Sex and gender are no longer considered synonymous in the field of science. There can indeed, be a third gender as it’s defined by their culture!

https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/what-do-we-mean-by-sex-and-gender/

It seems silly to hold onto one particular aspect of language just because it’s been around for a while. Language has always changed, this is just one aspect of it. I know I wouldn’t be able to understand what someone speaking English from 800 years ago, so why should we hold onto this particular aspect that has already begun to change?

I can’t say the assertion that gender has meant sex in the past is accurate either. Synonymous in what places? Some of them I’m sure, but the concept of ‘third’ or ‘other’ genders has been around for a longggg time in many different cultures. I can link you a source if you’d like to explore more about this!

I’ve gotta disagree with you right off the bat unfortunately. Sudden and ideological change can be bad, but many of the necessary and hugely impactful changes in recent history have been ‘sudden and ideological’ by most standards. I’m referring to things like the abolishment of Jim Crow laws, giving women the right to vote, legalization of gay marriage, and more. I think a more important aspect to look at for whether change should be resisted would be to look at if it causes harm.

So to look at this shift in language:

-Does it take away people’s rights? No.

-Is it a change designed to make life harder for a minority/oppressed group? No.

-Does it fall in line with current scientific consensus? Yes.

-Does it have a positive impact on the lives of the people it’s designed to impact? Yes.

Given all of this, I don’t see why it shouldn’t change. Something being static for a long time really doesn’t mean much to me, especially when again so many things like it have changed. Maybe you have some insight to something I’m not aware of, but I don’t see this being a harmful or dangerous change.

I’ll link this paper as well, it gives a brief overview of some of the ways gender has been looked at through history in different cultures and it’s not quite what you might think. I encourage you to explore the references at the bottom for more in-depth information on the subject as well.

Mmmm, it seems like the big thing here is our differing ideas of gender-identity and gender. In your idea they are separate and distinct things, and in mine gender is just a shortening of gender-identity. It seems like most people who use the word gender mean the same thing. If that doesn’t work for you I get it, but that’s what people mean when they say that. If that’s a big sticking point to you I can understand but it’s not for the majority of people you’ll talk to. Using the phrase gender-identity works just fine for me.

I agree to disagree over this kind of language having negative outcomes and hindering communication, I think it’s the opposite but that’s a whole tangent that I’m sure both of us could write endlessly about.

There are consequences to language, education, science, policies, child development, society, etc. for these ideas and not all of them are positive.

This doesn't actually help anything and isn't an argument for bastardizing our language today.

I brought up harm cause you seem awfully concerned with the impact of this change, but if that doesn’t matter we can move away from it. Let’s take a look at how this word references a concept it was created for.

The criteria of a word’s accuracy

What defines a word’s accuracy? Historical precedent? Scientific discovery? Some of both, or something else entirely?

In this case, gender as a social construct does not.

Research has shown that over 150 different pre-colonial groups acknowledged third genders (Powell 2021). Many Native American cultures have an identity often known as two-spirit.

As you say, a potential reason for examples like these is because there wasn’t a scientific understanding of sex/biological characteristics of sex at the time. It seems obvious to me then, that gender is a social construct. Of course it often aligns with sex, but if gender always was the same as sex then these cultural differences wouldn’t exist.

I’m not interested in defining in defining current ideas by any culture’s religious or spiritual beliefs, but those beliefs that exist demonstrate the idea of gender as a social construct throughout history.

Men and women the world over and across time generally behave the same. So we can't just say it's cultural influence.

This is just inaccurate. I can’t say that currently women/men in modern day England behave the same way as women/men in the 1400s in the same region. This goes for most places in the world, and even modern comparisons of different regions are so culturally separate that I wouldn’t be comfortable saying that statement is accurate.

Me, and people like me, generally aren’t trying to hide that gender often aligns with sex. But to say they are the same is both scientifically and culturally inaccurate. To say that gender (or the concept of gender within a culture) has no basis in social construction is inaccurate.

Let's use your criteria for my example of chauvinists changing the definition of man to exclude homosexual men.

-Does it take away people’s rights? No. -Is it a change designed to make life harder for a minority/oppressed group? No. -Does it fall in line with current scientific consensus? Yes. (Remember, chauvinists control the institutional science narrative too...) -Does it have a positive impact on the lives of the people it’s designed to impact? Yes, chauvinists men have their biases confirmed.

In this strange hypothetical situation, the answers you give in response aren’t exactly logical either. In that case the word changing like that would indeed make life harder for an oppressed group, and would not have a positive impact on those to which it would refer.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say with this example, but it just doesn’t make much sense to me.