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RE: LGBTQ+ Talk: The Transgender umbrella and Non-Binary gender identities | Female and male are not it!

in #lgbt7 years ago

I find the English language on the subject to be really confusing.

Male and Female are supposed to be biological definitions, but they are used interchangeably with gender. When someone says Assigned Male at Birth, they mean gender, not sex. It is society telling you that because you're male, you're a boy, not that society is telling you that you're male or female, you are, unless you're intersex, male or female.

When someone undergoes surgery, they call it gender reassignment surgery, but it would be more akin to changing sex, rather than gender. Gender is psychological, it's an identity, you can't change gender via surgery.

In Hebrew we don't really have this issue, because the words for male and female are a lot more clinical, and used almost exclusively on forms, and not every day speech.

For example, the equivalent to the word feminine is not derived from female, but rather from the word woman.

This allows a much sharper split between sex and gender. I'm not entirely sure why it is the way it is in English, but it is very confusing to me.

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Well, I feel we have the same problem in Spanish- only that at least English has gender neutral pronouns. In fact, I've thought about translating these posts to Spanish to reach more people, but it really isn't that easy, so I want to take my time with that one. Wished language was more inclusive.

Hebrew has gendered pronouns too. All of them. You is gendered. They is gendered. Really annoying.