SEX is the correct word

[Lovelyricepudding]

I saw a comment earlier about use of the words sex and gender and how gender used to be a reasonable synonym and sex just results in teenage dissolving in mirth. I couldn't find the comment again. But the idea was we should find a word to replace sex.

Sex is the correct word because it links to sexual intercourse which is part of sexual reproduction. We need this word precisely because of the connertations behind the sniggering. Sex (male/female) is primarily about reproduction - it is our reproductive roles that govern our bodies and how we are treated. Any other words obscures this. It is also a word with consistent meanings right across phyla.

I'm dreadful. Whenever I see the word gender used incorrectly, I always say "sex" out loud. Bit embarrassing; I once did it at dd's school.

I agree but nobody wants to say ‘sex reveal party’ and the like do they?

Flat you are not alone. I listen to lots of interviews and podcasts via headphones and every time I hear gender instead of sex I say its "SEX, Sex is the word you're looking for". With noise cancelling headphones and the doors and windows open the neighbours must think I'm demented.

"Gender based violence", is a particular pet hate, it implies that the performance of sex stereotypes makes women more vulnerable to male violence. We've campaigned for years to stop judges and barristers using what women were wearing to excuse male sexual violence so it feels like a retrograde step to meekly accept the term "gender" based violence.

I agree but nobody wants to say ‘sex reveal party’ and the like do they?

In which case, maybe that's a clue you shouldn't be having one? I think it's a weird idea, and I doubt I'm in a minority here.

If you're doing it, it's either because you are thinking of "gender" and some sort of role for the child, in which case you shouldn't be, or it's because the sex is in some way important enough to have a special party for (why?), in which case you should be fine with talking about sex.

In more general cases, I think getting used to saying "sex" more isn't that hard. Things get smoother with usage, which is why I approve of Maya's blunt naming of "Sex Matters". (Although I'm still sad about its first MN thread "New group-sex matters" having its title changed).

"Sex pay gap" is a bit weird too, but you can have "sexed" or "sex-based".

Ideally, we would stop using "sex" to mean "intercourse", get rid of the sniggering that way. That's an fairly recent usage. Wouldn't have had this problem a couple of centuries back.

Oo thanks for discussing this - it was me who started it on the other thread.

I think the word sex has been taken over so much by the media. ‘Sexual intercourse’ is old fashioned. Having sex, sexy, sex sells, oversexed are all common words/phrases now. It is too ingrained in culture. As someone else said, sex reveal parties sound wrong. If someone just said ‘Sex?’ I can’t think of another word where the meaning could be so different depending on who is saying it!

Gender used to be useful on forms but now I cross it off and write the word sex, as gender is too ambiguous. It makes data unreliable.

It would be nice to reclaim the word gender but in the dictionary it says about social constructs so I expect that’s lost.

On anonymous lesson feedback forms where the word sex is used, a significant number of pupils would write yes or no. No idea how many were mucking about. Some younger pupils would be so closed off to the word sex (meaning male or female) as it’s a rude/objectionable word.

I don’t have an answer but I think the way the words have changed leads to problems so it is interesting discussing it.

It's possible to select what gender one wishes to select. What's not a matter of preference is one's sex. "Gender" was a formal, polite synonym for "sex", in an age when the latter word was sometimes considered too fruity for mixed company.

This "cultural construction" thing is a very recent invention, and dubious at that. Back in the 70's, the word we used for the vogue referent of "gender" was "stereotype". The shifting of meanings betrays a political agenda, I reckons.

In Fiction: Dorothy L Sayers had no problems with using the word. Gaudy Night is full of the Female academics using it.
Jane Austen uses "Sex".
Miss Marple?
To use "Gender" reminds me of the John Betjamin poem about pretentiousness.
"Oops! pardon, I soiled the doily" was I think the final line.

OT, but I think you mean 'how to get on in society', which finishes with how not to pronounce 'scones'.

https://www.inspirationalstories.com/poems/how-to-get-on-in-society-john-betjeman-poem/

Back to the topic... I think part of the problem is because 'sex' as in intercourse has - for very good, progressive reasons - become decoupled from sex as in biological reproductive function. Women can (to some extent) control our fertility, homosexuality is no longer illegal. Modern generations have, I suspect, a rather different understanding of what sex is for than in the past. Sure, it could always be fun and have a recreational (rather than creational!) element - but the reproductive part would have loomed larger.

Errol that’s a very good analysis. The recreational aspect is dominant for younger people in particular! I taught biology and sex education at secondary school but back in the day pupils would say gender and I would know what they meant was sex (but they didn’t want to say the word).

… but Errol have to disagree with you on one thing - scones and bones rhyme.

Reported.

😁

Scones and bones DO rhyme, dammit!!

I agree with the pp who said that the loosening of the ties between sex (intercourse) and reproduction is partly behind this.

Except the most utterly bonkers TRAs, people don't object to using the word sex to categorise male and female animals, for example. Because the reproductive purpose is the prime reason for sexual intercourse between sheep etc. That's why the farmer needs to know which lambs are male, which female.

For humans, it's not the same - until it is the same, at the point of & following reproduction. A lot of women experience that sudden realisation that the world is still quite sexist after all at the point they have children - that's the point in our lives that significant disadvantages of being the female sex tend to come home to roost.

It's an interesting idea - I'm not really clever enough or focused enough to follow it through right now.

@Sugerfree this is exactly how I felt about the word gender. A polite synonym for those situations where you don't want to say sex. Gender now seems to mean stereotypes?!

Aw gender reveal parties are very American and just a bit of gimmicky fun in my book. Yes, lots of silly pink and blue but at least the parents trust the hospital that their child is either a boy or a girl! 🙈🙈🙈

Sex reveal parties, you might have to ask a TRA for an invite. 🤣🤣🤣

Yeah this is one of the several American imports we should back away from pronto!

People have no trouble saying virgin when talking about olive oil or gym membership. We'd all get used to saying sex pretty quickly I reckon.

DD recently applied for a job that had both "Gender" and "Gender Identity" as fields to fill in.

Gender was used as a replacement for "Sex" (the options were Male/Female)

That just looked bonkers.

I'm a right feminist buzz kill but I really don't see the fun in "gender reveal".

Sex reveal parties, you might have to ask a TRA for an invite. 🤣🤣🤣 this comment makes no sense from a feminist perspective.

Putting aside the fact that NOBODY ELSE GIVES A SHIT WHAT SEX YOUR CHILD IS and the sheer cost of it all, it so obviously feeds into the gender stereotypes which give rise to gender ideology in the first place.

Pink for girls! Blue for boys! People should be open to the fact their girl or boy could have any personality or sexuality. Our sex determines our bodies and potential role in reproduction, and influences our experience of living in a patriarchy. Not our hobbies, who we choose to love, how we dress.

Ideologically captured parents who transition their children have been known to hold "gender reveal" parties all over again to announce the gender switch.

Like gender identity theories, gender reveals are a capitalist wet dream.

If you had a gender reveal party, and the child then discovers its ‘real i e alternative ‘ gender or indeed complete lack of a gender, do you get to have another party.? Do you have to destroy the photographic evidence that the child’s sex was identified before birth, rather than assigned at birth?

this started out flippant, but has just veered into significance for me. I suppose the adherents would just dismiss it as more evidence of the ‘wrong’ body. I’m so glad I’m old.

If you're the type of person who has a a gender reveal in the first place, odds are that a) you'll transition your child when it resists stereotypes and b) you'll hold a second reveal. Never thought of the evidence destroying bit. Quite possibly - given trans charities advise parents to go no contact with friends and families who won't play along.

I would think the trendy transition parents wouldn't do a gender reveal in pregnancy but wait for their child to pick a gender.

I've always wondered, if your parents never told you that you had a gender, only that you were male or female, were you 'brought up as non-binary'? (or 'agender', 'bigender', or 'genderfree' etc?)

And therefore if you are female and later identify as, say, a woman, have you then transitioned from NB to woman?

I agree that sex is the correct word, but I think we have lost the battle on that one. language evolves and the word is strongly associated with sexy / intercourse / nakedness etc.

This is one point where maybe we need a new word. Something like Psex (for Physical Sex) or Bsex (for Bodily Sex) that focuses on just the physical shape of the body and allows us to discuss the issues that are linked to that.

The trouble is, sex means 2 different things: the reproduction meaning and the male/female meaning.I cant help thinkinf a lot of problems would be solved if the English language used 2 separate words for these. Because people then use the word gender for the sole purpose of avoiding saying sex, and that has opened up a minefield of shit

Sex as in male/female is common across all organisms which use sexual reproduction- including those which have both male and female parts.

Sex as a verb... there's loads of other words for it, many more descriptive. Maybe we should normalise the use of a some of those ...Or 'coitus' if you're Sheldon Cooper,