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 am not a philologist.

Those boxes exist for people who analyse the grammar of ancient and modern languages. Why Latin and languages derived from it are structured the way they are is not terribly relevant - it is thousands of years too late to change it.

Which is a good reason for not trying to use abstract grammatical terms to describe real-life material things like sex.

By the same token, it's too late to change the sociological usage.

Also their "grammatical" usage attempts to describe words like "beard" as "feminine", i.e. relating to real-life material things like sex.

Sociological usage is a few decades old, a recent fad, as opposed to Indo-European languages that are thousands of years old.

We were all able to feminist without using the word 'gender' until the 1990s, we can do it now if we want to.

Bring back sex.

We already have a word for sex. It's "sex".
By your own "confusion" argument, it's time to rename the box in which we keep the word "beard" to something other than "feminine".
Plenty of bad ideas are very old. We move on from them.

No, it really isn't. It's time to realise that 'feminine' does not mean 'female' and has nothing to do with sex, it is a grammatical term.

Germaine Greer was good on 'femininity' versus 'femaleness'. More than 50 years ago.

You are simultaneously trying to claim that using the word "gender" for sex spreads confusion, while also trying to claim that "feminine" has nothing to do with "female". Can you even hear yourself?

But feminine does not have anything to do with being female. Feminine is gender, so a load of outdated sexist bollocks and female is sex which is binary and immutable. You can have feminine men, but you can’t have female men.

What does it mean for a man to be "feminine", then?

to follow the outdated sexist bollocks that is gender stereotypes for women. Which were designed to keep women firmly in their place. If you don’t know what feminine is… have you tried Google?

So now read what I wrote again:

• while also trying to claim that "feminine" has nothing to do with "female".

paying careful attention to how it differs from what you seem to think I wrote:

• But feminine does not have anything to do with being female.

(emphasis mine... but extra word yours).

Errr stop with the rudeness please. So explain. What does feminine have to do with female? And cut the snark please.

"Cut the snark", says Nameless "have you tried Google" Nelly!

Take a look at your own answer to my question "What does it mean for a man to be feminine, then?"

See if you can find any words in it that relate to the concept of "female".

A couple of clues for you: "adult", "human".

Read Germaine Greer. Have a think.

This is a very good example of how the use of 'gender' outside its original grammatical context (nothing to do with sex, just a way of categorising words) has led to muddled thinking. I suppose that's why Judith Butler has to use so much obfuscatory waffle.

To me sex is biological and gender is all the bullshit people attach to sex. So when I hear “gender reveal party” I think it’s incredibly accurate.

It means a man that likes some of the stereotypically female things that gender is also based on. Make up or high heels for example. Alternatively they could naturally look feminine (with again stereotypically female things) such as high cheek bones or long eye lashes. None of these things make them female or are required to be female but they are considered 'feminine'.

People used to use sex and gender to basically mean the same thing even though the two are different. This still seems to be the case with the whole gender reveal nonsense. However with the rise of gender ideology and gender identity, gender has come to be very much separated out from biological sex - where gender is about inside feelz and sex is about biological reality.

@fan783 People used to use sex and gender to basically mean the same thing even though the two are different.

Starting about 30 - 35 years ago.

Until then they didn't use gender except as a joke. Sex was used universally - it was not seen as referring to the sex act until some time in the late 60s, and long after that was the word for - sex.

Of course in the pre-WW2 era, as some novels demonstrate, 'the sex' was a jocular term for women among some of the sillier man.

It's not that "feminine" and "female" never overlap, but that one is neither necessary nor sufficient to be the other.

And to add to the confusion, "feminine" in medical terms usually means something to do with the female body, whereas culturally or socially it more likely refers to stereotypes. Dainty, sensitive, etc etc.

I agree with most of the posters here about how gender differs from sex in modern usage.

My question about what it means for a man to be feminine was a pseudo-rhetorical one following on from this ridiculous assertion:

It's time to realise that 'feminine' does not mean 'female' and has nothing to do with sex, it is a grammatical term.

Even putting aside the obvious straw man (nobody is claiming that "feminine" means "female") it's clearly not just a grammatical term.

Even in the grammatical sense, these categories came about because of word endings originally associated with sexed entities.

And even if you were to abolish the sociological sense of "gender" that wouldn't get rid of the (much older) social sense of "masculine" and "feminine". Removing the words we use to describe oppression doesn't actually help in removing the oppression.

I think for the majority of people it's just a polite synonym for sex. Anyone who says 'there are only two genders' probably means sexes.

I've noticed this especially with Telegraph commenters lately! They seem to think 'gender critical' is some sort of insult from the transactivists, complain about the term when they see it in articles, and call themselves 'gender realists' - but their position is basically the GC one.

The language is confusing because of people's reluctance to use the word sex. To me it's obvious that sex = biology and gender = sex role stereotypes, but I've been involved in feminist discussion for a long time.