When did "sex" and "gender" stop being used interchangeably?

[WookeyHole]

Prompted by another thread where the OP is getting feedback on using gender reveal rather than sex reveal of a baby...

Until perhaps 10 years ago, possibly more recently than that, I, and everyone I know, would have used the words sex and gender interchangeably.

Now I know they are seen to have different meanings, but doesn't the very use of the word gender by TRAs and the fact women have to use sex mean a concession by women?

Or is it that language evolves and it's been a necessary step to ensure clarity?

I just can't help thinking people on mn calling out other women for using gender is using the term in a way which is a trans construct.

Please don't flame me, I am not good on the nuances of this whole thing, and I am posting to learn.

I don't think there's any reason for [ ... I'm looking for a flame emoji, but feck it, life's too short☺ ...] you to get flamed, it's a good question, as good as 'when did "sex" and "gender" start being used interchangeably!
'Gender' became a sort of polite version of 'sex' at some point, on forms etc.
Sometime between then and now, all hell broke loose.
But don't ask me, I can't even find a flame emoji!😑

I would be interested to hear other opinions on this. I know the mumsnet line is that sex and gender have entirely different meanings and anyone using them interchangably is a thicky thick pants but this is quite a new complaint. Gender was always a polite euphemism for sex when I was growing up (was born late 70s). Nobody thought you could be a different gender to your sex so it was never an issue.

When I was at school (1960s) sex was sex and gender was to do with Latin and French nouns. But I have seen it in Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities?) in a rather twee and tongue in cheek way (a shining representative of her gender, or something like that). Mostly the Victorians were happy to use the expression “the fair sex”.
In my experience it started creeping in over the 1990s - weirdly, as society seemed to become increasingly sexualised, people seemed to be embarrassed to use the word sex, while discussing all sorts of explicit sexual practices freely and in detail.

They have always technically had different meanings...

Gender has its origins c. 700 years ago from the Latin genus via the modern french genre - and that makes sense as we still use genre as a sense of classification...

so gender has always related to classifying people according to characteristics...
20th century prudish attitude to Sex started people using the word gender as an alternative - because there was no doubt in anyone's mind that if born a man you are always a man / if born a woman you are always a woman, so the two became shorthand for each other...

it is only in a world of fudging and lies and deceit where people pretend that you can change sex that it has become more important to return to the original meanings and point out that sex is immutable and gender is a temporal snapshot of a stereotype...

They broadly had distinct meaning for most of the time English had existed as a language: one grammatical (gender) relating to the formation of words, and one biological (sex) relating to the categorisation of bodies of humans.

Even then, gender was occasionally used as a literary flourish to mean sex, because gender used masculine and feminine.

Around the end of the 19the Century, sex took on an additional meaning of sexual intercourse, and gender took up a secondary meaning as a polite replacement for sex as the categorisation of bodies. It was at this time that sex and gender had an overlapping meaning.

I think what you mean, though, is the use of gender to denoteathe interaction that a person has with society as a result of their sex. Gender in that case being the socially constructed superficial things that follow from your body.

This happened in the 1950s and arose from women's studies academic writing, prior to its infiltration by "queer theory" to become "gender studies".

No, Sex and Gender was not used interchangeably originally.

I once even checked various dictionaries on a hotel room bookshelf and in those it was still just sex (‘80s? Early 90s?). Gender was used in reference to grammar - French and Latin at school for example where there are feminine, masculine, and neuter words needing different articles and adjective endings depending on which they are.

Then gender was then a word used by academics to mean the social presentation expected from the two sexes. That’s where the idea started to grow that there is no such thing as masculine or feminine except as social expectations ( later confused as there is. I such thing as sex only the mind).

Gender meaning ‘sex’ is a U.S. euphemism which spread here.

At one point here people used to say ‘sexual intercourse’, ‘intercourse’, ‘making love’ or even a more crude word. Once it became routine to just say ‘have sex’ there was more ambiguity around the meaning of ‘sex’, hence the growing popularity of ‘gender’.

I do agree though that very few people know that gender means the social presentation stereotypically associated with the two sexes.

Gender = feminine/masculine/neuter.

Sex = female/male.

It makes sense to say “a masculine woman” and it doesn’t make sense to say “a male woman”.

So in French a baguette is feminine and it is referred to as elle, like in English we refer to ships and countries as she/her - but their feminine grammatical gender does not make them female.

So the long and short, is that they never were really used interchangeably, until the 70s/80s I think - and people started wanting to signal that they were with it/right on, progressive - they knew about sexual politics, had heard of Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinham and were savvy about ‘gender’, and then it trickled down to being the ‘polite’ word, in much the same way that the polite word for ’handicapped’ became ‘disabled’.

Gender has always been a grammatical term.

Sex has always referred to biological sex.

And no, they have never been interchangeable.

The new 'fashion' to confuse them is a squeamishness thing - not wanting to say sex when you do mean sex (which is problem when you want to be understood)

The fact that, in English, sex also means 'sexual intercourse' is the probably cause of the squeamishness.

Meanwhile, those of us who like clarity (and speak a gendered language as a first language) tear our hair out trying to understand what English speakers mean half the time these days!

@stickygotstuck gender was occasionally used to mean sex in the 19th century, mostly for poetic effect. "...offering black baskets of Dead Sea fruit to black divinities of the feminine gender..."

Interesting the quote is feminine gender and not female gender or feminine sex. So it’s not quite interchangeably used there.

@coureur but a 'gender reveal' party (for instance) is not poetry. Or a 19th century occurrence IYSWIM. Also, your example 'femenine' is not the same as 'female'. So actually, I don't think it's actually referring to sex. But that's poetry for you.

My point is, it's a rather new phenomenon, and one that grates because of the lack of clarity (it's also is hard to believe is accidental, but I am just interested in linguistics)

Speaking of which, I've had a total of ONE deletion by Mumsnet, and that was trying to explain the usefulness of the neuter grammatical gender...

Ingenieur · Today 15:05

Wonderfully well explained, and so much better than I managed to, OP.

They have always been used interchangeably, for hundreds of years.

It's only recently that people insist they're different.

See Merriam Webster's usage guide.

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gender

If you think they've never been interchangeable, someone needs to tell the experts at MW that some randoms on the internet say they're wrong:

"In the 15th century gender expanded from its use as a term for a grammatical subclass to join sex in referring to either of the two primary biological forms of a species, a meaning sex has had since the 14th century; phrases like "the male sex" and "the female gender" are both grounded in uses established for more than five centuries."

It hasn't stopped. Most people who don't understand the difference are using them interchangeably.

It's just grammar but it makes a big difference when you get it wrong.

Ingenieur · Today 15:05’s post has nuance about the ‘used interchangeably for hundreds of years’ point.

OED, Cambridge dictionary, and even Samuel Johnsons dictionary also clearly show sex and gender have had the same usage for many centuries.

Back in the late 90s or early 2000s I was an admin on a forum where there was initially one lovely transitioning woman, who was very popular, though also obviously rather troubled.

Gradually pressure began to change the profile entries from “Sex” to “Gender”. It was done without much thought as it seemed harmless and, as I said, the one, prominent transitioner was a genuinely nice person. Anything small that helped seemed like the right thing to do.

Initially there were still only two choices (M and F) but it was requested that other options were put in place, initially just “Prefer not to say” then later you could add your own.

This was several years before the topic became controversial and the admins were happy to make the changes. I noticed similar changes elsewhere, though the forum was quite an early adopter.

So I think the change from “Sex” to “Gender” as standard on forms of all sorts was not that long ago. Back then, it seemed innocuous and it was considered by most to be a change between two words that were more or less used synonymously. It was only later, as a clique of bullies who claimed to be gender diverse, took over, driving many others away, that it became apparent that a problem was developing.

I don’t think women fighting for a reversal of the changes in terminology is a concession. It’s just that, over time, it’s become apparent that this change was strategic and not simply an evolution.

The terms sex and women are used in laws. The push to using different terminology and changing the meanings of words is designed to muddy the waters. It’s easier to change language than it is to change laws and if language is unclear, it gives benefit to those who want the boundaries that restrict them gone.

I hope this helps: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gender%2Csex&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true

The two words have been used synonymously for centuries but have also had distinct meanings. 'Sex' applies to non-human orgamisms too (male and female sex organs and gametes) ; 'gender' is used in relation to behaviours, roles, presentation culturally expected of each sex - 'masculine' and 'feminine' .

It's the muddling up and recent prioritisation of the latter over the former which is problematic nowadays - for instance, the ludicrous idea that sports should be split by 'gender' rather than sex.

Apparently there are 79 genders so someone told me the other day. 🤷‍♀️

There used to be a classic joke for form filling. Sex? yes please!

Now in the scramble to be 'proper' we've lost it

Stonewall fuelled the issue and the government enabled it by having 'diversity champions' in every workplace. Intended to look at access for minorities and LGB employees but totally hijacked by TRA's. When men with highly developed sexual fetishes around wearing parody suits of their sexualised notion of women began gaining promotions to board members and heads of women's charities and organisations the game was up. Hopefully it's running it's course and the public have more understanding of AGP and the damage to the rights of children, gay people and women.

It depends a bit on the context. In academia, especially among feminists, gender was used, from the language-use, to mean cultural masculine and feminine ideas apart from biological sex.

However, in general discussion, they were used pretty interchangeably from at least the 1970s, up into the two thousands. You started to see some people then who were "into" GI that differentiated them in that way, but the majority still thought of them as completely interchangable.

In North America, it's still that way, which makes some discussions quite confusing.

The question is when did sex and gender start being used interchangeably.

Very recently. When the graduates who attended university in the 80s during the back lash against women's liberation was in full force and Women's Studies became Gender Studies.

It was part of the process to pretend by using them interchangeably that there was no difference.

It is only younger people who think they are interchangeable.

Look up old newspaper stories or the fact with have a SEX discrimination act, not a gender discrimination act.

The concern is was that the change is use of words (often done through news papers having a house style for reporting that could easily be queered) was so gradual many didn't notice.