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RE: Gender bender: why we would be better off talking only about "sex" and doing away with "gender"

in #gender • 6 years ago

Not so long ago, gender was something used in grammar. Then the psychological community used gender to define personality. A number of years ago, I was disgusted when a school board changed the word sex for gender on a registration form. This wasn't because of political correctness it was because of as you said people being Victorian (which is really ironic because Victoria really really liked sex).

6 years ago in #gender by
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     6 years ago 

    Thanks for the comment. I'm not sure the psychological community adopted gender to define personality, but in the study of personality differences between genders were found, and hastily attributed to cultural causes. Much suffering came from this Blank Slate position within the psychological and medical communities, John Money being a leading figure there.

    To anticipate some points I'll make, here are some bullet points:

    • I think there's enough evidence that there are evolutionary and biological roots to the sexes and their average differences in brain and behaviour.
    • Like many other things the sexes are amenable to some cultural influence, to the point that there are societies with more than two sex categories, however they are rare, and their extra categories are based on other thinks that not wholly determined by culture either, like minority sexual orientations.
    • Much insight can be gained from comparing the sexes as social categories with the Indian castes - the latter are good examples of actual socially constructed categories.
    • Sciences "softer" than physics deal all the time with exceptions to rules. That doesn't mean they should give up on finding rules that govern natural phenomena. Therefore objections to my arguments appealing to exceptions are irrelevant.
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     6 years ago 

    Generally speaking ... if it doesn't affect me I don't worry about it.

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