2020-10-02 ศัพท์ ที่มักสับสน ชุด G – gender & sex

Revision G

2020-10-02

151212-1 ศัพท์ ที่มักสับสน ชุด G – gender & sex

การใช้ภาษาอังกฤษ ที่ถือว่า ถูกต้อง ในที่นี้ เป็นไป ตามมาตรฐาน ของภาษา

การใช้ภาษาอังกฤษ ไม่กำหนดมาตฐาน ถือตามส่วนใหญ่ที่ใช้แต่ละท้องถิ่น

ความหมาย อาจยืดหยุ่น ขึ้นอยู่กับ ตำแหน่ง/หน้าที่ ในประโยค

Dictionary.com

ออกเสียง “Gender” = ‘JEN-der’

ออกเสียง “Sex” = ‘SEKS’

Dictionary.com

USAGE NOTE FOR GENDER

Although it is possible to define gender as “sex,” indicating that the term can be used when differentiating male creatures from female ones biologically,

the conceptof gender, a word primarily applied to human beings,

has additionalconnotations—more rich and more amorphous

—having to do with general behavior, social interactions, and most importantly, one's fundamental sense of self.
Until recently, most people assumed that acknowledging one's gender, or sex, was easy.

You just checked the appropriate box on a standard form, choosing either “male” or “female,” according to the gender you had been assigned at birth based on visible anatomical evidence.

But some people's internal sense of who they are does not correspond with their assigned gender.

And in fact, we now recognize that a complex spectrum between male and female exists not only mentally, psychologically, and behaviorally, but also anatomically; there have always been intersex people.

The conflation of gender with sex, though historically common, is now often criticized because it is seen by some to be insensitive or dehumanizing.
Gender identity is complicated.

Some people, perhaps most, do not question their assigned gender.

But others perceivethemselves as belonging to the opposite sex.

Still others, some of whom identify themselves as genderqueer see themselves as neithermale nor female, or perhaps as both, or as rotating between genders, or even as not belonging to any gender categorization at all.
Those who clearly see themselves as the opposite sex may or may notwant to transition to it in some measure. Of those who do, some may complete that transition, but others may be happy to stop partway on a path that can include dressing and living as the opposite sex, although the desire to cross-dress can exist quite apart from issues of gender identity. Somewhere along the transitional path people may want to change their given names and adopt linguistic terms of their own choosing, including a variety ofpronouns, as designations of themselves and others.

Some will have hormone treatments and opt for various kinds of surgery—perhaps facial, perhaps on their bodies, perhaps ultimately including sex “reassignment” surgery (genital reconstruction). At any point, they may welcome or reject a “transgender” label.
This array of life experiences has resulted in a veritable explosion of new, or newly adapted, vocabulary.

Particularly striking and usefulis the word cis or prefix cis- as in cis male, cis female, and cisgender, designating those whose sense of self matches their assigned gender. Using cis is a way to refer to these individuals without implying that “cis” people are the norm and all others a deviation from “normal.” It is notablethat choices of gender beyond male and female now appear on social media sites. Clearly, gender is no longer a simple binary concept.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Are gender and sex the same? Usage Guide

Noun

The words sex and gender have a long and intertwined history. In the 15th century gender expandedfrom its use as a term for a grammatical subclass to join sex in referring to either of the two primary biological forms of a species, a meaning sex has had since the 14th century; phrases like"the male sex" and "the female gender" are both grounded in uses established for more than five centuries. In the 20th century sex and gender each acquired new uses. Sex developed its "sexual intercourse" meaning in the early part of the century (now its more common meaning), and a few decades later gender gained a meaningreferring to the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex, as in "gender roles." Later in the century, gender also came to have application in two closely related compound terms:

gender identity refers to a person's internal sense of being male, female, some combination of male and female, or neither male nor female;

gender expression refers to the physical and behavioral manifestations of one's gender identity.

By the end of the century gender by itself was being used as a synonymof gender identity.

Among those who study gender and sexuality, a clear delineation between sex and gender is typically prescribed, with sex as the preferred term for biological forms, and gender limited to its meanings involving behavioral, cultural, and psychological traits.

In this dichotomy, the terms male and female relate only to biological forms (sex),

while the terms masculine/masculinity, feminine/femininity, woman/girl, and man/boy relate only to psychological and sociocultural traits(gender). This delineation also tends to be observed in technical and medical contexts, with the term sex referring tobiological forms in such phrases as sex hormones, sex organs, and biological sex.

But in nonmedical and nontechnical contexts, there is no clear delineation, and the status of the words remains complicated.

Often when comparisonsexplicitly between male and female people are made, we see the term gender employed, with that term dominating in such collocations as gender differences, gender gap, gender equality, gender bias, and gender relations. It is likely that gender is applied in such contexts because of its psychological and sociocultural meanings, the word's duality making it dually useful. The fact remains that it is often applied in such cases against the prescribed use.

Usage of sex and gender is by no means settled.

For example, while discrimination was far more often paired with sex from the 1960s through the 20th century and into the 21st, the phrase gender discrimination has been steadily increasing in use since the 1980s and is on track to become the dominant collocation.

Currently both terms are sometimes employedwith their intended synonymy made explicit: sex/gender discrimination, gender (sex) discrimination.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language

gen′der·less adj

Usage Note: Some people maintain that the word sex should be reserved for reference to the biological aspects of being male or female or to sexual activity, and that the word gender should be used only to refer to sociocultural roles.

Accordingly, one would say The effectiveness of the treatment appears to depend on the sex of the patient and In society, gender roles are clearly defined.

In some situations, this distinction avoids ambiguity, as in gender research, which is clear in a way that sex research is not.

The distinction can be problematic, however.

Linguistically, there isn't any real difference between gender bias and sex bias, and it may seem contrived to insist that sex is incorrect in this instance.

Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary

usage.:

The use of gender in the sense “sex” (The author's gender should be irrelevant.) is over 600 years old.

Although some people feel that gender should be reserved for grammatical category only, the “sex” sense of gender is now extremely common;

sex itself is becoming increasingly rare except when referring to copulation.

Dictionary of Problem Words and Expression

Common Errors in English Usage Dictionary

Feminists eager to remove references to sexuality from discussions of females and males which don’t involvemating or reproduction revived an older meaning of “gender” which had come to refer in modern times chiefly to language, as a synonym for “sex” in phrases such as “Our goal is to achieve gender equality.”

Americans, always nervous about sex, eagerly embraced this usage, which is now standard. In some scholarly fields, “sex” is used to labelbiologically determined aspects of maleness and femaleness (reproduction, etc.) while “gender” refers to their socially determined aspects (behavior, attitudes, etc.); but in ordinary speech this distinction is not always maintained.

It is disingenuous to pretend that people who use “gender” in the new senses are making an error, just as it is disingenuous to maintain that “Ms.” means “manuscript” (that’s “MS”).

Nevertheless, I must admit I was startled to discover that the tag on my new trousers describes, not only their size and color, but their “gender”