To think that sex and gender are the same thing?

[StNinian]

I don't buy into the distinction many people make between the two terms nowadays. "Gender" was never a word used to describe how one feels/identifies behaves until recently. It has long been synonymous with "sex". Just curious to see if anyone else agrees with me.

The spectrum idea with two poles and you can be closer to one pole than another makes NO sense at all, because there is nothing to directly compare! You might as well make a "spectrum" between two other arbitrary traits like: Where do you sit on the spectrum between Gemini and Pisces? Are you more Gemini, or more Piscean? It doesn't make any sense! It's not like saying someone has blonde hair or brown hair and the darkness of the colour denotes where on the spectrum you sit. That's objective, you can easily say this hair is darker than that hair, therefore this person is more brown-haired than blonde-haired.

I don't buy the spectrum idea either. It's either or - male or female.

Anything else is hugely subjective.

It also must be exhausting. Imagine trying to constantly work out where you stand, what box you fit in to, then having to adjust accordingly all the time. Imagine what you could be doing with the time you waste trying to categorise yourself.

Being male- man, boy, female - woman, girl and just liking and doing what you like and not giving a shit , would be so much easier. And more productive.

This.

I'm so sick of all this gender, transgender stuff.

A man is a man. A woman is a woman.
A transgender man is a woman that wants to dress as a man and look like a man. A transgender woman is a man that wants to dress as a woman and look like a woman.

All the transgender people can crack on, be what you want to be, dress how you want to dress, do what you want to do, but flipping own it. You are not a woman if you were born a man. If you were born a man and chose to dress as a woman and change your hormones and body to look and feel more like a woman, then you are a transgender woman and you should feel proud of it. Leave the rest of us alone. Let woman play woman's sport. Let me play men's sport. Transgender people can crack on and pave the way for transgender sports categories. Fine. All good. Let's all be kind and accept one another, but don't force an idiology on others. Create your path.

This all comes down to definitions:

Male or Female = the biological sex

Gender is a social construct and varies across cultures etc. In previous times this was called masculinity or femininity.

The question is do the terms man or woman refer to the biological sex or the gender.

I think the majority of posters here seem to define man or woman by biological sex. Whereas the trans community would define it by gender. Years ago there were terms such as tomboy or a masculine female or effeminate for a feminine male.

You could solve this entire issue by abolishing the words man and woman, replacing them with the terms male or female. Incidentally if toilets today are labelled as male or female then trans people should have to use the one that is their biological sex. Whereas if the toilets are labelled men or women then it could be open to interpretation (or whichever has the shortest queue 😀).

My personal opinion FWIW is that after decades of hard work and sacrifice and ridicule of feminists to create equality of opportunity (I disagree with equality of outcome) for women that we now have the situation where men can self identify as a woman, equally claim those rights if not greater privileges and destroy the whole point of feminism if the terms man or woman cannot be defined or are abolished. I mean if no one is a man or a woman then what's the point of feminism.

This whole debate pointlessly winds people up and just creates further divisions in society. I truly believe that the majority of genuine trans people just want to get on with their lives in peace and do not wish to create a political campaign out of it or to gain victim hood status.

It seems everyone today wants victim status so that they can absolve themselves of personal responsibility for life's hard outcomes. Didn't get the job you really wanted? Was it because there were better qualified candidates or was it because you're a "victim".

I think the majority of posters here seem to define man or woman by biological sex. Whereas the trans community would define it by gender

The difference here is so that one side can define the terms. Man- adult human male. Male- the sex class that produces small motile gametes etc.

Yet there appears to be no definition of what a man gender is. Or what a woman gender is. Its always circular. We would actually love to know what this woman identity is so we know if we have one.

*Male or Female = the biological sex

Gender is a social construct and varies across cultures etc. In previous times this was called masculinity or femininity.

The question is do the terms man or woman refer to the biological sex or the gender.*

Biological sex 100%

Anything else is too subjective!

Yes I agree with every word of this. 👏

It's gonna blow your mind when you find out that many trans women are describing themselves as female now.

And this is the crux of the matter really.

It doesn't matter what words we use. The ultimate goal is to replace biological sex with socially constructed gender in all circumstances. In order to do that, all the words we have which mean biological sex must be redefined to mean socially constructed gender.

Trans women have already claimed the word "woman" and are now working on "female", which means that your suggestion of abandoning the words "man" and "woman" and simply using "male" and "female" is already out of date.

Let's take this one step further. Say we abandon the words "woman" and "female" and come up with an entirely new word to mean "adult humans of the biological sex which, in the absence of any disorders of sexual development or other infertility, is potentially capable of gestating, birthing and breastfeeding human infants between the menarche and the menopause".

What could this new word be? Let's say we go with "quinglet", which I came up with using a random word generator I found online.

About five minutes after we start using the word "quinglet" to refer to the group of people currently understood to be adult humans of the female biological sex, this is what will happen. Some adult humans of the male biological sex will start claiming to identify as that, and some adult humans of the female biological sex will start complaining that they don't identify as that, and asking us not to use it in a way that includes them.

This is how we have ended up with any male person being able to use the words "woman" and "female" to describe himself, whilst female people are redefined as "menstruators" and "people with cervixes" and "pregnant people" and "birthing bodies" to accommodate a small group of female people who, having asked us not to use the word "women" to include them, now want us to come up with euphemisms for female people so that they can be included.

I'm sorry, but these people need to be told "no". We need clear vocabulary to identify and discuss biological sex in humans. That means we need a word for all humans of the childbearing sex, which includes trans men and female bodied non binary people but not trans women. And we need a word for all humans of the sperm producing sex. I don't care whether you don't want to be included within the group that you are in, or you want to be included within the group that you are not in. I don't care. The criteria for inclusion are objective, not subjective. You do not get to dictate that the rest of society should not have words for concepts that it needs to be able to talk about just because those concepts offend you.

We don't need new vocabulary. We just need to reclaim the vocabulary that already exists and restore it to its original meaning.

Men who believe they identify as whatever it is they believe they are identifying with can come up with a new word for that and use it to refer to themselves. Women who happily refer to themselves as "cis women" and believe that they share some kind of identity with these men can also use that new word to refer to themselves if they wish.

I believe "quinglet" is available.

@MargotBamborough

"It's gonna blow your mind when you find out that many trans women are describing themselves as female now".

+++

Well in which case they are a) deluded and b) quite simply f'ing wrong.

I can describe myself as a squirrel but the reality I'm not one.

I also strongly dislike the terms cis man or cis woman and would object to being referred to as such. I still feel that all this debate creates an unnecessary further division in society just because some people want victim status.

When I was at school in the early nineties, we were told that 'gender' meant a social construct around sex. In that sense you couldn't be a gender because it was an abstraction based on a physical root. There was no concept of 'gender identity', although if there had been, it would have meant being drawn to the stereotypes associated with one of the biological sexes.

But at the same time, gender clearly meant sex. It was a polite way of saying it. You would normally be asked for your gender on forms. There was the old joke: 'sex? yes please.' Increasingly, animals had a sex while humans had a gender.

These days, gender means:

1. The same as biological sex.
2. Social stereotypes revolving around biological sex.
3. An identity, or lack of identity (non-binary) which seems to relate both to the idealised body and to wanting to be perceived in a particular social role.
4. A list of scores of personas for teenagers, which don't have anything to do with biological sex any more.

Obviously the third option is pretty regressive. Instead of saying 'women are female' you might be saying 'women are people who wear dresses'.

The fourth option is just teens roleplaying.

You could solve this entire issue by abolishing the words man and woman, replacing them with the terms male or female.

But transwomen do see themselves as female. It's all very confusing, but trans people essentially want to be the opposite sex, despite all this 'gender' talk.

You could solve this entire issue by abolishing the words man and woman, replacing them with the terms male or female.

No you couldn't.

As others have said, they just move onto female and they would move onto any other proposed word we chose to define ourselves as a class. If we can't define ourselves we can't protect our rights.

The only reason a thread about the definitions of two words is 12 pages long and is in AIBU and not Pedants' Corner is because it has a huge effect on our rights - because our rights depend on the law and the law is made out of words.

The Gender Recognition Act smerges together sex and gender, male and man, female and woman:

Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman).

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/7/section/9

That's why we are in this mess.

I used to think that this was just unfortunately badly worded law that had the unintended side-effect of eroding sex-based rights. I now know it was deliberate.

There's no single thing that could be done to solve this entire issue but repealing the GRA would be a very good start.

It's not so much about definitions as it is about the TRA wanting to take everything we have.

We - the women - we want our fucking stuff back. We want our women’s prisons, our women’s sports, our women’s refuges, our women’s bogs, our right to same-sex care, our fucking WORDS.

https://4w.pub/a-message-to-those-recently-opining/

We - the women - we want our fucking stuff back. We want our women’s prisons, our women’s sports, our women’s refuges, our women’s bogs, our right to same-sex care, our fucking WORDS.

THIS, with bells on.

You could solve this entire issue by abolishing the words man and woman, replacing them with the terms male or female. Incidentally if toilets today are labelled as male or female then trans people should have to use the one that is their biological sex. Whereas if the toilets are labelled men or women then it could be open to interpretation (or whichever has the shortest queue 😀).

What? No you couldn't solve the issue because some biological males would still want and expect to use the female toilets etc.
And the whole debate would rage on just using the new terms.

There is no such thing as gender. I am a woman, the old fashioned sort with a womb and can bear children.

I can’t believe how many uneducated people are commenting. Did you not learn anything in school? They literally teach the difference between sex and gender in year 7 since the 1970s

No, they literally don't.

Nobody other than crusty academics gave a shit about it until about five minutes ago.

Because it's utter nonsense.

No they didn't. They also didn't teach it in the 90's and early 00's when my DC were at school.

I can’t believe how many uneducated people are commenting. Did you not learn anything in school? They literally teach the difference between sex and gender in year 7 since the 1970s

I'm very well-educated, thanks. I was at school in the 70s to 80s and no, they absolutely did not 'literally' teach that.

Sex will never stop being biological.
Gender will never stop being a social construct.

No matter what happens Twitter or how many tiktoks are made of gender reveals, you cannot change facts.

Can confirm that they did not teach it at my school in 1997.

Perhaps the teacher was off sick that day, or perhaps they were short on time and decided to prioritise teaching us how not to get pregnant or catch STDs over teaching us about magical pink and blue souls which usually but don't always "match" a person's sex assigned observed at birth.

But I do think that if the difference between sex and gender were widely taught to year 7s and had been since the 1970s, I would by now have met at least one person capable of explaining WTF gender is and why anyone should care.

No they didn’t! As someone said above, gender was used in place of the more naughty/rude word sex. Many people (50s above) still use it inter-changebly, and don’t realise the modern interpretation of the word gender. That’s half the problem. The language had got very muddled and confused,