Gender - what word do we use now

[HagoftheNorth]

Interesting article on the difference between male & female brains on Radio 5 this morning (around 6.55 if anyone’s interested). The interviewee made the point that male and female brains appear to be physically/chemically different, and specifically, in the same way that male/female risk around heart attacks is different, male/female risk around eg Alzheimer’s is different. Then she highlighted that some of those risks are sex-based - ie just about the genetics, but some of this risks might be gender-based. By this, she meant driven by society’s sex-based treatment of different people.

Now, we all know perfectly well that how society treats transwomen is different from how society treats women. So, my question is, this societal difference used to be called gender, but now that means something else. How do we express this, or is this element of feminism now lost?

"Now we all know that how society treats transwomen men is different from how society treats women."

There. Fixed that for you

All the risks are sex based - some genetic, some based on how society treats people BECAUSE OF THEIR SEX.

I suppose they use 'stereotypes'. We could usefully ask the difference between gender and stereotypes.

Apologies, Igmum and Meceme, I thought all that was implicit 😉

Arthurbella, yes stereotypes, and the societal expectations which stem from that. Some chat about middle aged women having lots of caring responsibilities, because clearly men don’t have caring responsibilities for their children or their parents (yes I know some are very good, but society tends to laud those men as they are doing something unexpected 🙄)

The problem with identifying brains as male or female is - yeah ok, but at what point in time was the identification made? My very amateur understanding of current neuro research stuff is that the brain is capable of being changed by how it's used. The millions of different pathways are strengthened, or atrophy, depending on how much they are used.
So a child given toys that promote spatial awareness or manual dexterity will develop corresponding changes in their brain, which could later be interpreted as having a 'male' or 'female' brain. Any lurking neuro expert out there- feel free to correct me!

I think that's right, it's like how London taxi drivers show brain changes over time as they learn to navigate the city, different to other people who aren't cabgendered: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/london-taxi-memory

Gender means what it's always meant, which is the same as sex (except when sex means copulation or gender is used about grammar).

What's discussed here is gender roles, meaning the current local cultural norms for each sex. These can be partly nature-based (men really are more violent), partly arbitrary (pink for girls), and partly coerced (men don't want to be cuckolded so they pretend women are too stupid to be allowed to go out unaccompanied).

Second wave feminists wanted us to throw off gender roles, then Judith Butler made a right pig's ear of everything resulting in the idea that performing a gender role correlates to possessing that inner gender identity.

If only we had had only one word for sex in English we might not have been in this pickle now.

I don't believe in gender identity. I think that transwomen enact an incongruent gender role because they want to be treated like women and to some extent they succeed. In social situations the exaggerated signals they send out - through dress etc - elicit a semiautomatic woman-facing response in the rest of us. But this effect isn't strong enough to prevail in situations of potential danger or unfairness.

So here we are.

cabgendered

😄

The sexes are sexes, stereotypes are reductive and harmful, personalities are personalities, some people believe in astrology, gender is a feature of the grammar of some languages.

Biological sex.

Gender only started to be used to mean 'sex' in the 1970s, and then only in theoretical discussions about stereotypes and concept of 'queer', mainly in sociology. It started to be used instead of 'sex' more widely in the late 1990s, and took over about 10-15 years ago.

It is a very unhelpful and confusing word and it would be better for everyone if it had retained its 19th and 20th century meaning. Everyone except those proponents of newspeak who want exactly the sort of confusion and division its current use causes.

I found this which is quite a long read:

https://debuk.wordpress.com/2016/12/15/a-brief-history-of-gender/

It seems 'gender' for male or female goes back to the 15th century (derived from the Norman French 'gendre').

Also, of course it still gets used in scientific papers about (other) animals and plants.