Incredible cognitive dissonance - but the other way round

[MotherForkinShirtBalls]

I was at a conference yesterday (online). It was about medical research. One of the Canadian speakers had "she/her" in her bio notes . When asked about the gender implications of an animal model, she responded talking about sex based differences in the results. It was fascinating that of 15+ speakers, only the one with preferred pronouns used the word "sex" rather than "gender" to discuss biologically based differentiation (because obviously rats don't have a gender expression). Really reinforces that we need to clarify our language about sex vs gender.

Is there something about the word sex that makes people prefer to say gender? I think a lot of people (not on MN obvs) probably believe it means the same thing.

Sorry realised I missed the point there

I wonder if her brain made an automatic calculation from all the previous practice talking in code? The mental gymnastics must have an effect on thinking.

That's it exactly though, Ruby, I think everyone else used the "polite" word, gender, when they meant sex (the discussion was about how a particular disease has different effects on females vs males). I found it fascinating that the pronoun preacher used the correct term.

Possibly, Inebriati, I hadn't thought about that. I think it was simple intellectual honesty though.