WORDS have a gender - PEOPLE have a sex

In all of the gay marriage debate I wish to remind you that gay men are not attracted to people of their gender!!!

People do not have a gender, that is a part of speech.

Gay folks are attracted to persons of their own SEX.

(And yes, I do it too sometimes and I know better.)

At least that's the way I see it.

Gender applies only to words. Verbs can have a gender.

if I recall correctly, but I do get your original point.

when it comes to sex. Gender in addition has a meaning related to grammar.

I always use "gender," because "sex" has another meaning that can be confused. I won't stop, neither. It sounds more proper to me, and I'll use what I believe is the right word. :P

and I agree with them.

Biological sex attributes don't always = the gender identity of a person, Merriam Webster or no.

Gender is:
b : the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex.

sex and gender.

Many people INTERCHANGE sex and gender, but they are INCORRECT for doing so.

Most people DO interchange them, because for most people, their biological SEX...and thier "spiritual" GENDER are congruent...that is to say, they are anatomically male or female, and a HAPPY to be that way.

for a transgender person, like myself...our bodies at virth were NOT congruent with our internal GENDER.

Our GENDER was opposite our SEX.

So, no, fuck you, gender does not mean sex. That is unequivocally incorrect.
GENDER can mean...the behavioral qualities that society has assigned to a given sex, I suppose...BUT IT IS NOT THE FUCKING SAME A SEX!! Just because most people are happy, internally, with the sex they are EXTERNALLY does not mean it is correct to say sex=gender or that gender=sex...because, for some of us, this is not the case.

I'd always kinda figured that my pedantic purist refusal to say "gender" when I meant "sex" was insensitive to transgendered people.

Of course, this means that there would have to be occasions when I *should* say gender rather than sex -- if I am meaning to include transgendered people in the category that fits their gender, rather than their sex. I think there might be a lot of such occasions. And I'm wondering whether they might essentially cover all the instances in which I'd normally insist on saying "sex" anyhow. ;)

I'm genuinely curious and I hope you might offer guidance. When would you consider it appropriate to use each term? I tend to at least give very serious consideration to the wishes of people affected by what I do, so I can't guarantee I'd follow your advice, but I'll very definitely think on it.

What few people seem to understand, I'd just note, is that the use of "gender" to refer to human beings is only about a generation old. No one would have thought of referring to a person's gender when I was a young feminist, say. And the shift didn't really come about because of sensitivity to transgendered people or a desire to distinguish sex roles from sexes. It really was just squeamishness about saying "sex" all the time, and self-aggrandizing fancification of the discourse, it you ask me.

Thanks again!

They are the same word. No difference in meaning at all, unless one chooses to give it a different meaning. Gender is not a biological term, it has the exact meaning as sex.

"Confusion of sex for gender blurs significant aspects of their respective meanings. The former denotes objective biological capacities and constraints of a physical organism. The latter denotes more subjective features of sociocultural roles acquired in specific cultural and social milieux. These are not trivial differentiating concepts but, in fact, are analogous to and as important as genotype and phenotype.

Commonly, gender and sex characteristics closely converge; however, individuals sometimes experience marked contradictions."

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/extract/284/23/2997

I can pick my way thru it and see what it means. Basically, as a transgender person myself, read my above posts if you don't understand the JAMA jargon.

to words, it also does mean "sexual identity."

1. A grammatical category used in the classification of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and, in some languages, verbs that may be arbitrary or based on characteristics such as sex or animacy and that determines agreement with or selection of modifiers, referents, or grammatical forms.
1. One category of such a set.
2. The classification of a word or grammatical form in such a category.
3. The distinguishing form or forms used.

2. Sexual identity, especially in relation to society or culture.
1. The condition of being female or male; sex.
2. Females or males considered as a group: expressions used by one gender.

So, while I get what you're ultimately saying, it's not entirely accurate.

I get annoyed by the misuse of "gender."

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And so appropriate, too. :eyes:

It was unpleasant, and I am sorry.

Apologies just about NEVER happen around here. You are very classy! :toast:

damn it!

Damn it.

Now, if you keep it up, I'm putting you on IGNORE!!

SEX DOES NOT EQUAL GENDER!!

I am an example where it didn't, damn it!!

Sorry. It simply doesn't work that way.

There's no sensitivity or insensitivity involved. The original post is about the meaning of the word "gender". "Sex does not equal gender!!" is not the point. The word "sex" and the word "gender" sometimes have the same meaning.

You have to realize a few things:
1. Words have multiple meanings in different contexts.
2. WORD USAGE is a fundamental factor of word meaning.
3. Every living language evolves and changes.
4. Every single dictionary of American English includes at least two definitions of the word "gender" and one definition is ALWAYS sex.

In a medical context or a sociological context, the distinction between "sex" and "gender" is important. In ordinary usage, however, there is no distinction.

That may change over time, but it is not incorrect or wrong to use the words "sex" and "gender" as synonyms in casual context. Again, how people use a word determines its meaning. People who use "gender" in place of "sex" are not being insensitive or insulting to transexuals. If they are talking about transexuals or the state of being transexual they should make the distinction, however, because it is more precise.

Disputing the fact that the words sometimes have the same meaning because you don't like the way it makes you feel is like fundies disputing evolution because it makes them feel less important.

Welcome to Ignoreland.

The meaning of words is not decided by any individual.

My banishment to "Ignoreland" causes me great grief, of course. Did you stamp your feet when you clicked "ignore"?

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
Main Entry: 1gen·der
Pronunciation: 'jen-d&r
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English gendre, from Middle French genre, gendre, from Latin gener-, genus birth, race, kind, gender -- more at KIN
1 a : a subclass within a grammatical class (as noun, pronoun, adjective, or verb) of a language that is partly arbitrary but also partly based on distinguishable characteristics (as shape, social rank, manner of existence, or sex) and that determines agreement with and selection of other words or grammatical forms b : membership of a word or a grammatical form in such a subclass c : an inflectional form showing membership in such a subclass
2 a : SEX <the feminine gender> b : the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex.

Did you just cite a dictionary?!?!?!? WOW...


First thing you learn in Sociology is Gender =! Sex. But I guess academia is wrong because a dictionary says so!

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News to me. :eyes:

I guess a lot of academia types in queer/feminist theory are wrong then. Academia is pretty big and has differing viewpoints.

Besides people having "a gender" or "a sex", they can also have "sex".

I assume you understand the difference between "sex" and "a sex".

only apply to words and not people?

I use the word gender to refer to people, because, as someone said above, sex has other meanings that confuse things.

And as a woman, when I hear "sex" used as gender, I think of those tired old cliches, "the fairer sex" and "the gentler sex."

So I say, and will continue to say, GENDER when I refer to the sex of a human.

I get your point, but Webster's does, indeed, disagree with you.

you don't make assumptions about their GENDER because of what external organs they have, i'm cool with that.

I'm post-op now, but, there was a time I was biologically, anatomically male...and I'd have ripped your head off if you referred to me as a male, or with male pronouns, or "sir"ed me, or had referrred to me, in any way shape or form, as masculine at all.

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the DU'ers in this thread illiterates?

that we associate with biological sex. The latter we generally, probably inaccurately, typologize as a dichotomy (male/female) but given the wide range of hermaphroditic possibilities this dichotomy is likely a continuum with a strong bi-modal distribution. With each of these two 'modes' we associate certain social behaviors which we expect to observe in others and reinforce ourselves through our daily practices. Frankly, I think there IS a 'gender' for 'gay male' since often their social behavior differs markedly from that of straight males. There is probably also gay and straight female genders too. Of course, like the physical distinction of sex, the gay-straight and male - female axis of gender does not define four 'boxes' but instead two axes that delineate some sort of 'space' within which most human beings (at least in North American society) fit based on their exhibited gendered practices. To place yourself on this Devorian geometry (I named it for Holly Devor's Gender Blending book), one would assess their male:female and gay:straight ratios and plot their coordinates.

We assign male, female, intersexed, transgendered, etc. Sex is considered an act or prart of a verb, e.g., "She had sex with him." or "He wanted sex, but I said no."... That is why one has "Gender Studies" and a totally separate study, "Sexual Studies."
Many would also argue for a queer, a gay, a lesbian gender as well, but that's too postmodern for me.

In English, very few words have gender: poet, poetess, him, her, she, he, etc. In most Indo-European languages save English they do, to everyone's detriment. Even the "short guide to what makes a word masculine or feminine" is not 100% straight forward. Example: la mano and el agua in Spanish, even though most words ending in o are masc. and most in a are fem.
Verbs in I-E do not have gender.

Gender is about our internal feelings about who we are....sex is about what organs you happen to have.

In most cases, these are the same, but for transgender people, they are not.

To simplify, we like to say..."Sex is found between the legs, GENDER is found between the ears!"

Sex - biological definition
Gender - cultural definition

So there is only 2 sexes, but there can be many genders. Say... men, women, and gay men... three

In our culture it always seemed to me that lesbians are still considered women, while gay men aren't considered men or women.

to say the same thing. :D

as follows: The term 'sex' (to be exact, sexual dimorphism) refers to the physiological differences between males and females, whereas the term 'gender' is used to describe "the way members of the two sexes are perceived, evaluated, and expected to behave" (Alice Schlegel). While, in general, there are only be two biological sexes (this definition does, however, leave no room for hermaphrodites or androgynous persons), gender is much more fluid and can vary from one culture to another. Not trying to argue here--just adding yet another perspective.

..lest we have lots of sinning and little gerunds being formed out of wedlock. That's NOT what God intended!

And thanks for posting that.

However, and unfortunately, it's a lost battle.

gender, in definition according to M-W and now especially in progressive academic research, has replaced sex.

I'm a wordsmith by trade and a pedant by nature. And I'm with you.

Dictionaries do not tell us what words mean. They tell us how words are used. What words mean is a matter of the consensus of the speakers of a language. The fact that some segment of that population uses a word to mean "x" doesn't actually mean that it means "x".

Now ... when I was filling out my application form for getting called to the bar many years ago and hit the question "sex", I did say "sure, but shouldn't I get to know you a bit first?"

;)

You would have no idea how much the people frome the 1993 March On Washington struggled with this very same language! Or maybe you do. It's rediculicous and wedge-binding into agroup. All these terms were decided way back then, why are you bringing them up now? Do you wish to see transgender people leave? I'm not going anywhere. Why, Ben Burch, why this side splitting issue? And, also, why now?