That’s an argument for bringing our map closer to the territory, i.e., applying the word “gender” in humans to the same concept we use for animals. Not for completely messing up our map.
That “i.e.” is doing an awful lot of work. I don’t agree that the map is messed up, and moving a label doesn’t necessarily bring it closer to the territory.
We use the word “female” when referring to babies and animals, but that doesn’t mean we’re necessarily talking about the same thing as when we refer to adult humans
applying the word “gender” in humans to the same concept we use for animals
I’m not aware of the word “gender” being commonly applied to non-human animals for any concept, other than grammatical gender. You might be thinking of the concept usually referred to as “sex”.
If you want to follow that distinction, then I agree that “gender” doesn’t point to anything real aside from what is commonly pointed to by the word “sex”. Heck when “gender” first became used in its non-grammatical meaning, it was a euphemism for “sex” since the latter had acquired a meaning (as [Edit: an act]) that made it not necessarily SFW.
A pedantic correction: “gender” appears to have had that non-grammatical meaning since the 15th century (and has also had an NSFW meaning as a verb since even earlier) but (if the OED is to be trusted, which usually it is) it’s true that “gender” became widely used to mean males/females collectively in the 20th century because “sex” was too distracting. (It wasn’t “sex” as a verb, though, but “sex” as a noun meaning “copulation”.)
That’s an argument for bringing our map closer to the territory, i.e., applying the word “gender” in humans to the same concept we use for animals. Not for completely messing up our map.
That “i.e.” is doing an awful lot of work. I don’t agree that the map is messed up, and moving a label doesn’t necessarily bring it closer to the territory.
Above you said:
So what did you mean by that?
Tapping out.
I’m not aware of the word “gender” being commonly applied to non-human animals for any concept, other than grammatical gender. You might be thinking of the concept usually referred to as “sex”.
If you want to follow that distinction, then I agree that “gender” doesn’t point to anything real aside from what is commonly pointed to by the word “sex”. Heck when “gender” first became used in its non-grammatical meaning, it was a euphemism for “sex” since the latter had acquired a meaning (as [Edit: an act]) that made it not necessarily SFW.
A pedantic correction: “gender” appears to have had that non-grammatical meaning since the 15th century (and has also had an NSFW meaning as a verb since even earlier) but (if the OED is to be trusted, which usually it is) it’s true that “gender” became widely used to mean males/females collectively in the 20th century because “sex” was too distracting. (It wasn’t “sex” as a verb, though, but “sex” as a noun meaning “copulation”.)