The Absurd GOP

[TheWhiteMarten]

Gender isn't a recent construct.  It has existed for at least several hundred years in cognizable form.  When medicine gave a definition is rather beside the point.

I don't see it to be besides the point at all.

Gender was used as a categorical term before the 1950s in an academic sense and the 1970s in a more colloquial manner; that is to say that before 1945, if you see the word "gender" it is going to be used in a context that tells you what exists between someone's legs and bellow their stomach.


Without going into *too* much research, we can take English schoolmaster J. Brinsley's 1612 definition from his, "Posing of Parts" - "What is a Gender? The difference of Nounes according to sex." 

"Gender" as used by the post-modernist is not a statement of biology but of personality, and thus would again find itself utterly incompatible with how the word gender would have been used even 150 years ago. At worst, it's spent the last 20-30 years rewriting medical textbooks on behalf of political interests to redefine "transgender" into multiple smaller categories; the UN/WHO being terrible about this with their recent ICD's published.

Another gender-related word that has changed meaning overtime is "kind" - once used colloquially to differentiate between what we might consider gender today and again intrinsically linked to the biological differences between the individual and other categories.