Gender vs. ... Se...x

[Fredjikrang]

Ooo. Let's argue about that one! ;D

[Whistler]

okay... if you are talking about transgender people the difference is very important (transgender=identifies with gender opposite one's sex. So someone with a male sex might identify with a female gender and that person is called a trans woman).

[Unit of Energy]

For what it's worth, in market research we never have a "sex" question, but we almost always have a "gender" question, with the options being male and female. Also, this question in my company is always an observation question, meaning the interviewers never ask it, they just mark male or female.

[NerdGirl]

One of my small pet peeves is people who say they'll find out the gender of the baby at the ultrasound rather than the sex.

Another one of my pet peeves is dried toothpaste on the toothpaste container.

That's all.

I hate it when people leave drawers open. It fills me with rage.

[TheAnswerIs42]

I just wanted to say that I'm with Fred on this one. I used gender interchangeably out of ignorance, and mainly because I thought it was more clear because it only meant type of person and not type of person and something people do. I think it was less confusing. I guess now I will take these definitions into account, but I honestly never knew there was a difference.

[TheBlackSheep]

I'm obviously late to this one, but a few thoughts:

- You can be neither male nor female. There are more intersex people than people who are both with Downs Syndrome, or at least that's what I keep hearing at conferences.

- Gender is definitely not a binary. "Masculine" and "feminine" are good starting points, but there is a whole category of other commonly referred to as "third gender." And, of course, it's all a continuum, and gender can also be very fluid.

- Even at BYU I had to take a whole class on the differences between sex and gender. The two are most definitely not the same thing, and I twitch when I see or hear them used interchangeably.

- Transgender people don't necessarily identify as the gender that is traditionally thought to be opposite their sex. Transgender is an umbrella term for a whole lot of different gender identities such as transsexual, genderqueer, bigender, and genderf***. For example, I know (well, I've met, and I read the blog [http://www.humancomplaints.com/] of) a transman who has been undergoing testosterone treatments for years and who had top surgery in order to stop the dysphoria involved with a brain that expected his body to have a penis, but he still identifies as genderqueer.

[NerdGirl]

^^ Definitely agree that neither is a binary, but I was a bit scared to even go there. Glad that you did, though!

[Imogen]

That's why I love you, Black Sheep.

[TheBlackSheep]

Aww, thanks, imogen. I super love you, too.