I consider myself gender-critical but think this is a bit unnecessary and obsessive

[5foot5]

I am reading a book I borrowed from the library. It's not anything especially heavy or literary, just a fairly enjoyable piece of fiction set during the First World War. "The Post Office Girls" by Poppy Cooper if anyone's interested.

However, I have noticed that where the author has used the word "gender" a previous reader has struck it out and written "sex" above it (photo attached). This has happened twice now but I am only halfway through the book so there may be more.

A bit OTT, no?

So how come people claim to have changed gender but this allows them to access spaces of the opposite sex. Are you saying people changing “gender” means they have literally changed sex?

No. I am saying that you cannot change your sex, and you cannot change your gender. Because they are exactly the same thing. The idea that people can’t change sex but can change gender is a load of bollocks. They are the same thing and neither can change.

Gotcha. Totally agree in that case.

As I understand it, gender is social and sex is biological. The idea of gender was first used for children with sexual development disorders. Then it was picked up by second wave feminists to mean the social role associated with each biological sex. In the eighties, 'gender' became a polite way of saying 'sex', and the two terms became interchangeable. Then transactivism came along with a concept of gender identity. What was important was the gender you identified as, not your sex, according to trans ideology. But at the same time, transgenderism often involves medical treatment to look like the opposite sex, so it's all a bit muddled.

Then transactivism came along with a concept of gender identity load of bollocks

FTFY

It was used to mean sex for hundreds of years. It was then used regarding intersex children in the 50s. It’s ridiculous that it is entertained as something separate to sex.

The anti-trans lot are absolutely nuts.

Do you have any quotations from pre 20th century texts that use 'gender' in that way?

Not saying you're wrong. Just curious.

I thought it had originated in linguistics. I wonder if it comes from the same root as ‘genre’. Off to have a look…

OTT to me ever damaging a book but funnily I started a new book from the charity shop and so far the two instances of Jesus being said has been rubbed out 🤣

Because the GI movement separated them from each other, told us a person could have a F gender while being M sex, because they were different things; and that gender trumped sex when it came to the matters of rights and protections.
They then replaced the word sex with gender wherever possible (banking on no one noticing, because they mean 'exactly the same' right?) so that men could gain access to women's single sex spaces, because its doesn't say 'sex' it says gender, and their gender is 'woman'.
So it became really important to people opposing this to use the word sex when referring to actual women, so it was clear that when the word gender was used for women it could well include men.

When I was a child, writing in a book was perhaps the naughtiest thing I could ever imagine. As it happens, I still think that now. it’s outrageous.

It was probably one of the one-issue mono-thinkers you get on here.

I wouldn’t have altered a library book in pen, but I confess that little historical inaccuracies drive me crazy, and back then people commonly used “sex” when talking about “male or female.” In the past, I’ve very faintly penciled factual corrections into library books so hopefully at least one person will read it before erasing it. (No, Oscar Wilde is not the author of the phrase “the love that dare not speak its name”; no, the term “Immaculate Conception” does not refer to Mary being a virgin when she conceived Jesus.)

I agree that people shouldn’t be writing in ink in library books, but I definitely understand the urge.

The defacing of a book is completely unreasonable. I am a gender/sex realist but both words have been in use for centuries. Gender to the vast majority means the same as sex, used to describe sex based behaviours and it was felt more polite, to separated from the connotation of the sex act.

How would they? It’s such a small alteration that anybody could take the book off the shelf and cross out one word for another in about two seconds. It’s not exactly Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell taking library books home to replace the dust jackets with pictures of naked men. I know you’ve got a lot of CCTV in the UK, but surely not for every shelf in a public library.

The main character in this novel, which is set in 1915, is a nicely brought up 18 year old girl from a very sheltered background. It seems quite believable to me that a girl like that would be embarrassed to use the word "sex" so would use "gender" instead.

Although this novel was written in 2021 it is set more than 100 years ago so it seems more historically accurate to me that the main character would use the term she is most comfortable with.

I am quite sure the author isn't using this term to support any modern day trans agenda!

Probably one of the sad MNers who run onto baby name threads yelling "IT'S SEX NOT GENDER!"

I think they hear a little round of applause in their head when they do it.

If we take that "sex" and "gender" are indeed the same thing (personally I don't, but we don't need to fall out over it) then what word do you use to defined the mechanism by which living organisms assign their chromosomal properties such as to provide distinct reproductive paths ?

I ask as (you may have guessed) a scientist who is not a biologist.

I don't think it excuses criminal damage though.

Wouldn’t you consider the fact the book was based on times over 100 years ago and accept that’s the words they would have used at that time?

No it hasn’t.

The OED disagrees, with etymology of gender as a synonym for sex going back as far as the 15th century. See sense 3.a here: https://www.oed.com/dictionary/gender_n?tl=true

It’s a distinct meaning from the “social gender” of the 20th century which the OED lists under 3.b and describes as a 20th century US usage.

I'm not sure it is more historically accurate, to be honest. That far back I think 'sex' meant male/female, and 'sexual intercourse' (or possibly just 'intercourse') was used for the act. Gender would have been purely a grammatical term. If you think about officialdom, forms you filled in, you were asked to state your sex.

Regardless, it's defacing a book and I'd let the library know when I handed it back. I can't even bear to turn down a page corner never mind write in a book! <shudders>

Yes but they were talking utter bollocks and we should not humour it. They have not altered the dictionary.

It most certainly has.

"If you have any pity, grace, or manners, you would not make me such an argument. But fare ye well: 'tis partly my own fault; which death or absence soon shall remedy... Can you not hate me, as I know you do, but you must join in souls to mock me too? If you were men, as men you are in show, you would not use a gentle lady so... to swear, and vow, and counterfeit testimonies of a force of heavenly love, when I am sure you hate me with your hearts! You both are rivals, and love Hermia; and now both rivals, to mock Helena: a trim exploit, a manly enterprise, to conjure tears up in a poor maid's eyes with your derision! None of noble mind would so offend a virgin, and extort a poor soul's patience, all to make you sport... You counterfeit, you puppets, you! ... Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it... and our whole gender."

Hamlet.