Have The Guardian writers been indoctrinated so thoroughly than see gender in chickens?

[OvulaRasa]

www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/22/worlds-first-no-kill-eggs-go-on-sale-in-berlin

It really is so weird reading this. Gender and sex have got conflated in such manner that there are some poor souls who see gender in chicks.

So wrong.

Chickens have a sex, male or female. Usually they have to hatch 100% surplus eggs as 50% are male. Male chicks are culled in the first 24 hours as its uneconomic to raise them for slaughter.

This is a breakthrough in reading the sex of unborn chicks, eggs containing a male can be eaten instead of hatched. Its going to save the industry a lot of money as well as being an improvement in animal welfare - they wont have to pay to incubate worthless eggs but can sell them for human consumption instead.

I don't think a fertilised egg, nine days old would be very nice to eat userschmoozer. Eggs are usually unfertilized

I don't know if they'd be sold in supermarkets, but they are edible and can easily be used for commercial baking.

The article said the male eggs would be processed into animal food.

Being able to sex the eggs is a good development, silly of the headline to use that euphemism (which in this context was what it was).

A year or so ago I’d have let the word ‘gender’ pass.

Now I’m going to jump down the throat of anyone who uses it incorrectly.

Don’t care if it makes me a grammar Nazi. I’ve been called worse.

It's a perfect example of the lack of clarity in this aspect of English. And of prudery in an age of diminishing prudery.

Gender originally meant a group of items with similar attributes. About 500y ago it began to be synonymous with sex. 'Gender' did not tend to be used for 'sex', as the word 'sex' was not considered crude.

In the 20th century 'sex' began to mean the sex act, rather than a group of people with similar biological attributes. That's when using 'gender' to mean a group of people with similar biological attributes - ie male or female - took over.

The use of gender to mean behavioural stereotypes is a very recent development, only about 60y old. And, even then only in among relatively small number of people: feminists and social sciences.

So it's no wonder that the vast majority of people conflate sex and gender.

I would really appreciate seeing and listening to a debate between livestock farmers and TRAs. I think both sides would be a bit worrying, though.

Elite athlete horses are being given "gender" now, too. According to the BBC.

A post I wrote for the BBC Bias thread, half-jocular, but half serious too:

"Off to one side a bit, but I was half-watching that showjumping from Olympia on telly this afternoon.

When each horse and rider came into the arena, the BBC put a brief information caption along the bottom - Little flag to denote country represented, Name of rider, age.

Then similar for the horse. Name of horse. Age. And then, Gender!

Did anyone go around beforehand, checking with those horses what they identify as, what is their actual gender, and what pronouns should be used????!!!

Won't anyone think of the horses????!!!!

I really, really hope no horse was misgendered, BBC.

Horses normally classified as mares (entire females), stallions (entire males) and geldings (castrated males).

I used the horse classification on Digital Spy as an example to explain why TWANW....and it got me banned

Bubonic

But have anybody asked the horse how they identify? Or Is it just assigned at birth?

In the i newspaper today using sex, not gender.