Yeah, English speakers have used the terms “female gender” and “male gender”, along with “female sex” and “male sex”, for centuries.
Earlier speakers tended not to differentiate between “gender” and “sex” in colloquial conversation when referring to humans. And that conflation of sex and gender is still fairly widespread, as in the example MrDibble mentioned.
But now that transgender identity is more widely recognized, many people are drawing stricter distinctions between the concepts of sex and gender. But the adjectives “female” and “male” are still often used to modify either word.
So somebody can have, for example, “female gender” or “female gender identity” without being of the “female sex”, biologically speaking.
(The grammatical gender of words, on the other hand, just to confuse the issue further, is “masculine”, “feminine” or “neuter”, rather than “male” or “female”.)
Again, the meaning of “competitive” is very dependent on the context of the participant pool. All other things being equal, it seems likely that typically male testosterone levels and other aspects of postpubescent male biology will always be a net advantage in sports depending largely on physical power. But it’s seldom that all other things are actually equal, especially in the vast majority of children’s sport leagues.
The study doesn’t refer to transgenderism at all. They refer to male and female only. They use the phrase “both sexes” several times. They refer to male athletes and female athletes. Reading for context, indicates that they use the word, “gender” interchangeably with the word, “sex” which is how those words have commonly been used since time immemorial.
My statement that started this line of discussion with you was that cis-girls experience a lower risk of suicide when playing high-school sports than cis-girls who don’t play high-school sports. Do you understand that transgirls have nothing to do with that statement? The study was linked in support of my statement about cis-girls.
If you want to believe that when they use the term, “female athletes,” that they’re also referring to transgirls, be my guest, I could not begin to care less. But, your belief does not have anything to do with what I said which, again, is that cis-girls experience a lower risk of suicide when playing high-school sports than cis-girls who don’t. It isn’t in dispute in this thread that transgirls do too. Whether or not transgirls benefit from playing sports isn’t in contention (everyone agrees that they do) this discussion is centered around whether or not they should play on the girls’ team. Arguing that transgirls are being referenced in a study that uses sex and gender interchangeably is beyond irrelevant to the comment you were responding to.
Cis-girls are female and the cite was used in support of a statement that I made about cis-girls.
Your opinion that the cite is useless has been duly noted, but for me, the opinion of the National Institutes of Health (which published it) holds more weight.
To show one of the positive effects of high-school sport participation on cis-girls since it is on the girl’s team that transgirls want to play.
Not true.
I don’t care about whether you, Mr. Dibble, think that the cite is also referring to transgirls in addition to cis-girls when they use the term, “female athlete.” I do care about the topic; I care about cis-girls; and I care about transpeople. Do you care about cis-girls?
Was I in some way unclear that I was talking about gender?
Not were you just now deliberately choosing to engage in picayune definition nitpicking, but was I actually unclear, in the context of all my posts about that cite?
Which seems to be referring to the biological definition of “female” and you said
Which would be referring to “female” as a term for gender. Which seems a strange thing to say if you believed Summerday was talking about biology and not gender unless you were pushing back and inserting your own definition of the word.
So I’m left not really sure what you mean by female both in this instance and generally. Do you use it only to refer to gender or do you use it to refer to biological sex?
The whole exchange is pretty confusing due in no small part to exactly such conflation of definitions. Regardless of idiosyncratic usages of other sources, for discussions as these I think it would be really helpful to establish a convention that woman/man/boy/girl refer to gender and male/female to biological sex.
That seems helpful and unambiguous. Had you both used the above definitions then your exchange would have been a lot clearer and a lot shorter.
Not my “own definition”. And also not “inserting”, which implies a first usage. A perfectly valid usage to refer to gender, especially given it’s what her own cite used, as I pointed out.
I don’t think you were in the slightest bit actually confused by my usage, as you’ve been able to sum up quite nicely why I used the word I did. You’re just giving me crap to be contrary.
Take it up with the person posting cites where “female” is used to refer to one gender.
Yes. Exactly as I had been doing before. Because that was the fundamental point of disagreement over their cite - them believing it only refers to cis-girls, and me seeing that it clearly makes no distinction, so female=gender in the cite, and so it applies equally to trans-girls, if not more so - since formation of gender identity is explicitly referenced as a benefit of participation.
Perhaps if you’d been following the whole exchange, you might have picked up on that. Although past experience tells me you’d still be trying to do the arguing about definitions just for the sake of arguing, despite no real ambiguity as to my usage existing.
That’s quite rich considering that “Female=Gender” was all you had to say in order to clarify and head-off any possible confusion. I don’t know why you’d avoid clarifying when it is so easy to do so.
Because I don’t believe the question was asked from sincere confusion, but as mere rhetoric. Points scoring, basically. Counting coup. JAQing. Why the hey should I indulge that?
I’m perfectly happy to stand by everything I’ve ever written. When I ask for clarity on a definition it is because I’m unsure on how it is being used and for no other reason. I can’t stop you jumping to incorrect assumptions.
Failure to be clear on how a word is being used is important, and you implicitly accept this seeing as the diversion you and Summerday have stems from a lack of precision in defining the words.
Voltaire put it nicely and I try to stick to that same approach rigorously, no matter if it annoys people. It matters.
“If you wish to converse with me,” said Voltaire, “define your terms.” How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task
And if that was what I’d done, you’d have a point. But it wasn’t, as I’d made clear in earlier posts that the word ‘female’ was being used for gender in her cite and that was how I was going to continue
reading it:
(bolded for emphasis)
So my flippant “So are trans-girls.” was in reference to an ongoing discussion and a point I’d already made.
You jumping in on that one post with your rhetorical coup-stick was just so much evidence that you weren’t actually reading all the posts in that conversation, just looking for a crack to stick a crowbar into. Maybe don’t do that next time, and I’ll take your claims of innocent confusion with less NaCl.
No, I hate cis-girls. I hate them so much I currently parent two of them.