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Getting in Trouble Over Genders
I could teach this. Normally, my “zoom” sessions are on US Senate history or the “art and science” of lobbying, but I am very comfortable with discussing gender pronouns.
There are two. He, she. Or, his, her. When two or more of different genders are present, “they” works really well. That’s five pronouns. Did I miss any?
Your gender is assigned really early, “in utero.” In fact, it is assigned upon fertilization. You have no say in the matter (blame your father if you’re unhappy with the lottery, but it is a little more complicated than that. And yes, there are birth “defects” that complicate matters for a very small population). Everyone deserves respect for their situations.
Yes, those with gender dysphoria have serious psychological issues with their gender assigned at birth. Fine, I respect you. Your option is the other gender, with a lot of expensive surgery, but not entirely. “Science” hasn’t figured out a way to change DNA, even after transgender surgery. You can look it up. Pay careful attention to the consequences. And leave young children alone. They almost always work out any confusion before their teenage years. And don’t make me pay for your issues.
Here’s the thing. You can influence, but you don’t get to create your own reality. Your first exposure to it is when you’re born, and the doctor declares, “male” or “female.” With ultrasound technology since the 1980s among other technologies, we can learn our children’s gender very early in utero.
Hopefully, you’re born with no unexpected issues, with all your unique and God-given qualities (and rights).
By the way, you’re not God. Period. So stop trying to be one.
Where do I collect my honorarium?
Exactly!
Now, May we have some posts on your specialty, Senate history? Sounds fascinating.
I think, it and its.
In our day, getting comfortable with pronouns meant knowing whether to use nominative (subjective) or objective case pronouns. It also meant knowing the difference between a contraction and a possessive pronoun (it’s and it’s). My Apple autocorrect even bums up that one.
From a University document on correct usage if personal pronouns….
Simple no?
Apparently he, she, him, her, they do not exist.
Why do I get the feeling this whole thing is a scheme to employ the mentally ill?
Like gender studies was a job program for stupid, angry lesbians, and ethnic studies for stupid, angry minorities.
Have the grammar rules changed, or do book editors not know them? I have seen many examples of misuse of pronouns. Like “bigger than him”. I see this all the time now, and it grates on me.
Oh, rats. Autocorrect just proved my point about its and it’s.
The gender thing is getting wild, not so much because people have differing definitions of what gender is (some using gender and sex interchangeably, others don’t), but because it is one of these things that is going beyond interpersonal feelings to “you must think this way about the world.” It moves from being polite to “if you think there are two genders you are a bad person.”
Saw that. Didn’t mention it, since I figured you would do your own face-palm.
People do not have a gender. People have a sex.
People are not assigned a gender at birth. People have a sex, male or female, that is observed at birth. Nowadays, it is often observed well before birth.
I advise against giving in to the Newspeak-style language of the Wokeists. Never use the word “gender,” except to criticize it, and put it in quotes. Preferably, imagine hearing it with the fine sneer that Heather MacDonald uses when she says the term.
At best, trans is insanity. I mean that literally. Some trans people have an apparently genuine, severe psychological disorder. My suspicion is that the vast majority of trans people do not have the excuse of madness, and are acting in a bizarre way for some strange reason.
No. We all begin development as female and it is not until the 2nd month of life that people destined to become male overcome maternal estrogens and maleness develops.
I find it interesting that the people who have so much energy invested in unlimited, unrestrained sexual activity need to use a euphemism (gender) rather than saying the word “sex”.
As a fellow pedentist, I salute.
However, I do try to be in recovery. It’s not that big of a deal to say gender instead of sex.
I’m trying to understand the issue more. (Forgive me in advance if I botch this, the errors are mine.) I’ve been watching some of Collin Wright’s and Debra Sow’s videos on sex and gender respectively, and I may read Debra’s book on the subject. But it does appear that there are some definitions of gender that are more useful than others. I mean, we know gay people and transpeople’s brains light up in ways that differ from heterosexual people’s brains when looking at sexual imagery. So some simply prefer to talk about brains that are masculine or feminine as a way of approximating the effect of testosterone during fetal development.
All of that to say: do we want a word for explaining that empirical regularity? Probably. Could that be gender? I’m not against it. I wouldn’t use it for secondary sexual characteristics.
Or if you are teaching grammar.
Gender is a grammar term. It has something to do with biological sex, but it refers to nouns, pronouns and adjectives, not human beings.
I talk about gender all the time when teaching a foreign language like Latin, French, Spanish, German, etc.
But unless there is a problem with development , those with XY chromosomes, fixed at fertilization, will become male, and those XX will develop as females. So yes, sex is determined at fertilization unless an abnormal event occurs.
I disagree completely.
Imprecision is a big deal. The ability to define the terms of the argument is a big deal.
Imprecision of that nature is important if you’re a doctor. It’s important if you’re having an important grammar discussion.
For the rest of us, it’s just the normal progression of language. “Decimate” means ruinous and near total destruction, or does it mean only 10 percent are killed? “Nice” used to mean ignorant, then it meant polite, now it is a word used to describe a homely girl that you wouldn’t want to date.
Gender, to pedantics (and I admit to being one), means exclusively a grammatical term. But to 95% of English speakers, it means sex. You can howl at the wind as much as you like, but it signifies nothing and won’t change what the word now means.
Right. A gender is an association with a sex. Thus, words can have genders.
A person can also have a gender, but in addition to one’s sex. The latter is physical; the former psychological.
Your sex is what you are. Your gender is what you think you are. If the two differ, you have a mental disorder.
Truth and justice go hand-in-hand. A society that is not honest will not be just.
Gender does not have anything to do with sex. If you want to talk about neurological sex-based brain differences (activating different parts of the brain when looking at sexual images) then you can use “neuro-sex” or “sex-self” or some such. But gender is a real word that today is being used as a replacement word for sex. “Sex” should still have meaning as well.
Medical personnel are in a real bind today when a “man” comes in for an appointment for belly pain, and the chart says he’s “male”, but he’s either pregnant, or needs a vaginal exam, or an ultrasound of his ovaries. And you don’t know it, because he’s a man.
It’s not a normal progression of language. It’s a deliberate obfuscation of the meaning of both “gender” and “sex” for socio-political purposes.
“Gender” is not a psychological term, either. This is, again, just one more example of a malignant manipulation of words. Redefining words to achieve a socio-political end is not right or good.
I stand corrected.
I guess again, it depends on what you mean by gender. Sow says most peoples gender is their biological sex. Wright typically has tried to dismiss the debate because many people have different meanings of gender. I suspect we may be talking past each other since I agree that we can nail down, for most of the population, their mate attraction via brain scans and old fashioned intuition, but I’m not sure I’m convinced that the word gender isn’t useful in the right context with the right definition. But I would also say that your example is correct and is a problem for the sex (gender) is fluid crowd and why we should be careful.
This is a real problem. Firstly, many transsexual people not only don’t think of themselves as their true sex, but don’t want to be thought of as their true sex. On top of this is the officializing of this sentiment, such that companies prohibit employees from asking or even drawing a distinction.
I’d buy that if people hadn’t been trying to correct the usage for the past 40 years that I’ve noticed. At some point you just have to admit that irregardless is a word.
Do you mean “irregardless of the word”? Oh, by the way, it’s better to substitute “that for which we don’t have no regard” for “irregardless”. (“Irregardless” isn’t a word. But don’t tell anybody.)
Been a long week.