Sex vs Gender on forms

[ohshitohshit]

I've read a lot of posts on FWR, and as a woman, and mum to two girls, I find the whole concept of self ID deeply worrying.

Since reading the board, I keep noticing how many official forms now ask for 'Gender' rather than 'Sex'. In some cases I find this baffling! This post has been prompted by an organ donor form which asks your gender. The options are Male Female Transgender Other or prefer not to say.

AIBU to think that it's actually someone's biological sex that is the relevant question here?? As in - which bits and bobs might you be able to donate after your death - because men and women are biologically different!

Part of me wonders if it's a touch of British prudishness because everyone's glad they don't have to say 'sex' out loud anymore!

I agree. However, the thing that slightly concerns me re answering 'other' (with or without a comment) is that it will then be picked up on as '10% of our database doesn't identify as male or female, we need to do lots of special stuff'.

For what reason would you need to know gender.

That should have been a question.

Strike through gender and write sex. It's time the "no sex we're British" was consigned to landfill.

It’s worrying isn’t it.

I’m sure (well I bloody hope!) that in hospitals and at the GP there is a (private?) box that states sex as it’s pretty crucial in determining the illness that’s presented.

It’s ridiculous isn’t it.

Can you imagine in hospital where a trans woman puts down female and has actually got problems with his prostrate yet they have to go through the role of pretending he is female or even doing female checks if they are oblivious to his true sex...

Or even with is prostate :)

his

WineGummyBear The last one was this, it may get snippier if I send out many more.

Dear Sirs.
I note with some dismay that part of the information you request is for my “Gender”. Apart from any philosophical or political point I may wish to make about gender as a social construct and the erosion of women’s rights to safe spaces, I would direct your attention to the Equalities Act of 2010 which includes both Sex and Gender Reassignment as discrete protected characteristics.

You have either conflated the two or chosen to rewrite the Act, thus rendering your data collection irrational causing any provision based on it to potentially contravene the Act. I can only assume that this is a well intentioned error, one that needs to be corrected forthwith.

Yours
A Pissed Off Woman!

Yes I replied to my DD's school (for residential school trip) saying that I felt it was intrusive asking her about her gender, that as a typical teenager it was relatively fluid and I felt inappropriate for the school to record.... However, if they were talking about sex, which seemed an appropriate question for shared accommodation, that she is unequivocably female.

Haha - loveyouradvice that's genius!

I might start answering with 'cervix-haver'

Crossing out gender is all well and good on paper forms but so many are electronic now.

For instance - unless they've changed it recently the MN profile has 'gender' instead of sex. I've complained about it before ... a parenting site really doesn't need euphemisms. Maybe someone else could check and send them something along samphires lines. Though maybe not to 'Sirs'.

Though maybe not to 'Sirs'.

Ah! That's cos, for that one I know the bods in the office, both men, I used to work with one of them. I can never find a salutation I like... To whom It may concern is so pompous, I don't really like Dear Sir/Madam either, and Oi You is probably not the best!

What do you all use? I'd like to crib a few new ones

Sex on forms has its legal meaning which is not biological sex, whatever that means. Rather it has the meaning of gender so gender is the clearest word to use.

I will try to get EHRC to publish guidance suggesting the use of gender countrywide to stop people misunderstanding. On it.

Sex on forms has its legal meaning which is not biological sex, whatever that means. Rather it has the meaning of gender so gender is the clearest word to use.

There you go. 38 posts that make sense and then we are back to gibberish.

The meaning of biological sex is perfectly clear. Can you clearly define what 'gender' means?

YANBU and probably also right about British prudishness playing into it.

There are 4 billion females with the same biology. We know what it means.

Snappity the point is that there is a difference and the EA uses different terms for the protected characteristics. It is not up to the whim of any organisation or individual to change the wording of the law to suit their own agenda!

That and your post is nonsensical! Biology exists... and if you have that much pull with the EHRC you really should know that!

Your blithe statement of tripe is amusing but it is also a prime example of what it is so many people are fighting against!

Basically what Snappity is doing with all this word manipulation is demanding that sex IS NOT protected.

Snippety, sex is a protected characteristic. Gender identity, of its nature, is entirely subjective. We have no way to test it. Sex is objective. Women are disadvantaged by our sex.

I always write sex instead of gender on a paper form but increasingly these days forms are online and there's no option that makes my point. I don't want to be gender=female because I don't buy in to this gender bollocks, but I don't want whoever is collecting the data to get the impression that I am gender queer/transgender/whatevs and thereby artificially enlarge the population of this group.

Sex is the protected characteristic but the word does not have the narrow meaning some here claim.

Go on then, I'll bite, what do you think the word 'sex' means on forms, and how is it less appropriate than using 'gender' when collecting data for equality purposes, given that sex is the protected characteristic?

OK, Snappity, so what do you say sex means?

I should warn you that the intersex community has requested that proponents of transgender ideology not drag them into the debate. Disorders of sexual development endorse rather than dismantle the sex binary.

Sorry for getting your name wrong before.

"Women are disadvantaged by our sex."

Even more disadvantage from stereotyping of women though. Women gain immensely from a focus on gender rather than sex.

But that is not what you mean is it snappity, you don't mean that at all, you are using that to finagle a meaning of female that no longer refers to females.

You've already shown your hand snappity1.