The word “sex” can be traced back to the Latin word sexus, which referred to the distinction between male and female. The Latin term itself likely derived from the Indo-European root seks-, which means “to divide” or “to separate.” Over time, sexus came to encompass the biological and physiological differences between males and females. The word “sex” entered the English language in the late fourteenth century, retaining its original meaning of male or female and subsequently extended to refer to sexual activity.
The word “gender” originates from the Latin word genus, which means “class,” “kind,” or “type.” In Latin, genus was primarily used to classify nouns into various grammatical categories masculine, feminine, or neuter. Some thing either has a particular gender or it has no gender. This use did not carry the elaborate notions of psychological or social differences that came to be associated with gender in some circles. The term “gender” entered into the English dictionary in the mid-fourteenth century. Its earliest recorded usage dates back to the Middle English, derived from the Old French word “gendre,” which, again, originated from the Latin word genus.
The modern usage of “gender” to refer to social roles, cultural notions, and personal and political identities is a mid-twentieth century invention pushed by figures in found in various academic fields such as anthropology, psychology, and sociology. One particular figure was sexologist and psychologist John Money who introduced the concept of “gender role” in the 1950s, a term he coined to redefine gender as a societal construct separate from biological sex. As I will explain in a forthcoming blog, this term, along with psychiatrist Robert Stoller’s term “gender identity,” provided jargon for an emerging political movement aimed at normalizing sexual deviance.
Crucially, gender was not only used in grammar, as should be obvious from its roots in the Latin genus. Gender has a centuries long use rooted in the science of reproduction, specially referring to whether an animal or the reproductive parts of plants are male or female—the only two classes, kinds, or types of animals or plant species, what we now know as genotypes. There are numerous examples of important scientists who used gender synonymously with sex in the history of biological studies..
Rudolf Jakob Camerarius was a German physician and botanist who used the term gender in the late seventeenth century to describe the distinction between male and female reproductive structures in plants. In his De Sexu Plantarum Epistola (1694), he documents his extensive studies on plant sexuality and discovered the role of flowers in plant reproduction. Nehemiah Grew was an English botanist and physician who studied plant structure and function in the seventeenth century. He observed the presence of reproductive organs in flowers, describing them as the male and female parts of the plant. Grew made significant contributions to our understanding of plant reproductive structures. He also referred to these sexual parts as gender. Also in England during the seventeenth century, naturalist and botanist John Ray used the term gender in his studies on plant reproduction, e.g., in his 1682 Methodus Plantarum Nova, where he described the sexual organs of plants and recognized the presence of male and female parts.
Considered one of the pioneers of modern plant breeding, eighteenth-century German botanist Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter conducted numerous experiments on plant hybridization and cross-pollination, elucidating the importance of male and female reproductive structures in achieving successful fertilization. He referred to these structures using the term gender, i.e., the male and female class, kind, or type of reproductive structure. In the same century, over in Sweden, botanist Carl Linnaeus developed the binomial system of plant classification. In his works, such as Systema Naturae (1735), Linnaeus classified plants based on their reproductive structures and recognized the presence of stamens (male reproductive structures) and pistils (female reproductive structures) in flowers. In other words, the sex of plants is binary (with about twenty percent of species being able to impregnate themselves).
Back in England, in the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin contributed to the understanding of plant reproduction in his book The Effects of Cross and Self-Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom (1876). Darwin used the terms sex and gender interchangeably throughout his work. In fact, in his landmark The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), Darwin used gender and sex interchangeably to describe the biological differences between male and female individuals in the human species and our evolutionary ancestors.
I want to take a moment to emphasize a point I made in my April 27 essay There’s No Obligation to Speak Like a Queer Theorist. Doing so Misrepresents Reality (see also last month’s Denying Reality: The Tyranny of Gender-Inclusive Language). The point is this: sex and gender are synonyms. Not only can your use these terms interchangeably to refer to male and female of any species, animal or plant, the terms refer to the same things in science. As I have noted in a previous essay, it’s useful on the farm to differentiate between male swine and male humans to refer to the first as a “hog” and the second as a “man,” so perhaps one might suggest the usefulness of gender to differentiate in a species-specific way the male and female genotypes regardless of species. But in ordinary practice, this is an unnecessary conceptual distinction. It’s not something we think about in our everyday lives. After all, the pronouns in this example regardless of species is “he/him.” If you refer to a hog as a “she,” the farmer will correct you.
“Oh, I don’t see any balls.”
“Right, because I castrated him.”
“Because he identifies as a sow?” [No reasonable person would ever ask.]
“No, because I make my money on pigs and castration helps gets rid of boar taint that my customers don’t like. It also gives me more control over their breeding so I can control their numbers and traits. [You know, eugenics.]
I want to usher folks back to the real world where gender is not a spectrum. Where gender is binary—because it is in fact binary. Gender is determined by chromosomes, and it really not a complicated matter. It’s something humans have know about since they could know anything at all—and intuitively before that (or else they would have gone extinct). Now, thanks to science, we know the genetics of the matter. We know that the reproductive process in mammals involves the union of male and female gametes (sex cells) to produce offspring. Mammals exhibit sexual reproduction, where two distinct sex or genders, male and female, man and woman, contribute genetic material to create offspring. In mammals, including humans, the gender of an individual is determined by the sex chromosomes present in their cells. These sex chromosomes are responsible for carrying the genetic information that determines the development of reproductive structures and secondary sexual characteristics. To be sure, things can go wrong in the process, there can be anomalies, but that doesn’t change the natural history of our species or any other species.
For those who do not know how this works, under normal conditions, in mammals, including humans, there are two types of sex chromosomes: X and Y. Typically, females have two X chromosomes (XX), while males have one X and one Y chromosome (XY). During fertilization, when an egg (containing an X chromosome) is fertilized by a sperm (carrying either an X or Y chromosome), the combination of the sex chromosomes determines the sex of the offspring. If a sperm carrying an X chromosome fertilizes the egg, the resulting combination (XX) will develop into a female offspring. On the other hand, if a sperm carrying a Y chromosome fertilizes the egg, the resulting combination (XY) will develop into a male offspring. Hence, it is the sperm that carries either an X or Y chromosome that determines the sex of the offspring.
Mammalian reproduction involves internal fertilization, where the male deposits sperm inside the female reproductive tract. This can occur through copulation (sexual intercourse) or other reproductive strategies specific to different mammalian species. The male reproductive system consists of structures such as the testes, which produce sperm cells, and the penis, which delivers the sperm into the female reproductive tract. Females don’t have penises. To make this specific to the human species, women do not have penises. Once conception occurs, the fertilized egg (zygote) undergoes further development within the mother’s body. In mammals, the female reproductive system includes structures such as the uterus, where the fertilized egg implants and develops into an embryo. The female body undergoes hormonal changes to support the growth and development of the embryo. Sometimes this process can go wrong—but it does not change the gender or sex of the offspring. In humans, the gestation period is approximately nine months, during which the embryo develops into a fetus.
I will soon post an essay providing greater detail about the science of sex and gender across the animal kingdom and what can go wrong in the process, so I will leave the biology lesson there. My point in the present essay is to urge readers, as I have before, to be suspicious of those who use language to complicate and confuse simple and well-understood matters. Complicating and confusing matters are indications that some person or group is attempting to manipulate you. I recognize that, unlike sex and gender, gullibility lies along a spectrum. But knowledge is power—if one is prepared to accept truth over fiction, science over ideology—, so I still believe there is utility in explaining the matters objective. There are areas of scientific inquiry were matters are still open to debate and dispute. This is not one of them. The science of gender is settled. Queer theory is ideology. The moment somebody tells you that gender and sex are different things and that a person can change his sex or gender, you can know straightaway that the person is either ignorant of science or lying to you.
Rather that arguing over a settled question, folks need to ask this question: Why are some trying to confuse others over basic scientific truths? The Biden White House is one of those entities trying to confuse the public. Why? The agencies of the executive branch are trying to confuse the public. Why? The medical-industrial complex is trying to confuse the public about sex and gender. Why? Why are teachers confusing children about this? What is the purpose of the gender ideology flags and slogans? Why is transgender propaganda and pornography in public schools and libraries? Why are men dressed as sexually-provocative women reading to and dancing for children? These are the questions the public needs to ask.
freedom and reason 