Jeremy Taylor wrote:

I know it is a controversial point,  but is there even such a thing as gender? It seems a new and loaded term to describe the division of the sexes in such a way that someone might be a different sex innately to their biological sex. Without further proof I am somewhat opposed to the very term gender.  For such a usage it seems to have arisen within the last few decades to serve a particular viewpoint.

 
I always understood it to be a more prude expression of the sexes.

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

I believe, though I am not completely sure, that the popularity of gender as a substitute for the term sex or the sexes is due to those who wish to separate sexual identity from biological or physiological sex.

Right, but that's just a rhetorical point. The question is whether an in what ways are they so justified.

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

Of coure, although rhetoric and the use of language is not always unimportant.

Well, are they not justified in thinking that, in some respect, the social script including the division of labor between the sexes is ultimately or partially arbitrary?

I could probably find a better word- 'flexible' might be a better word.

And indeed, that's where it goes philosophically and ideologically, but politically it appeals to the alienated, who find the idea of the role they're supposed to carry out, as articulated in their time and place, unappealing. It is this latter group that carries the day, and it is by no means evident that they shall never reassert some sort of script, just not the one they were given.

Last edited by iwpoe (7/09/2015 1:11 pm)

Very well then. How precisely do we define sex?

Again, I'm not talking about poor blokes who think that they're the wrong sex trapped in a body, or a lizard, or any of that nonsense. What interests me is actual genetic flukes that imply androgyny.