To wish people wouldn’t say gender when they mean sex?

[AngeloMysterioso]

I am utterly convinced that half the reason this whole gender thing grew roots in the first place was because people who were too squeamish to utter the word sex just used gender instead. Now we have a situation where the two words have very different and distinct meanings which are having a great impact on women’s social and political position and people still continue to conflate the two. On the first page of the pregnancy board alone there are three threads discussing baby’s gender. I don’t want to be that killjoy who goes round correcting people but it’s really starting to grate!

Anyone else?

I was thinking this the other day. It's not a "gender" pay gap, it's definitely based on biological sex.

@5zeds

Until fairly recently they WERE interchangeable.

This, for many years gender did mean sex, it's a recent change.

5zeds : they may have seemed to have converged in most cases, but personally I have been discussing the constraints of gender since I was a student eons ago and discovered several urgent reasons to be a feminist.

And much as I am Gender Critical I can see that that conflation has not served Trans people well.

Shouldn’t we all be able to define ourselves by Dec and gender (separately) as we see fit?

Me: sex: female, gender: free, and fighting stereotyped gender based constraints.

Yanbu but this subject has really been done to death!

Yes even my cat has been asked her gender (meaning sex). Agree it was meant to be polite but it’s all gone wrong.

“This, for many years gender did mean sex, it's a recent change.”

No. It always meant gender. Then , “medium recently” it was lazily conflated to mean sex and many people adopted it as such, and now the difference is being made again.

Another trans bashing thread by stealth

Yanbu but this subject has really been done to death!

Until people stop saying gender when they mean sex, then it still needs saying

Another trans bashing thread by stealth

Hi, I am not trans but every single bloody organisation these days asks me my 'gender'. I don't have a fucking gender. So how am I 'bashing' anyone?

It needs correcting so yanbu.

I’m not sure gender and sex ever meant the same thing. I just think many people (me included) thought they did and while there is now a growing awareness among some people that they are different entities, it is very frustrating because the old ideas are entrenched. I mean, I think feminists were talking about the problems with gender at least way back in the seventies.

IAskTooManyQuestions

Please give me an example of the trans bashing taking place on this thread.

Not trans bashing to point out that sex has a different meaning to gender! But say it if it makes you feel better.

YANBU

Not as annoying as the pedants who reply to the "guess my baby's gender" post with "I think you mean sex" and "there are 29394 genders now."

Totally agree. People think saying "sex" is rude.

Another trans bashing thread by stealth

I don’t know what you’re complaining about. Are women not permitted to discuss ANYTHING without running it past those who identify as trans, first? Do we need permission? We’re expected to centre trans in almost every aspect of life and are having our descriptors changed without permission, but never get asked for our opinion by those people who identify as trans. There’s always someone who has to jump on ANY thread about sex and gender to whine about trans hate. Guess what, we don’t need your permission to discuss things that affect women. 🙄

In other words, I agree OP. 😁

Hi, I am not trans but every single bloody organisation these days asks me my 'gender'. I don't have a fucking gender.

I adopted a cat from a well-known cat charity last week.

All the cats on their website have their “gender” listed, not their sex. I wonder what David Attenborough would make of that.

Yanbu but this subject has really been done to death!

I don’t know anything about that, I just know that I’m spending a lot of time on the pregnancy boards at the moment and every time I see the word gender it makes me bristle.

If people want to use gender then let them, I've never seen an instance of anyone confused of what they mean.... Yes plenty trying to correct them, but still knowing exactly what the mean.

I only ever see it on here

Not as annoying as the pedants who reply to the "guess my baby's gender" post with "I think you mean sex"

Well, as I said I don’t want to be that person, but the two words have very different, very important meanings, don’t you think that matters?

If people want to use gender then let them, I've never seen an instance of anyone confused of what they mean....

If they aren’t confused about what they mean then why aren’t they using them properly?

Agree fully.

YANBU

I had to fight the urge not to go on one of the pregnancy/gender threads yesterday evening, and explain that scans are black and white and therefore will not tell you if you baby will come out with a predisposition to wearing pink or blue. But they can tell the babies sex from approximately 16 weeks by looking at the anatomy of the fetus!

Has the increased use of the word gender really affected women's rights? How?