sex (seks), n. 1. either the male or female division of a species, esp. as differentiated with reference to the reproductive functions. 2. the sum of the structural and functional differences by which the male and female are distinguished, or the phenomena of behavior dependent upon these differences. 3. the instinct or attraction drawing one sex toward another or its manifestation in life and conduct. 4. coitus. —v.t. 5. to ascertain the sex of, esp. of newborn chicks. [ME < L sex(us), akin to secus < secare to cut, divide; see SECTION].
gender (jen´dәr), n. 1. Gram. a. a set of classes of nouns, membership in a particular class being shown by the form of the noun itself or by the form or choice of words that modify, replace or otherwise refer to the noun. The most familiar sets of genders are of the three classes, as masculine, feminine, and neuter in Latin and German, or of the two as masculine and feminine in French and Spanish. b. one class of such a set. c. such classes or sets collectively or in general. d. membership of a word or grammatical form, or an inflectional form showing membership, in such a class. 2. sex. 3. Archaic. kind, sort, or class.
The Random House College Dictionary, Revised Edition, 1975
I believe it was around 15 or 20 years ago I noticed the word, “gender”, substituted for the word, “sex” on some form I had to fill out. My thought: I don’t have a gender. Nouns have gender. I am a person, not a noun. The definition of “gender”, above, indicates that it can be used to mean “sex”, but that usage was uncommon. After all, why substitute an obscure two-syllable word borrowed from the study of linguistics when a common one-syllable word expresses your meaning more clearly. The word, “sex”, gives us two choices, male and female. This is adequate. After all, every human being falls into one of those two categories. Changing to the word, “gender”, adds only one category: neuter. I have never heard of a person who claimed to be neuter.
The sex of a person can be definitively identified. A person with at least one Y chromosome is male. A person without a Y chromosome is female. Easy. Sex is less clear for some other organisms, but we’re not them. Gender can vary from language to language. For example, in English, ships are traditionally feminine and “God” is traditionally masculine for no apparent reason. In German, girl (mädchen) is neuter.
The substitution of “gender” for “sex” seemed to happen all at once, inflicting thousands of institutions simultaneously. There was no obvious need for the change—it was not demanded by the general public. Someone, somewhere must have wanted this change for some reason, but I don’t know who or why. Some organized group must have contacted those thousands of institutions and convinced them to make the change. The institutions probably just went along with the demand because they did not care which word was used.
This is part of a phenomenon called “newspeak”, from Orwell’s novel, 1984. In the novel, a tyrannical government manipulated its subjects through a variety of techniques, including changing the meaning of words. While the U.S. government is not above using newspeak, most of our current newspeak originates from other sources. We are being told that respecting people of all races and treating them equally is “racist”. We are told that a group using fascist techniques and demanding fascist policies is “antifascist”. Spending money on social services is called “investment” in “infrastructure”. Websters changes the definitions in its online dictionary within hours of some media source announcing the narrative of the day.
Languages have always evolved with words slowly changing meaning over time. While this change is necessary to allow a language to adapt to the changing needs of its speakers, it can make it hard to correctly interpret old writings. Now the language is changing so fast that statements made in the morning are being misinterpreted by groups inventing new definitions that afternoon. Our words will need some stability if we want to communicate in any meaningful way. I doubt that the newspeak creators among us actually want to do that.
Posted 2021/05/14