Bob Walkden wrote:
Hi,
gender really just means 'type' and is related to 'genus'. It's come to be associated with sex because in some languages, e.g. French, males and females are different genders and the genders themselves have been labelled 'masculine' and 'feminine'. However it's only a metaphor. The notion of a table being literally feminine, or butter being literally masculine is absurd.
I suggest it came to apply to sex euphemistically, by the same sort of people who first called a toilet a bathroom or rest room.
It's been made a thousand times worse by the people who now use 'gender' as a verb. Just type 'gendering' into Google for a shambles of examples of just how much people can butcher the language and at the same time advertise their own stupidity. Here's a good one: http://www.geocities.com/puckrobin/rh/rhgend.html
Bob (m.)
Friday, October 3, 2003, 3:54:12 PM, you wrote:
Before Political Correctness destroyed language in favor of the New Speak, "gender" was a gammatical term. As explained to me years ago: "Words have gender, people have sex."
CRB
Date: Fri, 03 Oct 2003 08:26:22 -0400 From: "Steve Desjardins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I've been told by some of my social scientist friends that the correct term is "sex", i.e., the answer to "are you amle or female?". >Evidently sex is a pure physical discitnction whereas gender refers to the psychological, behavioral, or cutltural traits associated with the sexes, so that then latter is a continuous and not a binary variable. At least this was the answer I got when I suggested we use the word "gender" on a survey. If memory serves, I made some sophomoric joke as a reply. ;-)
Steven Desjardins
-- graywolf http://graywolfphoto.com
