Using gender when studying Biology! What are they teaching.

[Confusedmumannoyedson]

So was talking about getting a pet and my son said what gender. I said not gender just boy or girl and he said we aren't 'allowed' to say that anymore we have to use gender. I explained that gender is something you can pick and there are lots people use including them/they which is fine for how someone identifies but not for animals or when talking biology. I am thinking he is confused because he said they use gender in biology now and don't use sex. I checked with a friend who said he is right.

AIBU? Surely sex should be used for a science subject like biology, and gender should be kept for personal use for how someone thinks they are.

Ah good, that saves me tagging you into the thread @Kucinghitam. I do hope you have that saved on your clipboard rather than having to retype it every time.

https://theconversation.com/amp/you-dont-have-a-male-or-female-brain-the-more-brains-scientists-study-the-weaker-the-evidence-for-sex-differences-158005

You can’t tell the difference between a male and female brain. I have also asked a neurosurgeon and he said no too. It doesn’t really matter one way or another (unless people with gender dysphoria think somehow their brains are of the wrong sex) but that study you quoted does not change what most medical people think.

Indeed.

We were watching a programme at breakfast this morning. It is a series that follows Columbus Zoo in the US. A very rare fox was pregnant and the keeper said 'let's find out what genders they are' and scanned then! I mean no wonder some children/adults are confused the silly keeper thought that she was checking a gender but was really checking for sex. A teacher upthread said that a child would lose marks if using gender when referring to sex in a biology exam - that is my concern so I have had a chat and said that many adults are confused. That gender is a social construct and like another poster said a bit like a religion with an ideological belief system. Sex is fact and to use the word sex during any and every science lessons unless they are talking about feelings and social constructs.

@Tinysoxx

The study I quoted is from a peer reviewed journal, one of the top rated globally, which if you know anything about science you’ll understand. This is not a hack or anything to do with a gender dysmorphia discussion.

you have quoted from a random editorial and your friend who is a neuro surgeon, yet the fact they didn’t even mention the size difference is worrying.

There are some people on this thread who seem determined to read something into a post that isn’t there to meet their own agenda. I AM NOT talking about gender dysmorphia, I am talking about physiological differences. Do your own actual research.

And I disagreed with you. I have done my research. The neurosurgeon worked on my child.

I just thank God that my children have grown up before all this bollocks became normalised, world has gone stark staring fucking mad

Gina Rippon debunked the gendered brain as neurosexism nonsense a few years back and wrote a book about it. She's a neuroscientist.
There was another study here which concluded - "Sex differences are sexy, but this false impression that there is such a thing as a 'male brain' and a 'female brain' has had wide impact on how we treat boys and girls, men and women," Dr. Eliot said."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210325115316.htm

Gina Rippon's The Gendered Brain is a really good dissection of the evidence on differences in brain structures.

[Summary: there are no pink or blue brains; what there is is an awful lot of cherry picked data, bad research questions, tiny sample sizes, poor methods, confirmatian bias, and skewed reporting of results.]

Also, further reading recommendation: look up the Univariate Fallacy.

I have read of some animals that are able to change biological sex, IIRC certain snails are among them, but I’ve never heard of any other animal, inc. fish, amphibians or reptiles, let alone mammals, with this ability.

If anyone else has, do please enlighten me.

That's sequential hermaphrodites. Like the famous clownfish.

Irrelevant to mammals, and there are still only 2 sexes that they are changing between.