Why use gender when you mean Sex ?

[Parsley1234]

Why do people ask the gender of their baby or have gender reveal parties ? The correct question is what sex is my baby or maybe I’m just getting totally fed up of woke nonsense.

Who really gives a shit anyway? I've only ever seen this discussed on mumsnet.

Born a man and is now a lesbian?? So he's a straight man 🤣

Good grief. Not everything is an American import. People have been using sex and gender interchangeable for decades.

Of course a baby can have a gender. One of the meanings of gender is ‘biological sex’ and this is how the majority of people use it. Look in any dictionary. You are using a very recent meaning of gender and not the one most people mean when they use the word. Just like they don’t mean grammatical gender when they are using the word to describe a baby.

@EmmaOvary how can he be a she with a dick testicles and a beard HOW !?!?!

I can't even believe it's up for questioning!

@thebloodycatwontstopmeowing I am waiting to see

Yes he is.

Yeah, straight white blokes telling the rest of us what to do.

I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell ye ...

Sex and gender are not interchangeable. They are not synonymous. If they're being used in that way, they're being used incorrectly.

One is a material body. The other is a social construct, the actual substance of which is difficult to determine as it changes according to historical time and geographical place. As far back as the 60s, the likes of Millett and de Beauvoir were chewing the fat about the very real distinctions between 'female' and 'feminine'.

A sexed body is the physical reality of our (dimorphic) species. Gender is the basis on which one of these sex classes asserts its dominance and the other is oppressed. 'Woman' and 'man' are not a feeling in someone's head. It would be impossible for me to 'feel like a man', because I'm not a man. That knowledge is therefore beyond the remit of my understanding or experience.

Sex and gender are antonyms.

I meant "gender reveal parties "

Not according to the OED.

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/gender_n#:~:text=The%20state%20of%20being%20male,group%20characterized%20in%20this%20way.

One of the definitions of gender (along with the others about expression) reads as follows:

"3.a.1474–
gen. Males or females viewed as a group; = sex n.1 1. Also: the property or fact of belonging to one of these groups."

Gender can be used interchangeably with sex, and it is not incorrect. It has been used this way for centuries.

Also from the Cambridge dictionary, one of the definitions of gender is:

"used to refer to the condition of being physically male, female, or intersex (= having a body that has both male and female characteristics):
Does this test show the gender of the baby?
Forensic scientists can tell the gender of the victim from the skeleton.
Synonym
sex (MALE/FEMALE)"

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/gender

But you're talking about academia. Words often have definitions for academic purposes that don't quite correlation to popular usage. And some academic circles and disciplines use different definitions to other circles and disciplines.

I'm aware what the OED says. Excuse the arrogance of this response - but they're wrong.

As for Cambridge, if they're still using the term 'Intersex' it shows how far with the programme they've got. It's a outdated, inaccurate, even offensive term - alongside cretin and moron which surely no one still uses - and people with DSDs have repeatedly asked not to be referred to as such - or to have their medical condition misappropriated for the purposes of identity politics.

Those with DSDs are still either male or female. One sex produces large, the other small, gametes. There has not been one recorded human being, for the whole history of our species, with the ability to produce both.

NB. 'Gender' is also defined in linguistic terms as masculine, feminine and neuter. Now there's one to keep us up at night ...

Could not agree more. Who gives a fuck? No one.

Then you need to write to them and tell them they're wrong and get it corrected.

I personally will take the definition from the OED, Cambridge, Webster's, Samuel Johnson etc. Which all list one of the definitions of gender as being sex, or describing it as a synonym for sex.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gender#:~:text=%3A%20the%20behavioral%2C%20cultural%2C%20or%20emotional%20traits%20typically%20associated%20with,other%20words%20or%20grammatical%20forms

https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/views/search.php?term=Gender

It should be abundantly clear to anyone that it has been used as a synonym for centuries and that is one of the correct definitions in the English language.

A dictionary is essentially a document that is put together to reflect what people mean when they use words.

If the majority of English speakers use sex and gender interchangeably, then the dictionary will reflect that. It's not incorrect - it's a correct reflection of language usage. It's why words like "irregardless" have entered the dictionary - it may have started life as an error and indeed it's not a word that most people would use in proper speech or writing today, but plenty of words we today regard as perfectly correct originated from misspeaking and misspellings. If it becomes common enough then given enough time it becomes 'correct'.

If some academics decide that it's worthwhile to differentiate between sex and gender whilst writing then that's fine, but they cannot dictate how people use words. If people's usage doesn't change, then the dictionary definition doesn't change.

God, here we go again, same boring bollocks. Not something I give any thought to, does it actually matter ffs.

Exactly.
The extent of institutional capture never ceases to amaze me.
In school, children are being taught that there are many, many genders.
They are being taught that if you are female and like boys toys it is possible to change sex to conform to your gender (which must be male). If you are male and like pink/dolls, you can change sex to align with your gender (which must be female).
Every parent should be concerned about this.
That poor little girl in Scotland who was kidnapped and raped got into a car with a man in a dress and wig because men in dresses and wigs are women, according to current gender ideology.
It is insidious and relies on people not being interested.

Sorry, are you saying that a dictionary shouldn’t list words that are offensive and outdated?

Read the definition above. It doesn't refer to the listing for 'Intersex', with a clause that the term is now obsolete and can be considered offensive. There would be no problem at all with that. I'm not advocating for a newspeak dictionary (perish the thought, given what's happening to the word 'woman').

It appears under the usual elusive, ill-defined bollocks that usually comes part and parcel of 'gender'. It's also fundamentally inaccurate in the way it's defined here.

who the fuck gets to decide the difference between sex or gender....... they are just words.

Yes. Not missing here, that academia - Oxbridge in particular - is amongst the most captured institutions out there. Yes, that would be our supposedly intelligent, once world-class higher education system.

It was Cambridge NUS, if I remember correctly, who first hoofed out Germaine Greer. University of Sussex - not RG but a highly-regarded institution - whose lecturers, alongside students, hounded Kathleen stock out her post, supported by a nefarious union.

We've seen what happens to established academics - all most all of them female it's interesting to note - who have attempted to argue against this insidious land-grab.