It was, in effect, stipulated to distinguish different aspects of a broader underlying reality that ranges from fixed biology on the one end, to social conventions and stereotypes on the other end, with lots of complex mixed aspects in the middle. There is no such distinction in the historical use of these terms. By 1975, the word was used to refer to, as Gayle Rubin put it, “the socially-imposed division of the sexes.” Gender, in this new, specialized usage, would refer to the psychological and social differences between men and women. Sex continued to refer to the biological differences between men and women. Then, in the mid-twentieth century, some theorists, including gender medicine quack John Money and, later, some feminists, began to distinguish sex and gender. More recently, “sex” became the preferred term in biology to refer to the natural differences between male and female humans and other organisms throughout the plant and animal kingdom. So, for instance, “gender” was used in grammatical contexts, whereas sex was not. Long story short: For centuries in the English-speaking world, these words were synonyms - but with different semantic ranges. The Curious History of “Sex” and “Gender” Even thirty years ago, medical forms used the word “sex” rather than “gender.” If these words were simple, unambiguous synonyms, this shift in usage wouldn’t matter. Even medical forms ask patients to select their “gender.” The test is a simple question, designed to determine, first, if the chatbot is just summarizing online stereotypes, or doing real analytic work, and second, if it is ideologically biased.įor the last three years, I’ve been working on the controversy over gender ideology, which is responsible for the widespread claim that a child might be “born in the wrong body.” A central theme of this controversy is the shape-shifting uses of the word “gender.” Most people now use the word “gender” to refer to natural differences between male and female. In fact, it was the first to pass a test I’ve been giving to various chatbots over the last year. One bot, Claude - developed by Anthropic - is truly impressive.
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