Re: sex or gender?

[Bill Burns <WBURNS -at- VAX -dot- MICRON -dot- COM>]

Tammy (tammyh -at- fgm -dot- com) wrote:

>>      Websters 9th and Meriam-Webster indicate that gender has to do with
        grammatical articles in languages (feminine, masculine, neuter), and
        that sex is the categories of male and female that people are divided
        into (based on their reproductive roles).

The usage note in my online Am. Heritage Dictionary responds:

>>      Traditionally, gender has been used primarily to refer to the
        grammatical categories of "masculine," "feminine," and "neuter";
        but in recent years the word has become well established in its use
        to refer to sex-based categories, as in such as "gender gap" and "the
        politics of gender."  This usage is supported by the practice of many
        anthropologists, who reserve sex for reference to biological categories,
        while using gender to refer to social or cultural categories. According
        to this rule, one would say "The effectiveness of the medication appears
        to depend on the sex (not gender) of the patient," but "In peasant
        societies, gender (not sex) roles are likely to be more clearly
        defined."  This distinction is useful in principle, but it is by no
        means widely observed, and considerable variation in usage occurs at
        all levels.

I've found this distinction beneficial in my academic writing.  However, this
usage is a matter of register or dialect.  If you're writing to an audience
of linguists, you would have to be very careful in which choice you used.  If
you're writing to an audience of sociologists, chances are they'd be more
familiar with the biology-vs-cultural-category connotation (allow me the
ostentatious alliteration).  For English speakers who have NOT studied a
language with gender distinctions, the term "gender" might merely be a way to
avoid using the term "sex"--or a way to sound more politically correct (gender
issues being such hot topics and such).


Bill Burns                            *
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