I'm sure you have all been exposed to the belief that gender is purely a social construct. I do not have a background in either sociology, or Biology, so I would like to understand more about it. What is the general consensus among the two disciplines? I ask this question because I have seen a lot of feminist theory circulating the internet, and they tend to project this idea. My guess is that seeds are planted in our genetics, and that we express these predispositions through social interactions.
I've seriously heard it argued by people who supposedly have degrees in the Social Sciences. I am guessing that they define "sex" and "gender" as two different things.
Yes, I see that they can be considered different things. Sex is biological and gender is sociocultural. Of course that definition is not universal. Based on that it seems to me that gender is a mixture of the social and biological. Biologically speaking males and females have differnent levels of hormones which drive certain behaviors. Society puts pressures on the sexes to act in certain ways. There are certainly individuals that clearly do not fit into the roles that society dictates. So the bottom line is that gender is a mixture of both social and biological forces. I think the only arguments will be about the relative strength of either biology or society in defining gender.
Good point. Male and female are sex terms not gender terms. The associated gender terms are masculine and feminine. The whole confusion results from the horrible mealy-mouthed modern practice of saying "gender", which is a language term, when what is really meant is "sex", which is the biological term. It's just a piece of silly bowdlerisation, along with saying "rooster"when what is meant is "cock".
I think that the sex/gender distinction is useful in sociology. 'Sex' is a biological term, referring to one's genetics, reproductive genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. 'Gender' is a cultural term, referring to how the sexes are expected to behave and the expectations that the culture places on them. Of course it can get fuzzy, if we hypothesize that some of the male/female behavioral differences are innate. The problem is that the otherwise defensible sex/gender distinction was taken up like a flag by feminists and thoroughly politicized. So the public started to perceive the distinction as an issue of political correctness. The biological term 'sex' started to be perceived as morally tainted (not unlike 'nigger') with possible social penalties for its use. So today we often see the word 'gender' being employed in situations where it's obvious that biological 'sex' is being referred to.
Interesting. I have just consulted my 1979 Oxford English Dictionary (the full version), which has 4 meanings for the noun "gender" which I summarise below:- 1. kind, sort, class, genus 2. grammatical classes more or less corresponding to sex or absence of sex (i.e. masculine, feminine, neuter) 3. synonym for sex, said to be "now only jocular" 4. product, offspring, generation, said to obsolete and rare. It is notable that none of these corresponds to a cultural term. I conclude that the current usage of "gender" as a cultural term is, as I suspected, a sort of neologism. For most of my life it was the sexes that were spoken of in cultural contexts, not "genders". As I say, I very much suspect this new usage has been brought about by people being squeamish about using the word "sex", cf. rooster v. cock. I regard this as silly. I'm afraid I simply cannot bring myself to use what to me is predominantly a grammatical term, when speaking of how the sexes behave etc culturally.
