Nebraska governor Jim Pillen, a Republican not noted as a women’s rights supporter, yesterday issued an executive order “defining” males and females and the attributes thereof. The anti-transgender political grandstanding offers fusty explanations of the sexes–men are “bigger, stronger and faster” on average–in pursuit of Rowling-esque calls for sexual segregation (and even echoing her ostensibly feminist rationales) and not a lot else.
The order declares that, in matters of the state, the “biological differences between the sexes are enduring” and that the “sex” of a person will be defined by the gender designated at birth. In addition to specifically noting how boy, girl, man, and woman will be defined, the order also includes biological descriptions. …
“It is common sense that men do not belong in women’s only spaces,” Pillen said in the news release. “As Governor, it is my duty to protect our kids and women’s athletics, which means providing single-sex spaces for women’s sports, bathrooms, and changing rooms.”
The reaction, at least from Democrats, is to point out that if it were enforced, the likely outcome would be Nebraska losing federal funding for womens’ shelters.
“Today Governor Pillen, famous women’s rights supporter, signed this offensive and ridiculous proclamation establishing a “Women’s Bill of Rights.” He should try saying this stuff to my face then we would see who’s got what biological advantage,” wrote State Senator Megan Hunt on Twitter.
You are thinking of sex. Gender comes from the same root as genre - like how you categorize books. It was initially used to define things loosely by cultural traits like “tribe” or “type” and was used in the 15 century to describe men and women in a tongue in cheek way. Basically saying “the tribe of woman” right before trying to be witty about how women don’t make any sense because they are like another culture. Other uses would have been to distinguish differences between any different nations, families, groups. So your gendre could have been “English” or “From this specific village where they eat a lot of cheese” or of a social class.
The word got hijacked by Victorian sensibilities which used it euphemistically in that “tribe of” way for the word sex because having a woman saying the word sex aloud to a room in the scientific sense of the word caused monocles to shoot out of men’s eyesockets at lethal speeds and early feminists needed language they could use without being censored… But the modern usage of gender is not a euphemism for sex. They are two distinct words.
Gender does not concern itself with any part of the person’s body. It refers more to classification by cultural attributes. Like how you would decide if a book belongs in the mystery section or romance. Whether the book is hard or soft cover is not relevant to genre classification in the same way male /female/intersex is largely irrelevant in regards to gender classification.
