Sex not Gender
Recently I signed up to receive a newsletter from the Australian Senator Cori Benardi, he is widely regarded as one of the more Conservative politicians in Australia. But while registering I was asked for my "Gender", My what!
So I wrote off an email which is below and waited a month.
So I wrote off an email which is below and waited a month.
Dear Sir/Madam
I was a bit shocked to see a Conservative organisation using
"gender" instead of the correct term "sex".
I do not have a gender, nor do you, as gender is a social
construct. In short society forces us to become men or women.
Sex is our biology, we are born male or female and grow up
to become men or women respectively.
I know many use the terms interchangeably but it is simply
incorrect. One is biology the other is feminist theory.
I hope you find the time to correct this oversight.
Yours Sincerely
Mark Moncrieff
It seems a month is not enough time to correct this oversight. I have received neither a reply nor a newsletter. It's a shame as Senator Benardi seems to be one of the good guys. But how many times do we see this nonsense, where gender is used as if it's real. It's not real, no one is forced to be a man or a women by society, this is something we can all safely blame on nature.
I also cross out the word on forms and write in the word "sex", it might not change the organisation but it sure makes me feel better. One little way to strike back.
Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future
I was taught that gender refers to language (i.e. if a word is masculine or feminine), sex refers to biology. Nowadays many people prefer to use gender in both contexts as sex sometimes sounds crude. I doubt there's any feminist subtext to Bernardi allowing that on his site - it's probably more of a sign that the two words have become interchangeable.
ReplyDeleteDear Plato
ReplyDeleteYou are correct the word comes from Linguistics and refers to whether words are masculine or feminine. But the word was then taken by Feminists and when it is used outside of Linguistics it is a Feminist word. Why are we allowing ourselves to legitimise Feminism?
We should use the correct word and that word is sex, as we are biological creatures, not as Feminist theory states created by society. Why are we endorsing their lies?
Some people do think the word sex is rude, just as some people think "the man came into the room" is funny. Why are we indulging them?
I'm sure your correct and the Senator didn't give it a second thought..... and thats the real problem.
I suspect that the web script that accepts user input was written that way and the Senator has no control over that.
ReplyDelete