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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33185 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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Since the term "gender" doesn't even exist in a lot of languages, I'm a bit skeptical of all these terms for all these other classes existing. Do you have an example in mind?

I don't know what you mean when you say that the term "gender" doesn't exist in a lot of languages.

Are you sure you're not sane-washing?

Here is the definition of "gender" from the Open Education Sociology Dictionary:"

(noun) The attitudes, behaviors, norms, and roles that a society or culture associates with an individual’s sex, thus the social differences between female and male; the meanings attached to being feminine or masculine.

Here is that dictionary's definition of "gender identity":

(noun) An individual’s self-perception of their gender.

So, as i said, "'gender' is not used to refer to a sort of internal feeling. The term for that is 'gender identity'"

I don't know what you mean when you say that the term "gender" doesn't exist in a lot of languages.

I don't know how else describe it. There is no equivalent word, and people often resort to simply taking "gender" from English.

So, as i said, "'gender' is not used to refer to a sort of internal feeling. The term for that is 'gender identity'"

How does that prove this is not sane-washing? Are you saying I won't be able to find academic papers using "gender" in a more expansive way?

I don't get why that matters. The societies which use those languages presumably have norms, etc, re each sex. Why does it matter what word is used to describe that phenomenon. There are many loan words from English in other languages. Eg: "genocide."

I have no idea whether there is some idiot in the humanities who has used the term incorrectly. I am saying what the standard definitions are. See also those from the Human Rights Campaign and Planned Parenthood and the WHO and the Mayo Clinic and Merriam-Webster

Looking at the Mayo Clinic page,

Sex assigned at birth and gender identity are two separate things. Sex assigned at birth is typically made based on external genital anatomy. But gender identity is the internal sense of being male, female, or a gender along the spectrum between male and female. People communicate their gender to others through gender expression. This may be done through mannerisms, clothing and hairstyles.

Is this the answer to the "What is a woman?" problem that people have settled on? "A woman is someone who feels like a female." Merriam-Webster goes the same way. But what does it even mean to "feel like a female", if female is just the physical organs and woman is the gender identity? At first glance, this seems like an ugly desperate kludge; it pushed back the point where the incoherence can't be hidden, at the cost of essentially giving up on non-dysphoric trans.

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