Let me preface by saying that I know it’s used often enough that it’s more or less acceptable English. I still don’t like it. This may also be a really silly rant, but I say it anyway and unashamedly.
SEX != GENDER, and GENDER != SEX
I’m not sure when this crap got started, and it may be very old indeed, but it seems to me that it got popularized in the last 20-30 years. Words have GENDER. People have SEX. (Frequently in some cases, but I mean that Male and Female are SEXES, not Genders). Maybe they started it because Academics didn’t really like using the word sex constantly, I don’t know. Maybe it started to distinguish cultural identity from physical features. This seems to jmake some sense, because the incredibly stupid concept that people were not “really” male or female but that was only a “social construct” was popular then. I don’t know.
What I do know is that it cheeses me off to the Hellishness of Satan’s abyssal cumstained jockstrap and back. I DO NOT HAVE A GODDAMN GENDER! I am male: A man, a human with a penis and the genetics to back it up. I do not have the “Maculine Gender”. I may have a certain culture which expresses this in certain ways and not others, but a female human is not going to come exactly the same as me even if she emulated that same masculine expression of culture somehow.
Saying “Gender” for “sex” calls to mind a deep implic ation of looking at other people as ciphers, objects, or “literary categories”, and not for what they are, human beings. Human beings have sex: raw and often unchained. Sexuality is dangerous - maybe the most dangerous weapon humans have. It constantly leads people into relationships that are often unwise, but it can also be one fo the most blessed gifts we have. Sex, human sexes, and sexuality are all basically the same word for a reason. Sex is messy, both physically and mentally. Sex immediately conjures up imagines of male and female and all the weird diffeerences and variances of the human form.
Gender is tame. Gender is an idealized state (in the sense that it is a positive ideal which can be thought about and manipulated by wordsmiths). Gender is controllable, or at least pretends it is. Gender is limited to the nice, safe spheres of literary contemplation and linguistic attribution.
I might hazard a guess that “gender” has become a type of euphemism. In today’s Western culture we tend to equate “sex” immediately with “intercourse.”
I’m going to go over to my girlfriend’s house tonight. There’s going to be dinner, some wine, and a movie. Before the movie is over, I guarantee I’ll have carried her to the bedroom for some hot gender.
Sex = “either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species and that are distinguished respectively as female or male especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures” (M-W)
Gender = “the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex” (M-W).
Or roughly put, Sex = Genotype whereas Gender = Phenotype.
Isn’t that almost the definition of “transgendered”? If a (genetic) woman’s brain is telling her that she’s “really” male, and acts with “behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits” that are commonly identified as male… isn’t that validation of the separatuion of Sex and Gender?
I agree with smiling bandit, put it on your calendar. Any linguist knows that gender is an artifact of Indo-European linguistic whatthefuckery, while sex is a biological phenomenon.
ETA: But yeah, “gender” also has a sociological use. What confuses things is the prims saying “sex” for “coitus” & “gender” for “sex.”
And I’ll add this … the idea that there are just two genders is not universal. Some small minorities of cultures have acknowledged additional genders. It’s been a long time since my college anthro courses so I don’ t remember the specific tribe involved, but at least one North American tribe recognized a third gender – biological men who dressed as women and did the jobs typically associated with women.
Also, even the notion of “sex” can be fuzzy … what do you call an XXY male? What about someone who is intersex? Even biologically our two neat boxes of male and female aren’t adequate to cover the range of human biology.
Finally, add to that the continuum of sexual orientation, and we don’t have nearly enough boxes in which to put people.
While this is true to some degree, it’s not very relevant. Few people are distnctly intersexed. XXY is just male, as XXX is just female - I’m not a strict genetic determinist. There are a few people who have other “arrangements”, but they usually fall roughly within one or the other pactically.
Yes, for simplicity I was avoiding unusual genotypes, or conditions such as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, where (in the case of complete AIS) they appear as women, tend to identify (gender) as women, but are genetically male.
very interesting. I thought exactly the opposite and have for years attempted to substitute “gender” for “sex” when referring to male and female. Ignorance fought I guess.
Well, it depends. For most people it probably doesn’t matter which you use – if a person is physically male and has always identified as a male, you can substitute gender for sex and never run into any confusion. For instance, you could ask me either way, and I’d say “I’m male.” I was born with the physical accoutrement of a male, and I identify as a male.
The difficulty comes in if you’re talking to someone who is transgendered. In that case, substituting “gender” for “sex” arguably gets you the information you’re really looking for. If that person was born with a penis, but identifies as a woman and has a female name, she’s going to appreciate being asked her gender, to which she’ll respond that she identifies as a woman. If you asked her sex, but what you really wanted to know was like which pronoun to use and how to characterize her in all the little ways we categorize people by gender, you’d be barking up the wrong tree. Her sex would be male, but she wouldn’t want you to call her “him.” If that makes sense. So, what “sex is that person” = what’s in the drawers, but “what gender” = shall I treat this person as a man or a woman? Depending on what you’re actually talking about, there’s an appropriate context for either.
People most certainly have gender, and it isn’t the same as sex. According to “Doing Gender” by West and Zimmerman, gender is what one “does”, while sex is a physical characteristic. Wearing a dress is something a woman does (gender), wheras a female (sex) has a uterus. A person born male can adopt the behavior of a woman and live as a woman (gender) but will still be male in terms of her sex.
I suppose you might say the issue I have with this is that it complicates a simple . If you wish to define Gender as “The cultural-specific demontsration and relization of sex,” then that’s kinda OK.
The problem then arises, however, that people don’t use it that way. As in your own example, you can’t be the “Male Gender”. You can only have the Male Gander common to your culture - which could be quite distinct from another. Well, you could theoretically borrow another, but that’d be pretty crazy. And at that point, what’s the use of even talking about Gender at all? I would say instead “Sexual Identity,” another common term, and more descriptive.
The use has already been described in this thread. You certainly can have “the male gender.” You just aren’t required to by your physical appearance.
As for the notion that describing gender and sex separately complicates a simple issue, I expect the transgendered would disagree, and probably be rightly insulted. You obviously understand the distinction, so I’m not sure what the trouble is.
