General > General Technical Chat
Elon Musk is a nice chap
TimFox:
--- Quote from: mikerj on December 02, 2022, 10:00:00 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on December 01, 2022, 08:30:38 am ---
--- Quote from: james_s on November 30, 2022, 10:01:08 pm ---For most of history gender was literally equivalent to sex, it is only very recent and arguably radical academic theory that gender is a social construct that is separate, 10 years ago I had never even heard of such nonsense and frankly for the vast majority of scenarios it is only sex, as in biological sex, not the act is all that is relevant. If a person needs medical treatment for example sex matters, not what they identify as.
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You may not have heard about it, but it’s actually something documented since antiquity. It’s absolutely, probably, not just something concocted in recent years. In many cultures it’s actually been integrated into core belief systems. (Like the “third sex” people in India, or Native American peoples.)
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The word "gender" has literally been a synonym for sex since the middle ages when it was first used. The pressure to change this is relatively recent and lead by some absolutely abhorrent deviants such as John Money.
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"Gender" is a cognate of "genre" and "generic", developing from the Latin "genus"; the original meaning was "type" or "sort".
From a standard etymological reference:
"The unetymological -d- is a phonetic accretion in Old French. Also used in Latin to translate Aristotle's Greek grammatical term genos.
The grammatical sense is attested in English from late 14c.
Jespersen ('Philosophy of Grammar,' 1924) defines grammatical gender by reference to the Indo-European distinction of masculine, feminine, neuter, "whether the division be based on the natural division into two sexes, or on that between animate and inanimate, or on something else...
The "male-or-female sex" sense of the word is attested in English from early 15c."
The grammatical sense of gender continues in modern French and German, and is not necessarily biological or even logical.
With all the agitation in the English-speaking world about gender, language, etc., I think that there seems to be less fuss in those languages that emphasize grammatical gender.
james_s:
In my mind, "gender" is either a synonym for biological sex, or it is an irrelevant label that one can arbitrarily apply to themselves.
TimFox:
But, to the medieval mind invoked above, and to modern languages with grammatical use, the meaning can be different.
AndyBeez:
Here in the UK you might encounter a web form that asks for your "identified gender?". Answers include: male, female, transitioning, non-bipolar and other. This replaces the arcane web form "sex" question where responses would be: male, female and yes please! In our post woke nation, asking for a person's gender is considered to be more 'gender neutral'. Except when it comes to female gender politics.
james_s:
--- Quote from: AndyBeez on December 03, 2022, 12:22:27 am ---Here in the UK you might encounter a web form that asks for your "identified gender?". Answers include: male, female, transitioning, non-bipolar and other. This replaces the arcane web form "sex" question where responses would be: male, female and yes please! In our post woke nation, asking for a person's gender is considered to be more 'gender neutral'.
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Frankly I find it mildly offensive when a person implies they can't tell my gender by looking at me and has to ask, but I guess nobody cares if I get offended. Really it's more tiresome than offensive, like just take your best guess, if you get it wrong maybe I'll bother to correct you. In most cases it doesn't strike me as relevant anyway, outside of a few specific cases like dating why is a person's gender even relevant?
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