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Based on what the dictionary says? The idea that gender and sex mean two different things isn't contentious amongst the people who study the phenomenon academic
by zajd 10y ago
Based on what the dictionary says? The idea that gender and sex mean two different things isn't contentious amongst the people who study the phenomenon academically.
- littletimmy 10y agoWell, gender studies is not very scientific. It is more "theorizing", in the sense of writing obscurantist explanations for everyday phenomenon.
- zajd 10y agoDo you feel the same way about all social sciences? Does "materialism" only mean valuing material things to you or do you respect the Philosophical definition? Honestly it's a lot of handwaving to excuse ignorance (what not knowing the difference between the two terms is)
- SolaceQuantum 10y agoThe difference in gender and sex also comes up in biology and neuroscience...
- wyager 10y agoEvery generation of soft social "scientists" (I use scare quotes because they don't usually use the scientific method. When I say "soft" social scientists I mean e.g. Gender studies people as opposed to demographers.) tends to disagree with the previous generation on huge fundamental tenets for mostly arbitrary reasons. It is wise to take any dictionary-defying claims from these fields with a large grain of salt, because there's a substantial chance that such a claim is made for social or political (but not scientific) reasons.
- lr4444lr 10y agoThe general statement "they mean something different" is a pronouncement on language as a broad concept. The OED and Merriam Webster are about as authoritative an answer as you can get on that in English, which for the sake of HN, will have to do for now. That's not to say one day the differences won't evolve (linguistically) into fairly concrete and well-understood distinctions across all languages, but we're definitely not there yet.