Words have gender, people have sex
Gender, anyone who has suffered through the required "Gender, Feminism and Gay Theory" course will tell you, is a social construct. Sex is a biological distinction. It refers to the division of a species with particular reference to reproductive functions.
I really dislike using the word "gender" to describe the sexes. My Latin teacher taught me the phrase "Words have gender, people have sex."
But this Prop. 8 ruling that was issued yesterday uses the word "gender" instead of sex. Mostly because the ruling seems to have a notable fear or loathing of the role reproduction plays in the institution of marriage. But what it says about gender is utterly amazing. Let's just start with this one on page 113:
Race and gender restrictions shaped marriage during eras of race and gender inequality, but such restrictions were never part of the historical core of the institution of marriage.
Whatever you might think of redefining marriage to include same-sex couples, that statement is insane.
Across history and culture, "gender" restrictions might be the only universal aspect of marriage. Until a few years ago, marriage was limited to heterosexual unions.
I am still reading this decision but the lack of understanding about the role "gender" plays in marriage -- a notion the judge completely rejects -- is shocking.
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Re: Words have gender, people have sex
Molly, I'm with you on your hatred of the word gender.
Your post reminds of something Boston College's Peter Kreeft (a conservative Catholic philosopher and theologian) wrote in one of his books. He was poking fun at academics who, for fear of appearing politically incorrect, often refer to God as "she." As a solution to our politically incorrect pronouns, he somewhat coyly proposed his own new word. He thought that we should combine our two "gendered" pronouns (she, he) with our one "gender neutral" pronoun (it) into a new word, a new pronoun which sounds like s h ! t.
May '10
Re: Words have gender, people have sex
I'm with you on this. This is one of my peeves.
One thing I've wondered: Do societies that speak a language where gender is deeply embedded -- where every noun is masculine or feminine -- have fits trying to please feminisst word cops?
May '10
Re: Words have gender, people have sex
mesquito: I'm with you on this. This is one of my peeves.
One thing I've wondered: Do societies that speak a language where gender is deeply embedded -- where every noun is masculine or feminine -- have fits trying to please feminisst word cops? · Aug 5 at 3:57pm
It is a characteristic of the Indo-European languages that nouns are marked for gender (English being an exception). This doesn't seem to bother people (except actor/actress people in America). The problem seems to lie in the pronouns, which are marked in many languages (including English) for gender, number, and rank or formality. Notice that in English "I" is not marked for gender, but in many languages it is, and there are other strong distinctions between men's and women's language, making the job of rectification difficult. It is precisely because English is hardly marked for gender that rectification seems possible.
May '10
Re: Words have gender, people have sex
All signs point to the "sexual orientation = race" meme having settled in permanently among left-of-center judges. Regardless of what history or common sense may recommend, there's a desperate attempt not to be backwards on the issue of gay marriage the way so many people were (and some remain) on racial equality.
This hardly seems like one of the biggest problems in America today, but it also strikes me as a little bit nuts.
Jul '10
Re: Words have gender, people have sex
"Race and gender restrictions shaped marriage during eras of race and gender inequality, but such restrictions were never part of the historical core of the institution of marriage."
Thus is truly insane. And wrong. And insulting. Really! Even aside from the truly insidious effort to conflate racial inequality with "gender inequality". How can a cogent human being state that gender restrictions were never part of the institution of marriage????? Unless one defines the "era of gender inequality" as from the moment that human society first evolved until yesterday morning.
But our noble judge on a white steed is here to end that nonsense. He is here to rescue us from our culture and our destiny.
Worst.Decision.Ever. (And that is saying a lot.)
Aug '10
Re: Words have gender, people have sex
Jason, Patrick,
I tend to view gay marriage favorably, and I'm still bugged by the orientation = race meme. It's just not the tight analogy it's so often talked up to be. If you don't mind my quoting myself,
"Interracial marriage has a long, broad history in human culture -- sometimes even being encouraged! -- while gay marriage doesn't have such a robust history (it arguably has some, but not much, as far as I know).
"The average biological difference between races (~0.1%) is much smaller than the average biological difference between the sexes. (I've heard men and women differ by up to 2% genetically -- more than human and chimp! -- so it's even reasonable to say there's not one human genome, but two!)
"Human history and biology might suggest that interracial marriage is more like same-race marriage than same-sex marriage is like mixed-sex marriage."
Whatever arguments may favor gay marriage, orientation = race is a problematic analogy trying to pass itself off as an identity, which isn't exactly friendly to honest and considerate discussion.
May '10
Re: Words have gender, people have sex
This semantic shift is par for the course. Happens all the time with a living language, whether we like it or not. The political correctness (which also put paid to the indefinite he, among other phenomena) in this case was aided and abetted by prudishness, which sometimes causes iterative euphemisms to be coined, e.g., ass was originally a euphemism for arse but is now often bleeped out, and one has to resort to donkey or even burro to refer to that homonym.
My main beef with the gender/sex debacle is that the prudes are depriving the coming generations of a nice (though a bit puerile) joke: In the questionnaire box "sex" he entered "very seldom".