easy for people not to take advantage of. I don't think we should allow the assumption that gender automatically means identity.

This is such a clear and excellently expressed summary it should be pinned somewhere!

Because it feels like living in this episode of Doctor who, when the replica becomes the original.

Ah, maybe that's the issue - I'm just not reading old-enough stuff. Maybe it's there more in 17th/18th-century texts?

Not in this sense, that I've ever seen.

I see your point OP but personally I find the two words sex and gender being distinct from each other helpful.

Gender and gender identity are helpful words when describing things that relate to a gender identity belief. For example, I'm fine with there being 72+ genders or (single occupancy, fully enclosed) gender-neutral toilets and so on. I accept that gender dysphoria is real and is very distressing for those that experience it.

I don't have a gender. But I accept that others believe they do and that for some people, their gender (or gender identity) means more to them than their sex.

But laws need to be sex-based. And children need to be taught that there are two sexes, that some people are same-sex attracted (or bi-sexual). These are facts. It is also a fact that sexism exists and that society and religions place restrictions and expectations on people because of their sex. I don't need the word gender to describe any of this.

Also, I think it would help children with gender dysphoria to understand unequivocally that they have a sex, and that their feelings of their gender are in no way linked to sexist stereotypes. Trying to claim back the word is a pointless task. Better to embrace its capture, set it free and make a clear distinction between the two: fact versus belief. Of course anyone who has a belief in gender and gender identity will consider it to be fact... that's fine as long as they don't expect me to do so, nor the law nor schools when they are educating children (unless they are explaining it as a belief). I'll even use preferred pronouns, though not for children, to show that I support their belief, just as I try to avoid Muslim prayer time when I schedule regular meetings at work with colleagues in Muslim countries. But I don't need to believe it myself.

In the very recent past (less than half a century) gender and sex have been treated as interchangeable by some people. And that recent past is what most people's frame of reference is.

But as you say, 'gender' to mean your personal identity, is even newer and the majority of people don't use it that way. And I think trying to enforce that as a meaning is possibly counterproductive - we're doing the tra's job for them! Maybe we should just be allowing people to use the word gender to mean sex (it's usually obvious when they mean it that way) and focus on arguing with the tra's that gender identity is not the same as sex.

Still

... Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

'No sex in Ireland ...' I don't think Flanagan used the word 'intercourse' (as Larkin did, of course). Too many syllables for the cute hoor.

by the 19th century obsolete

Ah, maybe that's the issue - I'm just not reading old-enough stuff. Maybe it's there more in 17th/18th-century texts?

The etymology section for the synonymous meaning of gender makes for interesting reading. Lots of usage from 1474 right up to the present day.

I'm sure, but they'd really have had to go looking for it, as etymologists do. I do not recall ever seeing it in any pre-WWII thing I've ever read, whereas I've seen a lot of "sex". What's the highest-profile usage in that etymology? Any work we'd have heard of? And in any context that doesn't fit "poetic/figurative/jocular"?

My 13 volume OED makes it clear that gender for sex was always rare compared to the other useu and by the 19th century obsolete except in a 'humorous' context. All three uses where there were other, better words for the same thing had been abandoned, and gender was used only for the standard grammatical term.

And so it remained until Judith Butler and that evil bloke in New Zealand decided to revive it in the late 1960s to describe the ways women are oppressed by society.

It took well over a decade before it started to leak away from that extreme specialism and be used for 'sex'. By people who thought 'sex' sounded a bit rude.

Sexual intercourse began in 1963. In England. Slightly earlier in Ireland, it arrived with television in 1961 (according to Oliver J Flanagan). It's another word that just didn't get used in normal conversation.

It was really striking in a drama about the Brontes. In the drama the script had her saying “Is it because of my gender?” to a publisher.

It just sounded so anachronistic hearing someone wearing period costume saying that. She would have said sex. And the word sex wouldn’t have been used publicly to refer to intercourse. It would have been some euphemism like “carnal knowledge” or something.

Many words have more than one meaning. For example, putting money in the bank probably doesn't require a trip to the side of a river. That's usually not a problem. Sometimes, though, arguments and ideologies (or metaphysical speculations) may equivocate (i.e. they may draw conclusions illicitly by mixing different meanings).

That's exactly what has happened with trans ideology regarding 'sex' and 'gender'. There's a simple way of escaping from fallacies of equivocation, however: disambiguate.

Here's an example.

If 'gender' means the same as 'sex', there can be no sense to talk of a person's gender mismatching their sex, as that would be the person's sex mismatching their sex, which is absurd.

If 'gender' means something other than 'sex', and we want to consider whether someone's gender matches their sex, we will need an explanation of how something other than sex might match or not with sex. (Usually only things of the same general sort can be held to match with one another, after all.) In the absence of such explanation, we conclude, again, there is no sense to talk of a person's gender mismatching their sex.

Overall, then, we conclude, whether 'gender' means the same as 'sex' or not, talk of someone's gender failing to match their sex is plain nonsense.

Of course matters may look different if we equivocate, as Stonewall & co. have shown time and again.

tldr: Don't fall for fallacies of equivocation: disambiguate.

It's interesting how many are unaware of how recent "gender = sex" is. It's firmly second half of 20th century. Before that, you would not see it in any sort of standard/formal setting - it was figurative/poetic/jocular.

It arose because "sex" came to be used for "intercourse" in the same period. So people moved away from "sex" to avoid that.

And now we're just making a similar move - "gender" has come to be used for "personality", so many of us feel compelled move away from "gender" again to avoid that. And we may as well go back to "sex" because we're maybe a bit less uptight about "intercourse"...

Just remember to hyphenate properly. I'm still grumpy that the thread title from a few years ago "New group-sex matters" was changed.

In the very recent past (less than half a century) gender and sex have been treated as interchangeable by some people.

For hundreds of years gender and genre were used interchangeably by some people.

For hundreds of years gender and engender were used interchangeably by some people.

For hundreds of years people who wanted to analyse and describe grammar have used gender with a specific unique meaning for classes of words in some languages.

I believe that only the grammatical usage is in any way valid and useful, and that the word would be retired in all other contexts because it has been weaponised against women.

And because sex is a perfectly good and useful word to describe the ancient and essential quality that is sex.