Words have meaning, definitions are important.

[JellySlice]

So when did the meaning of 'gender' change?

From the Pocket OED 1942

Collins Dictionary and Thesaurus 1987

Concise Oxford Dictionary of Etymology 1986, which also gives the root 'gen'.

Etymology wise, gender comes from the French genre (which was also used as gendre), which comes from the Latin genus - meaning class or group.

Not that this answers your question!

Sexologists differentiated between sex and gender in the 1950s when working with intersex children. It was to define the 'appropriate' behaviour for each sex.

In the seventies, feminists developed the concept of gender to mean the social construct associated with each sex. They came to understand it as an oppressive construct that supports the patriarchy.

Not long after, 'gender' started to be used in place of 'sex' because it seemed more polite.

And now 'gender' has come to mean an inner sense of maleness or femaleness which is more important than the body.

That's how I understand it!

Here is Stephen Wittle explaining the need to change the meaning of the words gender and sex to "demobilise".

socresonline.org.uk/12/1/whittle.html
A quote:
Moreover, the Gender Recognition Act is performative (see Butler 1990), in that as a form of speech-act, what it �does� is makes gender into sex in law. Indeed, as one of the authors was present at the meeting in the Department of Constitutional Affairs where the question of �gender� or �sex� was discussed, it can be verified that the decision to use gender was to bring a contemporary recognition of the complexities of the question to the Act. The decision to include �sex� as well as gender within the GRA was to acknowledge this and to ensure that the Act could not be challenged.

Stephen Whittle has harmed women immeasurably.

God I find that impenatrable. What's Whittle saying in plains peak?

For goodness sake, you can study cultural change by analysing language. What does that tell you? And you can’t take dictionaries as authority.

Just reread my own post, just wanted to say that I don't understand gender as an inner feeling or essence - I meant that's how I understand the history of sex v gender!

Etymology won‘t help you. You need to study the entire history of a word within a particular culture if you want real info.

Words do have meaning, but those meanings change over time (biology doesn't!)
Sure the dictionary used to define marriage as union between a man and a woman... But obviously that has been updated, loads of other words change and adapt too.

They don't change in a way that leaves no word at all to describe a thing. Ie there is no word right now in trans world that means 'adult male human of the sex that produces motile gametes to fertilise ova'.

Exactly Pratchet. That's exactly 5th eye want

What they want

Whittle is saying, confuse the fuck out of everyone and hey presto, we've pulled the wool over their eyes cos no-one can tell what we are saying. Whittle sounds clever and important and they buy it.

Norman Tebbit said it was a load of bollocks (not exactly that) but that was right wing fascism talk and the rest of the chaps in parliament wanted to be kind. And here we are.

Dictionaries reflect the evolution of a language. The changes in the 50s and 70s that NotTerfNorCis refers do not appear to have become mainstream by the 80s, as they aren't reflected in the later dictionaries.

Does anyone have a later edition that they could refer to? Printed book, not OL, as books reflect a fixed moment in time, whereas an OL definition could have been updated yesterday.

JellySlice I remember being taught the difference between sex and gender in English Literature A-Level class, during the early nineties.

Of course, the teacher was a socially progressive type... as were most of our Arts & Humanities teachers. The A-Level syllabus was loaded up with feminist authors. That's when I first read The Handmaid's Tale.

My job is editing scientific (biological and medical) papers. Whenever an author uses the word 'gender' as a synonym for 'sex' (and many do), I edit it to 'sex' and tell them it was changed because gender has a broader cultural meaning than sex, which is a simpler biological term. I've been doing that since before I knew the GRA existed. I will continue to do so, in the hope that Stephen Whittle's plan to ensure that the two are completely interchangeable can be thwarted.

I don't mean thwarted by my editing efforts obviously
I mean in the hope that I don't end up being 'wrong', because the two have become completely interchangeable.

Flowers, you haven't edited enough of the papers I've read!

(though the one for my exam this week actually does say sex. I've highlighted it )

Flowers, I worked at an academic publishing house in the 90s. The editor considered 'gender' a ridiculous, namby-pamby euphemism. He only allowed it if the context made it necessary, eg 'gendered behaviour' was clearly a reference to the difference between male and female behaviour, whereas 'sexed behaviour' could be ambiguous.

NotTerfNorCis, I did science A-levels and a Psychology degree in the 80s. I don't remember any such differentiation.

Socially progressive types teaching...nah, my lot were all scientists