BBC news article talks about the "gender" of horses

[BlueBrush]

Another example of confusing sex and gender. Good that this BBC article acknowledges biological sex...albeit in horses. But then refers to the gender of the horse. The BBC just aren't getting it, are they?

A Suffolk Punch foal is the first in the UK to have been born using technology to determine its gender.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-shropshire-53446927

I think the way we handle it is to keep asking, "When you say gender, do you actually mean sex? They mean different things, you know."

Rinse and repeat until people get it. You can't have a discussion if people don't share a vocabulary. 🤷🏼‍♀️

For your 2) Why not 'Sex stereotypes/ roles etc'?

If the term 'gender' had never been invented then that's probably what we'd call them, and everything would be clearer. However, as unfortunately it has, 'gender stereotypes' shows what 'gender' relates to.

I'm so pleased that someone at the BBC saw sense and changed the wording. When I saw 'determine its gender' at about 6am this morning I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Pondering while I was gardening -I suppose there might be a distinction between a sex stereotype and a gender stereotype.
A sex stereotype might be that men are stronger than women. Statistically at a population level that's true, because humans are physically dimorphic with a bimodal distribution of strengths , but for individuals it isn't (the distributions overlap) . Whereas a gender stereotype such as 'soccer is a girls' game' or 'soccer is a boys' game' is merely a cultural norm, applied to one sex or the other the opposite way round on each side of the Atlantic.

A Suffolk Punch foal is the first in the UK to have been born using technology to determine its gender.

Has science produced the first horse that can talk, thus allowing someone to ask the horse how it identified? If so it's even more impressive that it could answer questions while still in utero, clearly it's destined to grow up to be the Steven Hawking of the horse world.

So the technology exists to sort horse sperm into male or female before conception. Can this be applied to other species?

Anyone else see a potential problem with this being applied to humans? I can see it would be useful if you have a sex linked genetic condition, but in some countries sex selective abortion and infanticide are skewing the birth rates.

It would be an ethical nightmare for humans, but would presumably be good for eg dairy farming..

‘Gender’ is also used meaning ‘biological sex’ in law in the UK. It’s a mess. It’s nonsensical.

Here’s an example. Embryos obviously have no gender. They have a sex. Very serious inherited medical conditions and disabilities arise obviously do not arise because of sex-stereotypes, ie gender. Yet...

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2008/22/schedule/2/crossheading/embryo-testing-and-sex-selection

So, if the beeb can talk about the sex-specific issues of these beautiful animals (i.e. Males natural born moor frequently than females, more females needed to keep the breed alive), would it be too much to ask that the lived-experience of the adult humans can also be reported based on their sex?

And as a side issue, I've genuinely wondered how biology teachers and animal breeders would get on without being able to talk about 'sexed' species and their dimorphic nature.