Question Gender Vs. Sex

Greetings all,

This is not to be a "hot topic", but after using webtrees for a few months and have come to really enjoy it, there is one thing that I feel needs to be addressed. If at all possible, let's all please keep the social and political aspect out of this discussion. I primarily want to discuss the proper English usage.

As an immigrant to the Unite States, my ESL "English as a second language" classes were very strict about this understanding. The word "gender" and the word "sex", have two distinct definitions, or at least they did up until about 10 years ago.

The word "sex" refers to a man or women's biological distinction, their physical attributes.
The word "gender" is a literary term used in writing. For example, the word "she", describes the word as pertaining to the feminine sex. The gender of the word "she" is female or feminine. The words, he and she, as an example, are genders in the English language, but when to referring to an individual's actual physical attributes, it is sex.

The word gender refers to literary devices, sex refers to an individual actual being. You can look up all of this in historical dictionaries.

I do not know if this can be even changed at this point, and I understand that it is not webtrees decision to use the term, but it is improper English by every standard since the advent of the English language. It would be nice if webtrees was able to properly display this in the correct form.

Just some food for thought

Joao

If a web form says "Sex" I expect the options are "yes please" and "no thanks".

Jokes aside, you are probably right. If it really bothers you, you can make a custom translation for your own site (see the webtrees example module ) or add a translation to the diverse English varieties.

I think everyone agrees with @joaomach's definition of Sex above. Update: It seems I didn't really understand what he meant with Gender being a literary term. He meant the grammatical gender. There is of course the use of that word in the social construct of gender .

We are also 100% sure that the GEDCOM standard does not yet allow for Gender - which can be fluid throughout an individual's lifetime - and only allows Sex, which is immutable and either male, female, other (for the 0.02% percent with intersex characteristics) and unknown (where you know a person existed but don't really know anything about him/her, such as a baby that died at birth, but his sex is not mentioned anywhere).

I honestly think that webtrees should drop the use of gender when the underlying data format only allows for sex. It confuses people that the different concepts are being used interchangeably here.

And yes, it is also unfortunate that the word for this biological characteristic is overloaded with a few other uses that are not usually brought up in polite conversation.

Translations are made from en-US to other languages. This includes from en-US to regional variations such as en-GB, en-AU, etc.

A very long time ago (15+ years?), there was a discussion about this.

Speakers of en-US prefered "Gender". Many felt that "Sex" was a taboo word and were uncomfortable using it.

Because of this, webtrees has always used "Gender" internally (en-US), and translated it to "Sex" in en-GB and other languages.

To change this, I would want agreement from our en-US users. Maybe attitudes have changed in recent years???

So, Americans - what do you prefer - sex or gender?

I don't recall the discussion from 15 years ago, I'll look for it if it have time!

I'm not sure that the word "Sex" is taboo today in the genealogy context (although a group of people will never use the term), therefore I would go with the term "sex" as defined in GEDCOM.

Today, here in the US this discussion has political and religious connotations, these are at the heart of their use and controversy. Historically, the term "Gender" was rarely used in official documents, rather it was used to refer to the grammar of a word.

Politically speaking we have two camps, (1) some people use the term "Gender" to refer to a whole range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, femininity and masculinity, rather than the biological definition of being Male or Female.  (2) Others only acknowledge one (biology), and therefore the only term to use is "Sex" (male or female).

I'm more worried about this political controversy than the taboo use of the term!  Use the word "sex" everywhere and hope that GEDCOM find a path to solve the political controversy!

First, thank you for the tip on how to make a custom language, I will try it.

As for the US preference, how Americans "feel" is irrelevant. If we go off feelings, what happens when their feelings change?

No, the best practice is facts and standards. If the current standard is "sex" then it is sex. If the standard is was gender, then gender it is.

I fully support proper English, use "sex".

Joao

... or switch to British English. Your choice of language will be remembered.
_

joaomach wrote:

As an immigrant to the Unite States, my ESL "English as a second language" classes were very strict about this understanding. The word "gender" and the word "sex", have two distinct definitions, or at least they did up until about 10 years ago!
 

Just an aside for better understanding! The term “gender” as you indicated was (and still is) used in grammar to refer to words that are either feminine, masculine or neutral, but it also changed in sociological use back in 1955 when John Money introduced a new definition that became more widely used in the 1970s to define the “social construct” as different than the biological use of sex! The biggest issue today is that some groups do not recognize the social construct, that has intensified over the last 10 to 20 years!

I live in the USA and am a native English speaker, and I vote for using "Sex" instead of "Gender".

I'm old enough to recognize that "gender" can be used interchangeably with "sex" in some contexts, and quite frankly I didn't even notice that webtrees displays "Gender" in the heading of an Individual page until it was pointed out in this message. But come on, my Driver's License says "Sex" not "Gender"! These days the two terms are NOT interchangeable, and "Gender" has the wrong shade of meaning here.

Somehow I missed the original discussion of ~15 years ago that Greg alluded to. I started using Phpgedview in 2007 but was slow to make the switch to webtrees after they split. Had I been there at the time, I would have voted strongly against "Gender".

I have updated the en-US from `gender` to `sex`.

Translations to other languages may have used either term. If speakers of other languages want them changed, they should update the translation at translation.webtrees.net.

Excellent, thank you!

"Speakers of en-US prefered 'Gender'. Many felt that 'Sex' was a taboo word and were uncomfortable using it."

You can't satisfy everyone.  What if it were a non-issue in 99% of INDI pages?

William Waack
(male)

Sophie Waack
(female)

Pat Nonstandard
Sex: other

J. Doe
Sex: unknown