Gender as synonym for sex

[BCCoach]

Ok preparing to be flamed for this one and yes it’s probably a TAAT, but why do so many feminists use the recent (Psychological/Sociological/American according to OED) meaning of gender and deny the much older meaning as a synonym for biological sex, which is the one that the vast majority of people are using in the context of babies?

Gender as a synonym for sex is meaning 3a in OED and dates from 1474 while the new meaning (3b) is a US import first recorded in 1945.

What’s stopping us from reclaiming the older and, outside of academia and special interest groups, far more generally understood meaning?

Yes

When I was young people were often too prudish to say sex so used gender instead.

Medical journals like The Lancet specify in the author guidelines that when reporting research findings, it's crucial to differentiate between sex (biological differences) and gender (social identity), for obvious reasons when comparing data and drawing conclusions.

Of course they do. And when the Proceeding of the IEEE publishes a paper which uses the word gender it will have a different meaning altogether. I’m talking about general usage where gender has until very recently been a synonym for sex. I think women should not be criticised or corrected for using the word as a synonym for sex, especially when intent is obvious. Of course they can be questioned where intent or meaning is unclear.

From a pernickety etymological perspective "gender" is cognate with "genre", meaning category. In the past gender and sex were interchangeable, but the current usage is confusing two concepts.

In the very recent past (less than half a century) gender and sex have been treated as interchangeable by some people.

For hundreds of years gender and genre were used interchangeably by some people.

For hundreds of years gender and engender were used interchangeably by some people.

For hundreds of years people who wanted to analyse and describe grammar have used gender with a specific unique meaning for classes of words in some languages.

I believe that only the grammatical usage is in any way valid and useful, and that the word would be retired in all other contexts because it has been weaponised against women.

And because sex is a perfectly good and useful word to describe the ancient and essential quality that is sex.

It's interesting how many are unaware of how recent "gender = sex" is. It's firmly second half of 20th century. Before that, you would not see it in any sort of standard/formal setting - it was figurative/poetic/jocular.

It arose because "sex" came to be used for "intercourse" in the same period. So people moved away from "sex" to avoid that.

And now we're just making a similar move - "gender" has come to be used for "personality", so many of us feel compelled move away from "gender" again to avoid that. And we may as well go back to "sex" because we're maybe a bit less uptight about "intercourse"...

Just remember to hyphenate properly. I'm still grumpy that the thread title from a few years ago "New group-sex matters" was changed.

Many words have more than one meaning. For example, putting money in the bank probably doesn't require a trip to the side of a river. That's usually not a problem. Sometimes, though, arguments and ideologies (or metaphysical speculations) may equivocate (i.e. they may draw conclusions illicitly by mixing different meanings).

That's exactly what has happened with trans ideology regarding 'sex' and 'gender'. There's a simple way of escaping from fallacies of equivocation, however: disambiguate.

Here's an example.

If 'gender' means the same as 'sex', there can be no sense to talk of a person's gender mismatching their sex, as that would be the person's sex mismatching their sex, which is absurd.

If 'gender' means something other than 'sex', and we want to consider whether someone's gender matches their sex, we will need an explanation of how something other than sex might match or not with sex. (Usually only things of the same general sort can be held to match with one another, after all.) In the absence of such explanation, we conclude, again, there is no sense to talk of a person's gender mismatching their sex.

Overall, then, we conclude, whether 'gender' means the same as 'sex' or not, talk of someone's gender failing to match their sex is plain nonsense.

Of course matters may look different if we equivocate, as Stonewall & co. have shown time and again.

tldr: Don't fall for fallacies of equivocation: disambiguate.

The etymology section for the synonymous meaning of gender makes for interesting reading. Lots of usage from 1474 right up to the present day.

It was really striking in a drama about the Brontes. In the drama the script had her saying “Is it because of my gender?” to a publisher.

It just sounded so anachronistic hearing someone wearing period costume saying that. She would have said sex. And the word sex wouldn’t have been used publicly to refer to intercourse. It would have been some euphemism like “carnal knowledge” or something.

Sexual intercourse began in 1963. In England. Slightly earlier in Ireland, it arrived with television in 1961 (according to Oliver J Flanagan). It's another word that just didn't get used in normal conversation.

My 13 volume OED makes it clear that gender for sex was always rare compared to the other useu and by the 19th century obsolete except in a 'humorous' context. All three uses where there were other, better words for the same thing had been abandoned, and gender was used only for the standard grammatical term.

And so it remained until Judith Butler and that evil bloke in New Zealand decided to revive it in the late 1960s to describe the ways women are oppressed by society.

It took well over a decade before it started to leak away from that extreme specialism and be used for 'sex'. By people who thought 'sex' sounded a bit rude.

The etymology section for the synonymous meaning of gender makes for interesting reading. Lots of usage from 1474 right up to the present day.

I'm sure, but they'd really have had to go looking for it, as etymologists do. I do not recall ever seeing it in any pre-WWII thing I've ever read, whereas I've seen a lot of "sex". What's the highest-profile usage in that etymology? Any work we'd have heard of? And in any context that doesn't fit "poetic/figurative/jocular"?

by the 19th century obsolete

Ah, maybe that's the issue - I'm just not reading old-enough stuff. Maybe it's there more in 17th/18th-century texts?

Still

... Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

'No sex in Ireland ...' I don't think Flanagan used the word 'intercourse' (as Larkin did, of course). Too many syllables for the cute hoor.

Yes I agree it does seem to be more common post-war when “sexual intercourse” became abbreviated to “sex”. The etymology is a bit of a mixed bag really, I’ve attached the more recent ones.

In the very recent past (less than half a century) gender and sex have been treated as interchangeable by some people. And that recent past is what most people's frame of reference is.

But as you say, 'gender' to mean your personal identity, is even newer and the majority of people don't use it that way. And I think trying to enforce that as a meaning is possibly counterproductive - we're doing the tra's job for them! Maybe we should just be allowing people to use the word gender to mean sex (it's usually obvious when they mean it that way) and focus on arguing with the tra's that gender identity is not the same as sex.

@Reallybadidea I think this is what I am trying to say!

I see your point OP but personally I find the two words sex and gender being distinct from each other helpful.

Gender and gender identity are helpful words when describing things that relate to a gender identity belief. For example, I'm fine with there being 72+ genders or (single occupancy, fully enclosed) gender-neutral toilets and so on. I accept that gender dysphoria is real and is very distressing for those that experience it.

I don't have a gender. But I accept that others believe they do and that for some people, their gender (or gender identity) means more to them than their sex.

But laws need to be sex-based. And children need to be taught that there are two sexes, that some people are same-sex attracted (or bi-sexual). These are facts. It is also a fact that sexism exists and that society and religions place restrictions and expectations on people because of their sex. I don't need the word gender to describe any of this.

Also, I think it would help children with gender dysphoria to understand unequivocally that they have a sex, and that their feelings of their gender are in no way linked to sexist stereotypes. Trying to claim back the word is a pointless task. Better to embrace its capture, set it free and make a clear distinction between the two: fact versus belief. Of course anyone who has a belief in gender and gender identity will consider it to be fact... that's fine as long as they don't expect me to do so, nor the law nor schools when they are educating children (unless they are explaining it as a belief). I'll even use preferred pronouns, though not for children, to show that I support their belief, just as I try to avoid Muslim prayer time when I schedule regular meetings at work with colleagues in Muslim countries. But I don't need to believe it myself.

Ah, maybe that's the issue - I'm just not reading old-enough stuff. Maybe it's there more in 17th/18th-century texts?

Not in this sense, that I've ever seen.

Because it feels like living in this episode of Doctor who, when the replica becomes the original.

This is such a clear and excellently expressed summary it should be pinned somewhere!

I think, if we could go back in time, that keeping hold of gender in the traditional sense, and forcing the use of "gender identity" when that was what was meant, would make the biggest change to where we are now.

By thinking gender is synonymous with identity rather than the perception and consequence of your sex, we handed TRAs the default position in a lot of legislation.

I think that when gender is used, we should ask for clarity "do you mean sex or gender identity?" Using a word that can be interpreted as both is a bit too easy for people not to take advantage of. I don't think we should allow the assumption that gender automatically means identity.

That's the real purpose of this thread, isn't it? To continue a debate from another thread, not to address the question raised in the original post.

Tedious.

I believe that they changed a lot of forms to stop people writing "hilarious" things such as "lots please". I can see how that would get wearing.