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You probably just met someone from a non-English culture. The sex/gender distinction is an invention of the past 20 years, and outside of the English world has

You probably just met someone from a non-English culture. The sex/gender distinction is an invention of the past 20 years, and outside of the English world has probably only been picked up by people who interface with English speakers a lot (i.e. academics). I can assure you that Korean makes no distinction: the dictionary translations of the English terms are "sex" and (the full phrase) "one's feeling of one's sex."

moonchrome 4y ago
My primary language is Croatian - there is a word for sex (spol) and gender (rod). First is biological second is used for grammar. But I'm just making silly comments because it read to me like he's an alien (or maybe GPT is becoming self aware and posting on forums :) )
- Veen 4y ago
  That's how the terms sex and gender were used in English until a couple of decades ago. Gender was later coopted to refer to social and cultural factors, as opposed to biological factors, of sex.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> The sex/gender distinction is an invention of the past 20 years As a generalized concept (though descriptions of social systems with gender roles distinct from the commonly referenced sex binary are older still, though many of those written by members of societies which did not recognize such a distinctions, including Western European colonialists, were hampered by the absence of terminology to describe it simply) its significantly older than 20 years; with research projects and prominent works on gender identity, in the modern sense, being written as early as the 1950s and 1960s. While the bulk of the writing that early (and for some time after) on the subject pathologized identities that diverged from the social sex/gender correspondence stereotypes, it recognized that they existed, were largely a product of aspects of biology, and while they tended to held out that there was a social contribution to them which made them potentially malleable early on (and advised conversion therapy for that purpose), recognized that they were difficult to impossible to modify beyond early childhood, and in many cases recognized the value of gender confirming procedures beyond that point.
sokoloff 4y ago
Isn’t your last sentence the essential difference in English as well?
- ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
  You may have misinderstood, and I also oversimplified. The word "sex" is translated by the main online Korean-English dictionary as 성, the local pronounciation for the classical chinese character for the category of sex, or 성별, which translates back into English again as "sex". The word "gender" is also translated as 성별, and also has an entry for [grammar] 성 구분, or the grammatical difference between sexes. However the entry under "gender dysphoria" is "feeling that one's birth sex is not one's sex." So the social role idea is totally missing from the Korean-English dictionary. The Korean-only dictionary has an entry, however, for 젠더 "jendeo," which is the imported modern Western concept of gender with all its academic usages explained in detail.

moonchrome 4y ago

My primary language is Croatian - there is a word for sex (spol) and gender (rod). First is biological second is used for grammar. But I'm just making silly comments because it read to me like he's an alien (or maybe GPT is becoming self aware and posting on forums :) )

Veen 4y ago
That's how the terms sex and gender were used in English until a couple of decades ago. Gender was later coopted to refer to social and cultural factors, as opposed to biological factors, of sex.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> The sex/gender distinction is an invention of the past 20 years As a generalized concept (though descriptions of social systems with gender roles distinct from the commonly referenced sex binary are older still, though many of those written by members of societies which did not recognize such a distinctions, including Western European colonialists, were hampered by the absence of terminology to describe it simply) its significantly older than 20 years; with research projects and prominent works on gender identity, in the modern sense, being written as early as the 1950s and 1960s. While the bulk of the writing that early (and for some time after) on the subject pathologized identities that diverged from the social sex/gender correspondence stereotypes, it recognized that they existed, were largely a product of aspects of biology, and while they tended to held out that there was a social contribution to them which made them potentially malleable early on (and advised conversion therapy for that purpose), recognized that they were difficult to impossible to modify beyond early childhood, and in many cases recognized the value of gender confirming procedures beyond that point.

sokoloff 4y ago

Isn’t your last sentence the essential difference in English as well?

ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
You may have misinderstood, and I also oversimplified. The word "sex" is translated by the main online Korean-English dictionary as 성, the local pronounciation for the classical chinese character for the category of sex, or 성별, which translates back into English again as "sex". The word "gender" is also translated as 성별, and also has an entry for [grammar] 성 구분, or the grammatical difference between sexes. However the entry under "gender dysphoria" is "feeling that one's birth sex is not one's sex." So the social role idea is totally missing from the Korean-English dictionary. The Korean-only dictionary has an entry, however, for 젠더 "jendeo," which is the imported modern Western concept of gender with all its academic usages explained in detail.