What do most people think gender means?

[Sweetpea232]

I’ve just read yet another ‘gender reveal’ thread re a pregnancy, another in a succession of threads relating to baby’s “gender”.

I’m really struggling to engage with the whole gender issue because the language used makes no sense and it’s impossible to discuss a topic without a common language. But a starting point seems to be to try to understand what people mean when they talk about a baby’s ‘gender.’

i mean, it’s obviously they think it’s something different to its biological sex - otherwise they would just talk about the baby’s sex.

but it can’t possibly be anything about the baby’s own sense of personal identity, gender or otherwise - because the baby isn’t yet in a position to express that!

so - why have people started to talk about baby’s gender, or gender reveal parties? What do people think they are communicating if they refer to their baby’s gender.

because, what it sounds like to me, is that they are jumping on the gender bandwagon (ooh here’s a new trendy expression I need to use to keep up to date) while at the same time conflating the term gender with something that is fixed, unchangeable and identified at birth (biological sex) -hence disappointment at having a baby of ‘x’ gender, when the use of ‘’gender’ suggests this might change in the future and be not so disappointing!

i mean, it’s obviously they think it’s something different to its biological sex - otherwise they would just talk about the baby’s sex.

It's really not.They're just coy.

The whole 'reveal' shebang is an Americanism & AFAIK they use sex & gender interchangeably.

I think feminists get really comfortable using the word sex in this context because it's correct and it's necessary to discuss the conflicts between sex and gender, which we do often on here.

People who don't have these regular conversations just use gender to mean sex, but without the blushing and the giggling.

In that context it's just a polite euphemism for sex. Because "sex reveal" sounds dodgy!

I have absolutely no idea what it means, unless it means sex and the person is too ashamed to say the word.

Yes, what the 2 PP said. You’re overthinking it in this case, they’re just using it as a euphemism for sex.

Bro, you're reading too much into it. Might be a sign that its time to step away from the GC conspiratorial obsession with trans people? It's clearly doing your head in if such a benign event is rocking your world…

In this case, it could be 'polite euphemism for sex' meaning of gender.

Or it could be 'stereotypes we're going to impose on our child based on its sex' meaning of gender. Based on the people I've come across who've done them at least...

It’s a load of sexist bollocks that tries to determine what people can be interested in or do because of their sex. At the moment it is being abused by a nefarious ideology to shoehorn men into womanhood. It’s outdated and sexist abd should be consigned to the dustbin of history where it belongs.

Maaaate, it’s sexist, reductionist shite.

Gender was all about whether table and dog were masculine or feminine when I was at school. La or le.

Nobody had reveal paries of any sort because you had to wait and see, and then 'it' was a boy or a girl.
It's all entirely bonkers. But I agree, gender is often used as a polite euphemism for sex.

Did gender start being used alongside the discussions about gendered roles/gender pay gap etc? Or was the word 'sex' used initially?

Nobody on this thread has mentioned trans people except you.

It gets used as twee for 'sex' by some people. Fairly recent I think - I've been doing an NCIS re-watch and noticed that in the November 2017 season 15 episode Voices (I looked up the date) Tim wants to know the sex of his future child and the word sex is used by everyone in discussing that. No mention of gender.

ps His wife holds firm and he finds out after the birth.

I think if you use sex, you often get a ‘chance would be a fine thing’ or ‘yes please’ type response which is irritating when you are asking basic ID questions.

i can see why people use gender, but it’s had its time as a euphemism. It’s too easy to blur the facts.

'Gender' is an americanism for 'Sex', and it has also been a boon word to those wanted to sow confusion and conflate one type of thing with another. Very handy. Queer Theorists loved it. It blurs distinctions and is perfect for shape shifting.

Joe Public could not explain to you the difference between 'Gender' and 'Sex'

It just means "sex". Sex and gender used to be used interchangeably. The baby industry seized on the term as it works better than "sex reveal". It's like "adopt an animal" at the zoo. You don't physically take the animal home! But it works as a phrase.

I'm not sure about that - as I said, an 8 year old NCIS (you can't get more American) episode was very clear the subject was sex, and by that stage I had heard people on the UK and Ireland side of the Atlantic using 'gender' when clearly they were referring to sex. I'm inclined to blame UK academia and sociological theorists.

Bro, take your own advice.

Not a conspiracy.
Not an obsession with ‘trans people’.
Gender Critical (GC) means knowing that biological sex matters and wanting to safeguard the rights and dignities of biological women and girls.

What is your problem with that? Why are you misrepresenting it?

Queer Theory is straight out of the american academy. When i did my Sociology degree ( a British Uni) there was till a 'Women's Studies' module; then in the mid 1980s it morphed into 'Gender Studies'..which was more abstract and conceptual and not so much about sex.

Plus americans can be overly polite and lacking in directness in certain ways. That is why they refer to toilets as 'bathrooms' and 'restrooms' etc.

@DeanElderberry To be fair, Gibbs & Co are dealing with a LOT of dead bodies. It would be a bit weird if Ducky (RIP) couldn't tell the sex of a dead Petty Officer.

Anglophone academia, of which the USA is the biggest chunk, is the source, obviously, when when did it ooze out into the real world? Official Ireland seems to be been a early adopter with the Gender Recognition Act in 2015 (which they kept very quiet, a lot of people still haven't noticed).

Once it started being used in online advertisements (for essential items like glue for sticking pink bows onto babies' head) it was there for any nitwit to latch onto.

In the sense that maybe NCIS is a bit of an outlier compared to USA in general as they need to deal in facts.

Many years ago as an NQT, a child asked the difference between sex and gender. I was a bit flummoxed and pondered whether sex was a verb and gender a noun.

I was very familiar with it in foreign language grammar.

But it is a big beast of American TV. And the whole franchise only dipped its toe in gender-as-in-trans once, in one early episode, to no-one's satisfaction, which I find interesting.

"Gender" around babies pretty much always means sex. It's a bit of a quirk of English that sex also refers to "intercourse" so euphemisms have been popular.

Did you just assume their jendah?

Bro?

Well yes….it seems quite likely that people who have such parties are perhaps more likely to feel the need to colour code their baby and buy it ‘boys toys’ or ‘girls toys’.