• Latest
  • All
“Understanding sex and gender”—part one: a brief semantic history

“Understanding sex and gender”—part one: a brief semantic history

March 11, 2021
Former Louisville University professor wins $1.6 million over dismissal for criticism of transgender treatments for children

Former Louisville University professor wins $1.6 million over dismissal for criticism of transgender treatments for children

April 26, 2025
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Author: Alfredo Borba

Pope Francis passed away at the age of 88

April 21, 2025
Author: Tom Morris

U.K. Supreme Court defines woman based on biological sex

April 16, 2025
New Colorado bill punishes moms and dads for rejecting trans ideology

New Colorado bill punishes moms and dads for rejecting trans ideology

April 5, 2025
Female fencer Stephanie Turner faces penalties for refusal to compete against transgender opponent

Female fencer Stephanie Turner faces penalties for refusal to compete against transgender opponent

April 3, 2025
Georgia Governor to sign Riley Gaines Act of 2025, safeguarding women’s sports from transgender ideology

Georgia Governor to sign Riley Gaines Act of 2025, safeguarding women’s sports from transgender ideology

April 2, 2025
Humanity’s indispensable but unsung heroes

Humanity’s indispensable but unsung heroes

March 18, 2025
AfD politician slams leftist abortion agenda in staunchly pro-life speech

AfD politician slams leftist abortion agenda in staunchly pro-life speech

March 12, 2025
Maine locals rally against Governor Mills’ stance on transgender participation in sports

Maine locals rally against Governor Mills’ stance on transgender participation in sports

March 1, 2025
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

J.D. Vance criticizes Europe’s disregard for pro-life advocates and religious freedom at Munich Security Conference

February 20, 2025
  • About iFamNews
  • Contact

Navigation Button Subscribe

  • Subscribe
May 9, 2025
  • Login
  • Register
No Result
View All Result
  • English
    • Italiano
    • Español
    • Français
    • Deutsch
    • Polski
    • српски
    • Русский
    • Hrvatski

Navigation Button Donate

  • Donate
International Family News Network (IFN)
  • Home
  • Opinion
  • Life
  • Family
  • Culture
  • Politics
  • Entertainment
  • Science
  • Shows
  • Petitions
  • Subscribe
  • Donate
International Family News Network (IFN)
  • Home
  • Opinion
  • Life
  • Family
  • Culture
  • Politics
  • Entertainment
  • Science
  • Shows
  • Petitions
  • Subscribe
  • Donate
No Result
View All Result
International Family News Network (IFN)
No Result
View All Result

“Understanding sex and gender”—part one: a brief semantic history

What "gender" would have meant at the beginning of the previous century is much different from what it meant at the beginning of the present one.

Joseph Grabowski by Joseph Grabowski
March 11, 2021
in Culture, Opinion
1.1k
Reading Time: 5 mins read
0
“Understanding sex and gender”—part one: a brief semantic history
Share on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on TelegramShare on TwitterShare on WeChat

Last updated on March 23rd, 2021 at 04:25 pm

[This is the first installment in a five-part essay exploring the history of the concept of “gender” in its origins and stages of development. Part two was published simultaneously, part three can be found here, and the later two sections are to follow.—Ed.]

“Coded hate speech”?

Recently, during an exchange about the Equality Act, I was told that I’d used a term that is a “coded” form of hate speech, a term which functions as a “dog whistle” for “transphobia,” and which has its origins in “internet conspiracy theories.”

The term? “Gender theory.” 

In another recent discussion, this time with a friend seeking advice on how to discuss “transgenderism” with certain unsympathetic family members, I gently suggested at one point during his rehearsal that he say rather “sex” or, if he preferred, “biological sex,” when speaking about the matter. 

I also wrote recently, admittedly a bit reluctantly, on Marjorie Taylor Greene’s protest in the House office building consisting of a sign that read, “There are TWO genders: Male and Female.” In that context, given the purpose of my piece and the purpose and circumstances of Greene’s protest, I prescinded from noting that her sign was, to me, not quite correct—which I will explain below.

These three occurrences suggested to me that I should find occasion to provide a bit of primer on the subject of “sex and gender,” and the language and history at play in the discourse surrounding these topics. 

“Gender” is a construct… of language

“Gender,” used as a term to refer to human persons, is a relatively novel coinage. It arises in the 20th century, as part of certain new conceptions of social psychology, and the usage was subsequently picked up by feminist scholars and others who found it useful for their own purposes. 

When speaking of human beings, the term “sex” formerly had been normative. “Gender,” on the other hand, was a concept related (as it were) in a metaphorical way, but quite distinct: it primarily had to do with language.

See, in most languages, words have a “gender”—e.g., masculine or feminine or neuter. (This is what I meant above by reference to Greene’s sign being “not quite correct”: there can be a third or more “genders” in a language.) Some modern languages still have three genders, like German; whereas some, like French and Spanish, have reduced it down to just masculine and feminine; and still some others, like English, have essentially lost grammatical gender for all words except pronouns. (A friend with whom I was discussing this asked, “What about words like ‘actress’ and ‘actor’?” The fact is what we see happening in these words is more dis-analogous than analogous to what we mean by grammatical gender. In a language with gendered nouns, it’d be more likely that you’d have a single word, “actor,” which might be a feminine noun, regardless of whether it referred to a male or female actor. Or, to look at it another way, suppose describing an actress and saying she was wearing red shoes, a red dress, and had red hair. In a gendered grammar, you might have three different spellings of the same adjective “red,” because in that language “shoes” might be feminine, “dress” neuter, and “hair” masculine. That’s more of what we mean when we speak of “gendered nouns.”)

Furthermore, note how while linguistic gender and referential sex have aligned sometimes, there are also notable exceptions that prove the rule that it isn’t about sex. For instance, “girl” in German (Mädchen) is grammatically neuter. First-year Latin students, on the other hand, will be familiar with how the word for “farmer” in Latin (agricola, -ae) is morphologically feminine (a word of the first declension), but is treated as masculine for agreement with modifiers adjectives. A more advanced Latin student might know that the word “uterus” is a Latin loan-word (where it also referred to the womb), and yet it is a “masculine” noun! This, of course, would seem very odd if the “sexual” underpinnings of grammatical gender were pressed too far. Grammatical gender simply doesn’t work this way. Thus, certain animals’ names are masculine or feminine grammatically according to species, regardless of whether one is speaking of a particular animal that is male or female. And words that don’t seem to have any implicit sexual connotations or even relational roles—words like “sky” and “sea” and “rock”—all have their assigned “genders.” 

A rocky discussion

An example based on that last word, “rock,” might be illuminative. Anyone who has ever done or encountered New Testament biblical apologetics might be familiar with the debate over whether Simon bar Jonah is “the Rock” (in Matthew 16:18), since the new name Christ gives to Simon is rendered in the Greek as masculine—πέτρος—even though the play on words relates this to the feminine noun “rock”—πέτρα. I am not interested here in commenting on this interesting discussion or the relative merits of any arguments thereunto pertaining. My point here is to notice why the confusion arises: it has to do precisely with this distinction we are making. While both words have a gender, only the man Peter additionally has a sex, which the rock does not (with apologies to Duane Johnson). “Rock” in Greek is a feminine noun, but Matthew renders it in a masculine form when referring to Peter because to do otherwise might confuse the reader.

From this we can see that it is only accurate, and not at all “coded hate speech,” to speak of a “theory of gender” or of “theories of gender” that arose and flourished in the second half of the 20th century. It is simply an undisputed fact that, to anyone before this time, “gender” meant a quality having to do with grammatical forms of words.

If one asked an early 20th century English speaker “how many genders are there?” the answer would likely have been “three.” This is because that speaker likely would have had “a little Latin and less Greek” from grammar school, and assumed you meant Latin since English isn’t really a gendered language; but the speaker would have known in any case you were asking a question about language and not about human beings.

Now, however, the term “gender” has become a rocky subject, with much different meaning than it had historically. How did this happen? Well, in our next part, we will examine how the first tectonic shift in the meaning of this word happened. It began in 1950s…

[Continue reading in part two.]

Tags: "Understanding sex and gender"biological sexGender identitygender ideologygrammarlanguageLGBT ideologySexual revolution
Joseph Grabowski

Joseph Grabowski

Joseph Grabowski was the Executive Director of the International Organization for the Family until August 2022. He also served as Director of Communications for the National Organization for Marriage. Joseph has a B.A. in Philosophy from Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary, Overbrook and M.A. in English from Marquette University.  Joe has appeared as an expert on traditional marriage and family in local and nationwide media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Breitbart, and elsewhere. Joe’s writings on traditional marriage and family, as well as on Catholic Social Teaching and the writings of G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, have appeared in The Stream, Gilbert Magazine, Ethika Politika, and The Distributist Review, and he has spoken at several national conferences on the place of G.K. Chesterton in 20th Century literature and thought.

Discussion about this post

Popular News

  • Former Louisville University professor wins $1.6 million over dismissal for criticism of transgender treatments for children

    Former Louisville University professor wins $1.6 million over dismissal for criticism of transgender treatments for children

    0 shares 25 VIEWS
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Two Spanish ministers denounced for embezzlement in contracts awarded to Tragsa

    0 shares 7 VIEWS
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Christian Lawyers request to the City Council of Callosa (Alicante) the replacement of the cross after confirming that the re-signified crosses do not violate the Law of Historical Memory.

    0 shares 3 VIEWS
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • A judge in Tortosa (Catalonia) investigates the procession of the “Santa Baldana” that brought out the virgin surrounded by black pudding.

    0 shares 2 VIEWS
    Share 0 Tweet 0

IFN – International Family News Network

© 2022 IFN – International Family News - All Rights Reserved.

Quick Links

  • About iFamNews
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy

Follow Us

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
Subscribe

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Opinion
  • Life
  • Family
  • Culture
  • Politics
  • Entertainment
  • Science
  • Shows
  • Petitions
  • Subscribe
  • Donate

  • en English
  • it Italiano
  • es Español
  • fr Français
  • de Deutsch
  • pl Polski
  • sr српски
  • ru Русский
  • hr Hrvatski
  • Login
  • Sign Up

© 2022 IFN – International Family News - All Rights Reserved.