"We can know the baby's sex but not its gender"

[Rumplestrumpet]

Hi all, I'm feeling a bit dim on this but know it's a sensitive subject so didn't want to ask IRL ....

I was chatting to a colleague about her pregnancy and asked if she knows whether it's a boy or girl. She said she didn't want to find out because it doesn't matter. I agreed - saying of course a baby is a baby and who cares what sex it is. But she explained "Well anyway we can only know its sex, but not its gender". Someone else nodded in agreement and I just kept quiet... But honestly I have no idea what this means.

I personally am critical of the idea that your sex has to define you, and hate the sexist stereotypes people fall for with small children ("boys will be boys" and all that nonsense). But it didn't sound like she meant this.

What would you understand by this?

Fwiw she's in her 20s and I'm an old fogey now so it may be a generational thing

@pigsDOfly

A match of sex and gender surely just mean that the person feels their gender is at one with their sex, as apposed to someone with gender dysphoria who feels their gender is at odds with their sex.

A match of sex and gender doesn't mean that they have to dress in pink frills if they are a woman or have a big butch attitude to life if they are a man.

Woman are not drag queens they are nuanced human beings. They are perfectly able feel happy to be a woman in a woman's body whilst enjoying less traditionally womanly things.

The same with men. Many men can appear quite 'camp' but will have no thought that their gender is anything but male.

It seems to me that this idea that there are hundreds of different genders is a ridiculous attempt at trying to pigeonhole people. Confining them into some sort of stereotype at all costs.

When I was growing up people didn't bang on about gender and certainly, there were people who didn't fit into the usual male or female stereotypes, they got on with life, they didn't need labels to tell them what they were.

Why do we need to slot everyone in somewhere and confine them. I prefer to accept that all human beings are different and on a spectrum of male and female without all this silly labelling.

Thanks for your response. It seems like you've swapped the word 'match' to 'be at one with' rather than answer my question. If someone identifies as a woman, and their sex is female, is their gender 'at one with' my sex? On what basis is it 'at one with' it or not?

Is this person trans? If not, why not?

What does 'having a female sexed body' got to do with 'feeling like one is a woman'? The word woman used to mean that you were female-sexed, but clearly it does not now and is, apparently, transphobic to say so. So is this a mismatch of/ non-correlation of/ non-correspondence between/ being at odds with sex and gender?

Not picking on you pigsDOfly just trying to voice my question in different ways.

Sounds like she's being a bit woke. She'll wise up a bit when her baby's here...

I see nothing but misogyny and homophobia in gender ideology. I see nothing but strict societal conformity in 'boys things' and 'girls things' I see a huge step backwards in 'lady brain'. It's the most dreadful and oppressive nonsense.

Spot on.

Ffs..

@StrawberryLipstickStateOfMind

I see nothing but misogyny and homophobia in gender ideology. I see nothing but strict societal conformity in 'boys things' and 'girls things' I see a huge step backwards in 'lady brain'. It's the most dreadful and oppressive nonsense.

Spot on.

And people are falling for it hook line and sinker.

@Rumplestrumpet

Thanks ssd, that's what I did.

Water I get that, but I just wondered does it need to have a "gender" in that case? Shouldn't we be fighting against gendered stereotypes? Like I said, I would understand if she said she didn't want society's views of gender put onto her child. I get that. Feels like a feminist approach. Not sure that's what she meant though

This is exactly why many feminists (gender critical ones) OP are being vilified at present. Because we think that as gender is a social construct based on sexist stereotypes we should be avoiding gender altogether - it's harmful to both sexes. And it's got everyone in a right utter linguistic illogical nightmare as PC people conflate the two then seek to justify illogical positions which have no basis in biological truth or fact.

This is exactly what I found weird about some of the rhetoric - at one point everyone was cheering 'let clothes be clothes' no need for pink for girls, blue for boys, someone's sex says nothing about them other than what biological functions they might be able to use and one being of a class of people that are largely oppressed by the other.

Then all of a sudden it got flipped and the correct thing to do was encourage children to think that if they didn't meet certain stereotypes (see DSM upthread) they were in fact the wrong sex.

I used to be confident in saying that femininity and being female were separate things and someone doesn't need to be one to be the other, and vice versa - men can be feminine, women can be masculine, sex is one measure and how fem/masc you are is a completely separate one. But now I worry someone would see something offensive in that. Which is a shame because I found thinking about that very freeing.

Telling girls that if they like being active and adventurous and short hair, then they have a male soul.

And what if they like being active and adventurous but prefer wearing their hair long? What is their gender then?

@EdgeOfACoin

Telling girls that if they like being active and adventurous and short hair, then they have a male soul.

And what if they like being active and adventurous but prefer wearing their hair long? What is their gender then?

Non binary of course!

Gender is just personality, but society has confused the whole thing but insisting personality has to mean a stereotype. You like football and muddy activities - you must be a 'gendered' boy. As someone said up-thread, it does more harm than good and reinforces misogyny and homophobia.

Gender and sex cannot match or be at odds unless you are talking about stereotypes placed on one particular sex

I wish the simplicity of this wisdom could gain more traction in the media and wider world.

With this woman, OP, I disagree that she is 'a fool,' or 'a pretentious twat.'

She is possibly trying to be responsive to all of the gender/trans/etc issues that are circulating and exploding all over the place right now, and maybe it sounds clunky in every day convo, but she's having a bash at doing the right thing.

Who knows? It's a bloody minefield. Building understanding and embracing fluidity from the ground/birth upwards is possibly the right thing to do.

My offspring are late teens/young adults now and had I been asked what gender they were before they were born I would have answered without a second thought, assuming gender was being used interchangeably with sex. I think gender was definitely seen as a more polite word but most people considered them to effectively be the same thing.
Not now though. If I was pregnant now and someone asked what gender my baby was I would make a point of saying that their sex was male or female. Because the words are used differently now - sex is biological fact and in my opinion, sex and sex based rights matter. So someone could be differentiating between sex and gender for more than one reason.

Gender and sex cannot match or be at odds unless you are talking about stereotypes placed on one particular sex

As someone in another thread put it - it's a bit like saying your race matches your nationality.

It's not just younger women though, my mother is on board with gender ideology too.

I should have said mainly younger women I suppose!

Some of those old issues exist as although better there isn't equality at work etc. There are also new issues- online porn etc, and now of course trans ideology. I think lib fem is a huge problem for women as well. It's not feminism, well I'd label it 'get your tits out for the lads feminism'.

Oh that reminds me of something I saw on FB this morning, can't find the post now but it was something like, "If Sex work is so empowering and great for women why do people need to be trafficked at all and why aren't they trafficking accountants and engineers"

@AryaStarkWolf

Some of those old issues exist as although better there isn't equality at work etc. There are also new issues- online porn etc, and now of course trans ideology. I think lib fem is a huge problem for women as well. It's not feminism, well I'd label it 'get your tits out for the lads feminism'.

Oh that reminds me of something I saw on FB this morning, can't find the post now but it was something like, "If Sex work is so empowering and great for women why do people need to be trafficked at all and why aren't they trafficking accountants and engineers"

What do you mean my approach to feminism is exclusionary and aggressive? I'm right and so are my clique so fuck off.

I still don't understand why the pregnant woman felt the need to lecture the OP who hadn't actually asked her whether or not the foetus in question was identifying as a unicorn? She only asked one question, but that wasn't it, so why did she get an answer to a question she'd not asked and why did a nearby work colleague feel the need to nod like an obedient donkey? Makes literally no sense at all.

The Church of Woke is all around us and I don't subscribe to any religion so I shan't be signing up to be a disciple, no matter how many threats I receive as a result.

It's not feminism, well I'd label it 'get your tits out for the lads feminism'

I've never heard it called this, but yes. Women are STILL naked/wearing bikinis/decorative etc. but somehow, the male-dominated industries have encouraged the rebranding so that we're all giddily finding or not that being half-dressed is in fact 'empowering.'

Oh look...women still have no clothes on and men are watching.

Nothing changes.

I honestly didn't expect such strong reactions, but thanks to everyone for helping me understand the issues better.

Fwiw, this colleague is a good, kind person, and even if I disagree with her on this issue (which is seems I do though of course we can only guess at what she meant) I have no doubt it came from good intentions.

I do think it's a shame we can't discuss this more comfortably in society today - not least because I would have liked to ask her to explain her viewpoint, but I honestly wouldn't want to get caught up in a gender debate in the workplace.

I also think most PPs here are actually wanting the same thing - for women (and men) to be free from the shackles of stereotypes and the misogyny in our society. But we're trying to get there via different routes - and it seems one actually embraces those stereotypes to get there

I do think it's a shame we can't discuss this more comfortably in society today

Me too. But unfortunately you're not allowed to have an opinion other than agreement with this woke BS otherwise you're phobic X Y or Z.

I also think most PPs here are actually wanting the same thing - for women (and men) to be free from the shackles of stereotypes and the misogyny in our society. But we're trying to get there via different routes - and it seems one actually embraces those stereotypes to get there

That's my feeling too OP, and part of what makes it all so frustrating! Quite often the only people who know the same technical terms as me are the ones who'd call me a TERF if they knew my thoughts on gender...

CardinalLolzy

Sorry if I'm being a bit dim but I don't really understand your response to my post.

I haven't changed what I said or meant just using different words.

At one with = match. Perhaps match would probably have been a better word to use in my second post; perhaps match is less ambiguous.

The response by pigsDOfly has helped me articulate something to myself that has been nagging at me as being 'off' for ages: the belief that individuals 'have' a gender. We don't. Gender is not a thing that belongs to anyone. Gender is the term for the collection of regressive sex-based stereotypes which society imposes onto those born male or female (and those stereotypes change over time and from culture to culture across the world).

Individuals can actively embrace or reject some/most/all of the stereotypes associated with their sex or the opposite sex (and I'd argue vanishingly few embrace all); equally some individuals may not give so much as a passing thought to whether something they like/do/wear is a gender stereotype. But that still doesn't mean we have a gender. We have a biological sex and then we have preferences of expression, facets of personality, likes and dislikes.

I honestly don't care how femininely a man wants to dress (or vice versa), and no one else should care either. No one should encounter violence or discrimination because they feel happier wearing the clothing more usually associated with the opposite sex. But dressing like a woman - or claiming some nebulous indefinable womanly 'feeling' - doesn't make you one, and it's an insult to women to think it does. We are a sex class of our own with our own hard fought sex-based rights, not simply a place where anyone designated 'not-man' can collect or be dumped.

@EleanorOlephantisjustfine

I fear for future generations.

Exactly this.

@WaterOffADucksCrack

Sex is biological, gender is a social construct, that's what she was referring to I believe.

That's exactly what I thought.