Thread by @beka_valentine, are sex and gender the SAME or DIFFERENT?well, this depends on who [...]

are sex and gender the SAME or DIFFERENT?

well, this depends on who you ask and what you mean. some people will say yes, some people will say no.

interestingly, both trans folx, and transphobic feminists, often agree that they are different

let me argue why they're the same

so what you'll hear from some folx is that sex is your bodily configuration, while gender is a mental phenomenon, a psychological disposition or cognitive disposition or social disposition in some way or other

it's sometimes said in queer/trans circles that sex is between your legs and gender is between your ears

TERFs will more typically go for gender being between people in a social setting (for them, gender = gender role)

i've discussed previously how sex itself is a construct and why it's somewhat nonsensical to say that humans (or any species really) is sexually dimorphic, and how this idea emerges through cultural forces

but in going the other way and looking at the rejection of the dichotomy between sex and gender, we need to look less at the coherence of the social construct with regard to the underlying biological facts, and look instead at historical development

first consider the recent past: the last 100 years or so

about 100 years ago, the idea of "sex" and "gender" being distinct would've been.. trivially true, but only because the word "gender" meant merely the grammatical phenomenon, and didn't apply to anything but words

it would've been silly to talk about "the feminine gender" in reference to women. the WORD "woman" ok maybe, depending on the language, but women themselves? no no no, women are the feminine sex, not the feminine gender!

as feminist philosophy and sociology emerged, the concept of gender roles began to be theorized and extracted, with a distinction being made between sex (as in biology) and literally everything else (behavioral, cultural, etc.)

prior to that, tho, there was no separation between these ideas. and indeed in many ways still today there is no separation between these ideas

that is to say, to a victorian, or earlier say, you would not have made any sense talking or "gender roles"

to a victorian, and to some modern folx too, the various attributes normally ascribed to different gender roles -- eg caring, child rearers, bread winners, strong physically and emotionally, etc etc -- were ascribed to different sexes, on biological essentialist grounds

women -- ie females -- were caring, natural child rearers, emotionally weak, physically weak

this was not a role, this was part of the theory of the biology of femaleness. it was in the genes and the blood and the brains of females

in that view, women doing these various things that normally today are described as "gender role" things, was as natural as a fish breathing water, and women working factory jobs and bringing home money to support a family, being strong emotionally or physically, was like..

..expecting a fish to sprout wings and fly and breath air -- thats just not how biology works! it's not like you can train a fish to breath air or fly, no amount of training can do it

and to the victorian mind, so too could you never truly Culture a woman to do inherently..

..masculine things. it was just not possible.

for the victorians, sex and gender(/gender roles) were INDISTINGUISHABLE

there is irony here because the precise set of attributes which were said to be "feminine" and inherent to women, vs "masculine" and inherent to men, was never fixed in time -- it always fluctuated and depended on the time and place

now, when we're talking about "sex" vs "gender", we have to be careful to not conflate what we as uses of the words mean, with the words themselves

we as users of the words are speaking within a very specific, and rich, context

so if i say to you "sex" and you interpret it to mean biological aspects, well, that may or may not be what i mean. and certainly it's not what a lot of folx mean (and not what victorians mean)

we also have to be careful to distinguish between the concepts and theory involved, and the correctness of that theory

why sure, we can say that a theory is FALSE, but that's not the same thing as the theory existing as a theory, or things being true *of the theory*

and so when I say that Sex and Gender are the same, what I mean is something very specific:

within the "Gender Theory" that was believed by the victorians, or by many people today, the things that we theorize as distinct -- sex and gender -- are instead identified

that is to say, Sex and Gender are never the same or different, punct. that's a theoretical framework -- "Sex and Gender refer to distinct things" is a theoretical proposition within a particular, modern theory

and that theory is NOT the dominant one in our society

the Sex/Gender Unity theory, which the victorians used, is STILL, more or less, the dominant theory in our society

so when I say that Sex and Gender are the same thing, i mean that within the society we are in, and its history, these two ideas are the same idea

and indeed for the victorian era, they wouldn't've even distinguished them linguistically

now maybe this theory is FALSE

that's a question of the validity of the theory wrt the underlying reality

but the statement "Sex and Gender are the same" is NOT a statement about underlying reality, at least not when we're doing a study of the very ideas of Sex and Gender

when we say "Sex and Gender are the same", this is a statement ABOUT a culture/theory

in a sense its meta-theory of a culture (ie its anthropology or sociology)

it's like saying "Christians believe Jesus is the same as God" or whatever

it's a statement *about* someone elses beliefs

and those other beliefs may be true or false or incoherent

and the statement itself may be true or false or incoherent

but they're not the same statements

so when I say "Sex and Gender are the same thing", it is to make a statement about the theory of the world that is latent in American culture

American culture may be wrong, but that's a separate question

in what ways can American culture be wrong about this?

that is to say, within American culture, these words refer to what they refer to, they mean what they mean. if they happen to mean the same then well then they mean the same thing

it may well be that the thing they mean doesn't exist, it could be a fiction

ie it could be that the total theory of the world, which these words are embedded in, is wrong

by analogy: the word "Spock" refers to a person (who is half human have vulcan, who was born on vulcan, who is in starfleet, etc etc), and all of those things are true -- of Star Trek

here in the real world, "Spock" refers to a fiction, an entity in a story which is not true. "Spock" means what it means, it still refers to that dude, it's just that the entire context you find him -- the story, the fictional world, the theory of a possible reality -- is untrue

so too for "Sex" and "Gender" in American culture and the theory it has of the world. the theory may be wrong but the words still point to the same chunks of that theory independent of the theory's truth

and it's simply a fact that "Sex" and "Gender" are the same. they don't point to anything real, because maybe the theory is wrong, just like "Spock" doesn't point to anything in the real world, but "Spock" and "the youngest son of Sarek" still mean the same thing

so if we want to say that American Culture is wrong to believe that "Sex" and "Gender" are the same, at best what we can say is that the American Culture's theory, insofar as it applies to gendery things, is wrong

ok fine, i'll grant you that

American Culture is definitely wrong where gender is concerned

but now

you would like to say that in fact "Sex" and "Gender" are distinct things

and I would say wait hold on there hoss

because those words refer to things __in american cultural theory__

you might as well be saying "No actually Spock is not the son of Sarek, because don't you see, Star Trek is fiction and there is no Spock nor Sarek, Spock is actually a child psychiatrist"

if you say this you're just confusing the issue

why yes maybe there indeed is some underlying truth that is better fit by a different theory, this is probably true!

but why the heck are you insisting on using the words "Sex" and "Gender" for parts of the new theory?

and this is where we get the tricky problem with the claim that Sex And Gender Are Different Actually

because that statement is simply False False False within the dominant cultural theory we have

and if you propose a NEW cultural theory, you are RE-USING words in a NEW WAY

and so while it is now trivially true in your theory that Sex and Gender are distinct, it can't be otherwise!

because now you're using these words to refer to YOUR theoretical constructs!

its a sleight of hand so subtle many people don't even see it

Sex (as in the idea from dominant american culture) is the same as Gender (as in the idea from dominant american culture)

Sex (as in the idea from modern gender theory) is different from Gender (as in the idea from..

..modern gender theory)

well yes thats trivially true, they're FOUR (or is it three) different ideas!

indeed, this is also true:

Sex (as in the idea from dominant american culture) is different from Sex (as in the idea from modern gender theory)

so when someone says that Sex and Gender are different actually, they are in a sense rejecting the validity of the dominant cultural theory insofar as it pertains to gender

but also trying to cheat and reuse the words

but now.. why those words?

why are we still talking about sex and gender if the modern gender theory concepts are distinct from the old pre-modern concepts?

thats where the historical dimension comes in. as we saw, this change started to emerge in the last 100 years, and isn't even complete

its origins are in feminist philosophy and sociology, and, as academics are wont to do, the terms were reused and altered because, well.. academics suck, frankly

by using the words "Sex" and "Gender" in the ways they were used, there is a sort of trick that is played on the reader -- you get the impression that there is some deep and profound new insight into the world, and in particular about these concepts

it wouldn't sound anywhere nearly as impressive and insightful if someone were to say

"Sex/Gender is fake, but Florp and Glorp are real!"

i mean there's certainly some insight to be had by saying Sex is artificial and erroneously conflates two distinct phenomena, Florp and Glorp

that's a move that happens a whole bunch of the natural sciences, as does the reverse

but philosophy often trades in not just pragmatic theoretical insight, but appearance of profundity

and so by reusing some words, in new and interesting ways, academics smear together the ideas, make it hard to distinguish them, and create the appearance of deep insight

it's utterly boring and trivial as a theory to say "a vagina is different from a skirt", like no shit sherlock

but if "sex" does, and always has, meant "penises, vaginas, hormone profiles like so, chromosomes like so"

and if "gender" does, and always has, meant "pants and skirts, pink and blue, dainty vs. strong"

then it's utterly trivial to say "sex" and "gender" are different

well yeah they're different just look at what they mean

and if we said "penises are not skirts" and "vaginas are not the color blue" we would be no more enlightened about the world because duh?? of course they're not the same things???

but at the same time we don't feel that this claim -- that Sex and Gender are distinct -- is obvious, trivial, and uninsightful

instead we feel that it's a DEEPLY insightful claim

and that's because it's a bit of a cheat -- you're supposed to be relating these words to the..

..ideas within the dominant american culture -- you're supposed to be operating within a theoretical framework that conflates the two, that's how it manages to appear somehow insightful

ultimately tho, it's not insightful, because the intent is to supplant the dominant theory of gender with a new one, with a new theory that has distinct ideas, which simply have names spelled the same as some ideas from the old theory

but they're different ideas

it might be a better theory (its not), but it's a fake insight to say "Actually, sex and gender are different"

i would give as a similar phenomenon what Daniel Dennett calls a Deepity, which is a statement that can be interpreted two ways, one which is true but trivial, the other false but would be shocking if true, and this makes the statement sound profound

Dennett gives as examples of Deepity things like "love is just a word"

and this is true, sort of .. "love" is just a word, in that, the word love has four letters, two vowels and two consonants

but also its false, love is an emotion, a feeling one has for others etc

here, it's a use/mention error. in one interpretation, it's a quotational reference to -- a mention of -- the word "love", the linguistic object -- that is just a word

in the other, it's a use of that word for what it means, the feeling

and you can draw it out like so:

"a four letter word with two vowels and two consonants is a feeling and emotion"

well that's just false

because we're silently pretending like "love" in quotes, when present as a mention, is the same as love, no quotes, when present as a use

"Chicago" has 7 letters, Chicago is the largest city in Illinois

but it's not true that the largest city in Illinois has 7 letters

that's how the "Love is just a word" deepity comes about tho -- conflation of use and mention. one reading is true but boring, the other is false but incredible

thus some people get duped into thinking its TRUE and INCREDIBLE

hence profundity. but its fake, it's a cheat

and the same is true when academics say "Actually sex and gender are different"

either that's true but boring (penises != skirts), or false but incredible (American cultural theory is not what we thought it was)

thus: profound insight

so rather than saying "sex and gender are different"

i am inclined to say something that i think is truer:

most people operate within a view of the world that doesn't assign those words different meanings. some people operate within a view of the world that does. AND MOREOVER..

..both of those views of the world are oversimplifying a fundamentally complex world. no way of slicing the world up into "sex" and "gender" is going to hold water under deeper scrutiny. tldr abolish gender

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