Re: Gender importance (was Future Relationships)

From: Damien Broderick (damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Fri Apr 23 1999 - 13:53:48 MDT


At 09:10 PM 22/04/99 -0500, Jocelyn Brown wrote:

>I was speaking of gender when it comes to primary sexual characteristics,
>i.e. male and female.

`Gender' is primarily a linguistic marker term, in many languages only
loosely coupled to sex. For the last decade or two, especially in feminist
discourse, it is usefully distinguished from `sex' which is the biological,
reproductive or morphological category. `Male or female' is sex;
`feminine, masculine, ambi, neuter, lifeless, chiral,
washed-on-Tuesdays-while-wearing-an-emblematic-parrot (etc)' is gender.

Damien Broderick



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:03:37 MST