Ambiguous usage of the word is one of the reasons oppressors have such outdated and undereducated views. The less ambiguity the easier it can be explained to the common folk.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (3 children)

The fun bit is that the word gender was pulled from linguistics into sociology exactly to try to make a less ambiguous situation.

It literally went "what if we talked about people having gender like the French talk about objects?” Much like people, a table is feminine in French regardless of if it has a penis or not.

Later, people decided to use gender as a synonym for sex and complain about using the word gender in a way that's ambiguous with sex.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

a table is feminine in French regardless of if it has a penis or not.

Which most tables in France do, of course.

[–] idiomaddict 3 points 1 month ago

Gender has been conflated with human sex from the fifteenth century, but I like your explanation of the sociological application.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I'm glad we never took the word "gender" into swedish, we've had to go the opposite way round and start with "sex" and now creating "sex identity" which, like, actually makes sense???