That’s because the distinction doesn’t actually exist.
Surely it does. One is a classification system based on biology, the other is a cultural template determined by the local culture.
You can argue that they match most of the time, or even that they should match all the time, but in contemporary usage the words “sex” and “gender” clearly have distinct meaning.
There are two things here, if we care to stick to the discussion of edge cases (which is theoretically the point of this thread...)
The first is sex, in which case we should be talking about things like Turner’s syndrome and XYY syndrome; sex is not binary. It is only usually binary.
The second would be coming up with a definition of gender, and seeing if it matches our definition of sex. It is safe to say that 1) the use of ‘gender’ to mean the same as ‘sex’ is within the usual range of common usage, and 2) completely wrong under certain ‘domains’ (sociology, anthropology, a number of personal vocabularies, etc.).
That’s because the distinction doesn’t actually exist.
This seems to be saying that those domains are making a mistake in making this distinction—something that is hard to defend without knowing something of those domains. This is particularly hard to defend without making very strong definitions, and it is very hard to get strong definitions that we will agree on.
The first is sex, in which case we should be talking about things like Turner’s syndrome and XYY syndrome
Yes, and nearly all those cases do in fact cluster with one of the two “standard” genders. And the very rare exception to this are generally not the people who are claiming to be “transsexual”.
The second would be coming up with a definition of gender, and seeing if it matches our definition of sex.
You can come up with whatever definition you want, I don’t see why I should are about IffThen!gender.
Surely it does. One is a classification system based on biology, the other is a cultural template determined by the local culture.
You can argue that they match most of the time, or even that they should match all the time, but in contemporary usage the words “sex” and “gender” clearly have distinct meaning.
There are two things here, if we care to stick to the discussion of edge cases (which is theoretically the point of this thread...)
The first is sex, in which case we should be talking about things like Turner’s syndrome and XYY syndrome; sex is not binary. It is only usually binary.
The second would be coming up with a definition of gender, and seeing if it matches our definition of sex. It is safe to say that 1) the use of ‘gender’ to mean the same as ‘sex’ is within the usual range of common usage, and 2) completely wrong under certain ‘domains’ (sociology, anthropology, a number of personal vocabularies, etc.).
This seems to be saying that those domains are making a mistake in making this distinction—something that is hard to defend without knowing something of those domains. This is particularly hard to defend without making very strong definitions, and it is very hard to get strong definitions that we will agree on.
Yes, and nearly all those cases do in fact cluster with one of the two “standard” genders. And the very rare exception to this are generally not the people who are claiming to be “transsexual”.
You can come up with whatever definition you want, I don’t see why I should are about IffThen!gender.