Gender is from linguistics, and in other languages, is applied to inanimate objects. But the thing is - sex is Male/Female. Gender is masculine/feminine. These are not the same things. Sex is grounded in biology. Gender is the freakin' construct of culture, that sees a table as masculine, feminine, or neuter (English pretty much sees all non-living objects and plants as being "neuter" - "it") - this crap varies by (European) language (and I have no idea how Asian languages work), and has nothing to do with reality, it just makes other languages that much harder to learn for an Anglophone.
Cripes, I don't remember "gender" being used before the early 90s (with the very rare exceptions on the farthest left TV shows of the 80s), when the US federal government started replacing the word "sex" supposedly not to offend Christians at the time (I remember reading an article about it back in the Bush Sr era) - though I understand that academics might have been touting the word at the time, it sure as fuck didn't filter down to the rest of us until more recently.
Shit, there used to be a show called Battle of the Sexes. SEXES, not "genders".
No, there are two sexes.
Gender is from linguistics, and in other languages, is applied to inanimate objects. But the thing is - sex is Male/Female. Gender is masculine/feminine. These are not the same things. Sex is grounded in biology. Gender is the freakin' construct of culture, that sees a table as masculine, feminine, or neuter (English pretty much sees all non-living objects and plants as being "neuter" - "it") - this crap varies by (European) language (and I have no idea how Asian languages work), and has nothing to do with reality, it just makes other languages that much harder to learn for an Anglophone.
Cripes, I don't remember "gender" being used before the early 90s (with the very rare exceptions on the farthest left TV shows of the 80s), when the US federal government started replacing the word "sex" supposedly not to offend Christians at the time (I remember reading an article about it back in the Bush Sr era) - though I understand that academics might have been touting the word at the time, it sure as fuck didn't filter down to the rest of us until more recently.
Shit, there used to be a show called Battle of the Sexes. SEXES, not "genders".