6 ms·

That distinction is already there. As I understand it, there's a differentiation between "male" and "female" biological sex v. "man" and "woman" gender identiti

That distinction is already there. As I understand it, there's a differentiation between "male" and "female" biological sex v. "man" and "woman" gender identities. Hence terms like AMAB/AFAB (assigned male/female at birth). I'm not at all as well versed on it as I should be and I'm working to understand it better as time goes on, but the distinction was made using existing language to avoid overloading, and later generations already understand the distinction pretty intuitively.

homonculus1 4y ago
"Male" and "man" are an adjective and a noun referring to the same thing.
- socialismisok 4y ago
  That's certainly one opinion. A common use of language these days separates the concept of manliness from the concept of maleness. Bill Gates is, for example, not particularly manly, but he's absolutely male. I find it useful to separate the concepts, and others do too. You might not find that useful, but you should be aware language is evolving towards those definitions recently.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    > Bill Gates is, for example, not particularly manly, but he's absolutely male. What does manly mean? Because Bill Gates does not seem to be missing features that I find typical of males in the US. Otherwise, I would say pretty much all male office workers and many other males are as “manly” as Bill Gates”, at which point I figure the word loses utility.
    - socialismisok 4y ago
      Great question. Compare, say, Brad Pitt to Bill Gates. Or The Rock to Peewee Herman. There are differences between how closely those people fit the archetypal mold of "manly". I'm comfortable saying that Arnold Schwarzenegger is manlier than I am. He ticks more of the boxes we associate with "man", culturally. He's muscular, successful, attractive, tough, etc. I've got a bit of a spare tire, I'm pretty soft, etc. He and I both are male, and about the same degree of male. We both have penises, etc. In this way we can use "man" to describe our features that are culturally associated (ruggedness, toughness, cigars and whiskey, etc.) from the biological features (penis, testicles, body hair, etc.)
      - wang_li 4y ago
        People who read your comment should think on manliness and then see how you're portraying it and then consider what you say accordingly.
        socialismisok 4y ago
        I'm trying to articulate my understanding of what the typical American considers manly. Do you have a different understanding of what the archetype is? I'm happy to work with that.
  - jasmer 4y ago
    The term 'man' infers gender while 'male' refers to sex, and has nothing to do with the term 'manliness' in the context you described. The language is 'evolving' only among a very small subset of people on earth who happen to believe they are the 'social vanguard', that doesn't make them so. The response to the linguistic disassociation between the obviously inexorable relationship between gender and sex is, I would guess, considerably bigger and I don't think this argument is going to be won but the language antagonists. I think society is going to accept trans people, which is good ... but I suggest we're never moving away from classical gender terminology. The rest of the world is coming online very quickly and they want nothing to do with our linguistic wars. They'll change their language when they start using 'Latinx' (a term invented by 'colonialist progressives') in Mexico which is to say, probably never. And by the way that's perfectly fine. Paradoxically, in many other parts of the world trans people are far more commonly accepted and have been for some time, lo and behold, they use 'men and women' in the common sense, without any problem at all. In Canada, they fight over whether the stop signs should say 'STOP' or 'ARRET' (aka English or French) because that's how rich and prosperous they are, they can afford to inflate ideological inanities to the level of material concern.
  - homonculus1 4y ago
    - socialismisok 4y ago
      I'm sorry, but I don't see how you can be so prescriptive about language. People use the words in the manner I describe. People use the words in the manner you describe. Both usages exist and are common, albeit in different areas. I'm not denying people use the language in the manner you describe, I'm saying people additionally use it in the manner I describe. And since language is descriptive, not proscriptive, we need to understand both usages exist and be able to recognize both, even if we disagree with them.
  - 8note 4y ago
    Bill gates is known for being a ruthless business executive. What's not manly about that?
    - socialismisok 4y ago
      Apologies, I'm happy to work with whatever your icon of unmanliness is. The specific objective was to identify that there are spreads of people who appear to the general public as more or less manly. Please, if you have an alternative, I'm happy to work with that.
- jimbokun 4y ago
  Males can be boys, roosters, bulls, etc. etc.
- int_19h 4y ago
  The fact that you can say "a male" - and people do it all the time, e.g. it's typical in police reports - means that it's not just an adjective.
knaekhoved 4y ago
Your example contradicts the claim. They say "assigned male at birth" rather than "male", because they believe you can be a female even if you were assigned male at birth.
- eganist 4y ago
  > Your example contradicts the claim. They say "assigned male at birth" rather than "male", because they believe you can be a female even if you were assigned male at birth. I'm not sure that's a contradiction so much as it's trying to weave through people's own synonymizing of the two terms where a distinction is being made. I hear your point though.
- delecti 4y ago
  It's more that male/female is not a single binary, it's several bimodal spectra. Chromosomes of xx or xy don't perfectly line up with birth genitals, birth genitals don't perfectly line up with endogenous hormones, and endogenous hormones don't perfectly line up with internal sense of self, several of those things can be changed later, and none of them are clear binaries.
  - knaekhoved 4y ago
    In excess of 99.98% of people have the genitals naively predicted by their chromosomes. This is one of the closest-to-perfectly-binary phenomena that exists in nature.
    - delecti 4y ago
      Not even 99.98% of people have unambiguous genitalia (it's about 99.5-99.97% [1]), before we even get to people with the "opposite" genitalia of what their chromosomes would suggest. An in any case, genitalia was only one of the 4 things I mentioned, and are also one of the ones that can be changed later. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex#Prevalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex#Prevalence
      - 4y ago
SoftTalker 4y ago
These "assigned" terms don't really work IMO. It imples some choice has been made, by someone. Who is doing the assigning? And it happens before birth, if we want to be accurate. "Conceived male" or "Conceived female" (leaving out the case of genetic abnormalities) seems better to me.
- dahdum 4y ago
  > It imples some choice has been made, by someone. Who is doing the assigning? And it happens before birth, if we want to be accurate. It's on the birth certificate, so it is assigned. There are some efforts to remove it, so perhaps that will change.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    Doesn't seem like assignment to me, more like documenting. Has a penis -> Boy Has a vagina -> Girl Of course that is not a designation of what gender identity the person will adopt, and perhaps change more than once, over the course of his or her lifetime.
- dillondoyle 4y ago
  assignment does not always happen before birth. There are lots of kids born with ambiguous & differing genitals where parents & doctors make an assignment for that kid outside the womb. also ignores a lot of different chromosomal and hormonal differences outside the norm.
  - foverzar 4y ago
    > There are lots of kids born with ambiguous & differing genitals where parents & doctors make an assignment for that kid outside the womb. This sounds suspicious. I don't really believe that the ambiguity is actually that ambiguous to the point where it's actually hard to decide. Or that such "assignments" can be made without ending with suicide. It's not like biological sex is actually defined by visible members - it's a chromosome thing.
int_19h 4y ago
There's a more recent trend claiming that "male" and "female" are similarly fluid and not set in stone.
- zach_garwood 4y ago
  It's not a "trend"; it's established science.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    When it comes to biological sex, which is what "male" and "female" normally refer to, the established science is that it is determined by your physiology. It's not the same thing as "man" and "woman", which is gender identity. But thank you for illustrating OP's point.

homonculus1 4y ago

"Male" and "man" are an adjective and a noun referring to the same thing.

socialismisok 4y ago
That's certainly one opinion. A common use of language these days separates the concept of manliness from the concept of maleness. Bill Gates is, for example, not particularly manly, but he's absolutely male. I find it useful to separate the concepts, and others do too. You might not find that useful, but you should be aware language is evolving towards those definitions recently.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  > Bill Gates is, for example, not particularly manly, but he's absolutely male. What does manly mean? Because Bill Gates does not seem to be missing features that I find typical of males in the US. Otherwise, I would say pretty much all male office workers and many other males are as “manly” as Bill Gates”, at which point I figure the word loses utility.
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    Great question. Compare, say, Brad Pitt to Bill Gates. Or The Rock to Peewee Herman. There are differences between how closely those people fit the archetypal mold of "manly". I'm comfortable saying that Arnold Schwarzenegger is manlier than I am. He ticks more of the boxes we associate with "man", culturally. He's muscular, successful, attractive, tough, etc. I've got a bit of a spare tire, I'm pretty soft, etc. He and I both are male, and about the same degree of male. We both have penises, etc. In this way we can use "man" to describe our features that are culturally associated (ruggedness, toughness, cigars and whiskey, etc.) from the biological features (penis, testicles, body hair, etc.)
    - wang_li 4y ago
      People who read your comment should think on manliness and then see how you're portraying it and then consider what you say accordingly.
      - socialismisok 4y ago
        I'm trying to articulate my understanding of what the typical American considers manly. Do you have a different understanding of what the archetype is? I'm happy to work with that.
- jasmer 4y ago
  The term 'man' infers gender while 'male' refers to sex, and has nothing to do with the term 'manliness' in the context you described. The language is 'evolving' only among a very small subset of people on earth who happen to believe they are the 'social vanguard', that doesn't make them so. The response to the linguistic disassociation between the obviously inexorable relationship between gender and sex is, I would guess, considerably bigger and I don't think this argument is going to be won but the language antagonists. I think society is going to accept trans people, which is good ... but I suggest we're never moving away from classical gender terminology. The rest of the world is coming online very quickly and they want nothing to do with our linguistic wars. They'll change their language when they start using 'Latinx' (a term invented by 'colonialist progressives') in Mexico which is to say, probably never. And by the way that's perfectly fine. Paradoxically, in many other parts of the world trans people are far more commonly accepted and have been for some time, lo and behold, they use 'men and women' in the common sense, without any problem at all. In Canada, they fight over whether the stop signs should say 'STOP' or 'ARRET' (aka English or French) because that's how rich and prosperous they are, they can afford to inflate ideological inanities to the level of material concern.
- homonculus1 4y ago
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    I'm sorry, but I don't see how you can be so prescriptive about language. People use the words in the manner I describe. People use the words in the manner you describe. Both usages exist and are common, albeit in different areas. I'm not denying people use the language in the manner you describe, I'm saying people additionally use it in the manner I describe. And since language is descriptive, not proscriptive, we need to understand both usages exist and be able to recognize both, even if we disagree with them.
- 8note 4y ago
  Bill gates is known for being a ruthless business executive. What's not manly about that?
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    Apologies, I'm happy to work with whatever your icon of unmanliness is. The specific objective was to identify that there are spreads of people who appear to the general public as more or less manly. Please, if you have an alternative, I'm happy to work with that.
jimbokun 4y ago
Males can be boys, roosters, bulls, etc. etc.
int_19h 4y ago
The fact that you can say "a male" - and people do it all the time, e.g. it's typical in police reports - means that it's not just an adjective.

knaekhoved 4y ago

Your example contradicts the claim. They say "assigned male at birth" rather than "male", because they believe you can be a female even if you were assigned male at birth.

eganist 4y ago
> Your example contradicts the claim. They say "assigned male at birth" rather than "male", because they believe you can be a female even if you were assigned male at birth. I'm not sure that's a contradiction so much as it's trying to weave through people's own synonymizing of the two terms where a distinction is being made. I hear your point though.
delecti 4y ago
It's more that male/female is not a single binary, it's several bimodal spectra. Chromosomes of xx or xy don't perfectly line up with birth genitals, birth genitals don't perfectly line up with endogenous hormones, and endogenous hormones don't perfectly line up with internal sense of self, several of those things can be changed later, and none of them are clear binaries.
- knaekhoved 4y ago
  In excess of 99.98% of people have the genitals naively predicted by their chromosomes. This is one of the closest-to-perfectly-binary phenomena that exists in nature.
  - delecti 4y ago
    Not even 99.98% of people have unambiguous genitalia (it's about 99.5-99.97% [1]), before we even get to people with the "opposite" genitalia of what their chromosomes would suggest. An in any case, genitalia was only one of the 4 things I mentioned, and are also one of the ones that can be changed later. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex#Prevalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex#Prevalence
    - 4y ago

SoftTalker 4y ago

These "assigned" terms don't really work IMO. It imples some choice has been made, by someone. Who is doing the assigning? And it happens before birth, if we want to be accurate. "Conceived male" or "Conceived female" (leaving out the case of genetic abnormalities) seems better to me.

dahdum 4y ago
> It imples some choice has been made, by someone. Who is doing the assigning? And it happens before birth, if we want to be accurate. It's on the birth certificate, so it is assigned. There are some efforts to remove it, so perhaps that will change.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Doesn't seem like assignment to me, more like documenting. Has a penis -> Boy Has a vagina -> Girl Of course that is not a designation of what gender identity the person will adopt, and perhaps change more than once, over the course of his or her lifetime.
dillondoyle 4y ago
assignment does not always happen before birth. There are lots of kids born with ambiguous & differing genitals where parents & doctors make an assignment for that kid outside the womb. also ignores a lot of different chromosomal and hormonal differences outside the norm.
- foverzar 4y ago
  > There are lots of kids born with ambiguous & differing genitals where parents & doctors make an assignment for that kid outside the womb. This sounds suspicious. I don't really believe that the ambiguity is actually that ambiguous to the point where it's actually hard to decide. Or that such "assignments" can be made without ending with suicide. It's not like biological sex is actually defined by visible members - it's a chromosome thing.

int_19h 4y ago

There's a more recent trend claiming that "male" and "female" are similarly fluid and not set in stone.

zach_garwood 4y ago
It's not a "trend"; it's established science.
- int_19h 4y ago
  When it comes to biological sex, which is what "male" and "female" normally refer to, the established science is that it is determined by your physiology. It's not the same thing as "man" and "woman", which is gender identity. But thank you for illustrating OP's point.