4 ms·

I have nothing constructive to say about the article, but for the record: gender is chosen, sex is not. I wish the world would get this right, especially Scient

I have nothing constructive to say about the article, but for the record: gender is chosen, sex is not. I wish the world would get this right, especially Scientific American, which got it wrong in the second sentence. Here's an interesting link: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gender%2C+sex&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cgender%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Csex%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gender%2C+sex&...

crazygringo 13y ago
The world doesn't seem to agree with you. Straight from Wikipedia [1]: Gender is the range of physical, biological, mental and behavioral characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, the term may refer to biological sex (i.e. the state of being male, female or intersex), sex-based social structures (including gender roles and other social roles), or gender identity. ... the meaning of gender has undergone a usage shift to include sex or even to replace the latter word. .... Gender is now commonly used even to refer to the physiology of non-human animals, without any implication of social gender roles. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender
- LesZedCB 13y ago
  From the same article: >The modern academic sense of the word, in the context of social roles of men and women, dates from the work of John Money (1955), and was popularized and developed by the feminist movement from the 1970s onwards (see Feminism theory and gender studies below). The theory was that human nature is essentially epicene and social distinctions based on sex are arbitrarily constructed. Matters pertaining to this theoretical process of social construction were labelled matters of gender. I think most places people hear it is that gender is the male/female/other self-description, and sex is the physiological state.
  - gnarbarian 13y ago
    Most transgender social justice warriors or gender studies majors maybe. Not most people in general. The vast majority of the people out there don't distinguish between gender and sex. Especially since only about 0.5% of the population identifies as a gender other than their physical sex.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      There's a lot of terminology that the vast majority of people understand poorly. By itself, that hardly seems a good reason for a (supposedly) scientific magazine, particularly when using 'sex' exclusively would understood by everyone.
      - gnarbarian 13y ago
        It probably comes down to the fact that the people practicing physical "hard" sciences do not particularly care about or trust the conclusions drawn by the "softer" sciences (sociology, gender studies, psychology)
        icebraining 13y ago
        Maybe so, but the person writing this article isn't a practitioner of hard sciences, she's a journalist.
        gnarbarian 13y ago
        A journalist for a magazine focused on presenting hard sciences to the masses.
ebfe 13y ago
I think you're confusing the sociological/social justice definition of gender with the literal one. In the case of the latter, sex and gender are synonymous.
TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
You beat me to it. Gender is not sex.

crazygringo 13y ago

The world doesn't seem to agree with you. Straight from Wikipedia [1]: Gender is the range of physical, biological, mental and behavioral characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, the term may refer to biological sex (i.e. the state of being male, female or intersex), sex-based social structures (including gender roles and other social roles), or gender identity. ... the meaning of gender has undergone a usage shift to include sex or even to replace the latter word. .... Gender is now commonly used even to refer to the physiology of non-human animals, without any implication of social gender roles. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender

LesZedCB 13y ago
From the same article: >The modern academic sense of the word, in the context of social roles of men and women, dates from the work of John Money (1955), and was popularized and developed by the feminist movement from the 1970s onwards (see Feminism theory and gender studies below). The theory was that human nature is essentially epicene and social distinctions based on sex are arbitrarily constructed. Matters pertaining to this theoretical process of social construction were labelled matters of gender. I think most places people hear it is that gender is the male/female/other self-description, and sex is the physiological state.
- gnarbarian 13y ago
  Most transgender social justice warriors or gender studies majors maybe. Not most people in general. The vast majority of the people out there don't distinguish between gender and sex. Especially since only about 0.5% of the population identifies as a gender other than their physical sex.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    There's a lot of terminology that the vast majority of people understand poorly. By itself, that hardly seems a good reason for a (supposedly) scientific magazine, particularly when using 'sex' exclusively would understood by everyone.
    - gnarbarian 13y ago
      It probably comes down to the fact that the people practicing physical "hard" sciences do not particularly care about or trust the conclusions drawn by the "softer" sciences (sociology, gender studies, psychology)
      - icebraining 13y ago
        Maybe so, but the person writing this article isn't a practitioner of hard sciences, she's a journalist.
        gnarbarian 13y ago
        A journalist for a magazine focused on presenting hard sciences to the masses.

ebfe 13y ago

I think you're confusing the sociological/social justice definition of gender with the literal one. In the case of the latter, sex and gender are synonymous.

TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago

You beat me to it. Gender is not sex.