Talk:Gender

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To-do list for Gender:

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For section "sex": "Here should be a summary of the sex-determination system article and related material, with emphasis on how the categorisation into male and female works, i.e., stuff about sexual dimorphism (how sex is determined in different species). XX chromosomes, SRY genes, reproductive tasks, etc." For section "social category": This needs to be expanded. For section "music": Write about Riepel's theories For section "other languages: Should this section be here at all? See AlexR's comments on the talk page (now in Talk Archive 1). Need a section on the political aspects of this word as a tool used radical gender feminists in academia and elite mass media circles to control common usage of sex-related terms using a controversial and largely untested construct.

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[edit] Talk archives

• Archive 1 - up until May 2005

[edit] Summary style page uploaded

I have been lazy, my apologies for this. However, after the RfC there was some concord (albeit with dissent) to try to make this page into an encyclopedic article about gender, typically as an overview of its various meanings with pointers to more detailed presentations.

Especially, this page has to move away from its attempt to be normative about what gender should mean. I hope we all agree that it is not Wikipedia's business to tell people how a term is correctly applied, especially in the present case, where this very debate is ideologically loaded. (I won't repeat the debate, see above for some lucid explanations of the viewpoints pro et contra.)

As I tried to read up on the subject, I quite fell in love with its different yet related meanings, and think this will make for a wonderful article.

I have tried to make something like that. I also gave my best shot at a definition of the term gender that I hope encompasses all its uses and tries to find a common aspect of these uses (namely, the distinction into categories male and female, or lack thereof.) I assume that this very definition needs more work—improve it!

Even though I think what I uploaded is a pretty good framework, it is far from finished. I think I did a good job on some of the passages, but I ran out of time and energy and think the wiki community will do a better job that I. Frankly, there are some sections about which I know very little, and where I have cut-and-pasted from other WP sources. Attention from the cognoscenti is welcome. Incidentally, the electrical connectors section has been cleaned up by me, much of what the original article said is just plain wrong. (As far as I have been able to determine.) But have an extra look.

The current text is full of HTML comments indicating what I think is missing/lacking/bad/wrong/too little. Have a look.

The section on grammatical gender in indo-european languages is too long compared to the rest of the article, and I hope to be able to fix that real soon now. I am aiming for Wikipedia: Summary style, so each section ideally should be three long, good paragraphs with a pointer to one or more “full” articles. Arbor 07:12, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Grammatical gender, again

I've noticed that this topic causes confusion and controversy. Perhaps that's not surprising, considering that most contributers to the Wikipedia no doubt have as their mother tongue English, which doesn't really have this feature. I propose the following rewrite of the section on grammatical gender. The current version, which has an arcane example in Old English that most readers probably have a hard time following, can be placed in the specific page for "grammatical gender". Opinions, suggestions and criticisms are welcome. (I plagiarized the Wikipedia's page on Swahili just a little bit. I hope that's not a problem.) Nov. 27 2005

All languages can use different nouns to differentiate between people of different biological or social gender, e.g., male and female, man and woman, uncle and aunt, but not all languages have gender in the grammatical sense. In linguistics, grammatical gender refers to the existence of different classes of words, called "genders".

To understand this notion, consider the sentences "The man is tall" and "The woman is tall". In English, the only word that differs between them is the noun "man/woman", which has a direct semantic association with sexual identity. In Spanish, however, one says "El hombre es alto" and "La mujer es alta", respectively. Not only do the words for "man" and "woman" change, "hombre" vs. "mujer", but so do the article and the adjective. Words that refer to a noun must be inflected according to the gender of that noun. This is called "gender agreement". We say that a language has grammatical genders when it requires gender agreement between a noun and other parts of speech that refer to that noun. This is analogous to grammatical number, whereby parts of speech that refer to a noun must be inflected to agree with the number of that noun (singular or plural, in most cases).

In many languages, there is considerable overlap between grammatical and semantic gender, and then it's customary to call one of the genders the "masculine", and another the "feminine". However, grammatical genders are much broader categories, which also include inanimate objects and abstractions, and need not relate to sexuality in any way. For instance, Bantu languages can have more than ten genders, reflecting notions such as "person", "plant" or "tool", but none that corresponds to biological or social gender. Furthermore, even in languages with a masculine and a feminine gender, the correspondence between grammar and semantics is often not perfect. In Spanish, the word miembro (member) is always masculine, even when it refers to a woman, but the word persona (person) is always feminine, even when it refers to a man.

There is often some degree of arbitrariness in the assignment of a noun to a particular gender, but in many languages noun classes tend to be associated with certain word endings or word beginnings. Thus, in Spanish most nouns that end in -o are masculine and most nouns that end in -a are feminine. In Swahili, nouns that begin with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote persons, and nouns that begin with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural denote plants. There may be exceptions, however: problema (problem) is masculine in Spanish, and radio (radio station) is feminine.

Old English had three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter, but gender inflections (as well as number inflections) were greatly simplified, and then merged with one another. The only trace of grammatical gender left in modern English are the personal pronouns he, she, it. Finnish, a language that never had any genders, has only one third person singular pronoun, hän.

Gender assignment is often different for animals than it is for humans. For example, in Spanish an ostrich is always un avestruz (masculine) and a snake is always una cobra (feminine), regardless of their biological sex. If it becomes necessary to specify the sex of the animal, an adjective is added, as in un avestruz hembra (a female ostrich). Even in English, it's interesting to note that people concerned with gender neutrality in language avoid referring to a person of unknown gender as it--a pronoun traditionally reserved for "things" and "animals"--preferring instead to use the originally plural pronoun they.

Your contributions are welcome, but I'm not too sure about some of your concrete suggestions. 1. The Old English example is used specifically because more readers will appreciate an ancient (but barely understandable) dialect of their own language than of any other language (like Spanish or German). Also, it covers a historical aspect about English having lost its gender system. 2. The "22 genders of Bantu" (or whatever language or gender system you might want to mention) are a touchy subject. Many linguists would tell you that these aren't genders but noun classes. I don't have an opinion on that, but Wikipedia shouldn't have either, and it certainly isn't a good example. (The opinion that "not all noun classes are genders" certainly would benefit from some exposure on this page.) Let's keep talking here, the article is certain to improve from your attention. Arbor 08:48, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your feedback. Regarding 1, the current version of the text says it is a "highly contrived" example. Since grammatical gender can be a mysterious concept for native speakers of English, I thought a very plain example might be preferable. Also, in the OE example the noun refers to an inanimate object. It's not immediately apparent why the class to which the word "shield" belongs should be called the "feminine". I think it's more suggestive to begin with an example where the noun refers to a person, and biological gender is meaningful, and then extent the concept to objects, abstractions, and animals. I was thinking of putting the example in Old English in the specific page on grammatical gender, but now that you drew my attention to it I've changed my mind. Tell me what you think of the new version of my proposal, below.

Regarding 2, I do realise there is debate over how to count genders in Bantu languages, and I've changed the text to "more than ten", which seems like a more conservative calculation.

About not all noun classes being genders, I am not familiar with the arguments in support of that position. Perhaps it's because not all noun class systems have a "masculine" and a "feminine"... But, if the "neuter" can be called a "gender" in German and Old English, why not other noun classes? The original meaning of "gender" is "kind", after all. It doesn't have to be related to sexuality. And I think there are cases of languages in whose evolution the masculine and the feminine merged, leaving a "neuter" an "animate" category, or vice-versa. It seems inconsistent to stop calling them genders just because there stopped being a "masculine" and a "feminine". That would make the grammatical notion of gender dependent on sexual identity, when I think an important point to make about grammatical gender is that it doesn't necessarily mirror biological or social notions of gender.

On another note, I was thinking of removing the paragraphs named "Gender in Indo-European languages" and "Gender in other languages" from the main page, and taking them to the grammatical gender page, where there already is a more indepth discussion of gender in Indo-European and other language families. The paragraph on "Gender in other languages" has very little to say, and I see no reason to give a special place to Indo-European languages in this page.

Looking forward to your opinions. Nov. 30 2005.

All languages can use different nouns to differentiate between people of different biological or social gender, e.g., male and female, man and woman, uncle and aunt, but not all languages have gender in the grammatical sense. In linguistics, grammatical gender refers to the existence of different classes of words, called "genders".

To understand this notion, consider the sentences "The man is tall" and "The woman is tall". In English, the only word that differs between them is the noun "man/woman", which has a direct semantic association with sexual identity. In Spanish, however, one says "El hombre es alto" and "La mujer es alta", respectively. Not only do the words for "man" and "woman" change, "hombre" vs. "mujer", but so do the article and the adjective. Words that refer to a noun must be inflected according to the gender of that noun. This is called "gender agreement". We say that a language has grammatical genders when it requires gender agreement between a noun and other parts of speech that refer to that noun. This is analogous to grammatical number, whereby parts of speech that refer to a noun must be inflected to agree with the number of that noun (singular or plural, in most cases).

In many languages, there is considerable overlap between grammatical and semantic gender, and then it's customary to call one of the genders the "masculine", and another the "feminine". However, grammatical genders are much broader categories, which also include inanimate objects and abstractions, and need not relate to sexuality in any way. For instance, Bantu languages can have more than ten genders, reflecting notions such as "person", "plant" or "tool", but none that corresponds to biological or social gender.

Old English had three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter, but gender inflections (as well as number inflections) were greatly simplified, and then merged with one another. Curzan illustrates gender agreement in Old English with a “highly contrived” example:

Seo brade line wæs tilu and ic hire lufod.

(Literal translation:) That broad shield was good and I her loved.

The noun lind (shield) is grammatically feminine, and forces the pronoun seo (the, that) and the adjectives brade (broad) and tilu (good) to appear in their feminine forms. Notably for Modern English speakers, the pronoun hire, referring back to lind, is feminine, adopting the grammatical gender of the referent. By comparison, Modern English uses natural gender, where the noun's class agrees with the sex (or sexlessness) of the referent:

That broad shield was good and I loved it.

Here, the shield is understood as a sexless object, and is referred to by the neuter pronoun, it. The only trace of grammatical gender left in modern English are the personal pronouns he, she, it. Finnish, a language that never had any genders, has only one third person singular pronoun, hän.

Even in languages with masculine and feminine genders, the correspondence between grammar and semantics is often not perfect. In Spanish, the word miembro (member) is always masculine, even when it refers to a woman, but the word persona (person) is always feminine, even when it refers to a man. Thus, grammatical gender is, to some extent, a matter of convention.

On the other hand, it is often related to noun morphology: in Spanish most nouns that end in -o are masculine and most nouns that end in -a are feminine. In Swahili, nouns that begin with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote persons, and nouns that begin with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural denote plants. There may be exceptions, however: problema (problem) is masculine in Spanish, and radio (radio station) is feminine.

Gender assignment is often different for animals than it is for humans. For example, in Spanish a cheetah is always un guepardo (masculine) and a zebra is always una cebra (feminine), regardless of their biological sex. When it becomes necessary to specify the sex of the animal, an adjective is added, as in un guepardo hembra (a female cheetah). It's interesting to note that even people concerned with gender neutrality in English avoid referring to a person of unknown gender as it--a pronoun traditionally reserved for "things" and "animals"--preferring instead to use the pronoun they, originally a plural.

Good stuff. Ideally, the grammatical gender section on the current page should be a three-paragraph summary of grammatical gender (see Wikipedia: Summary style), so both the current text and your suggestions are too long anyway. I suggest that we move to grammatical gender and get that article into better shape. Afterwards we can abstract the result into gender with focus on (1) the masculine/feminine dichotomy (which is what this page is about) and (2) the possible lack of coherence between grammatical gender and natural gender of a sexed object. Arbor 20:55, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Very well. See here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Grammatical_gender.

I have rewritten the other page. Since there don't seen to be any objections, I have proceeded to edit this one as well. Dec. 8 2005.

[edit] Gender affirmation

I flat-out removed a newly added section on gender affirmation. Some parts were simply rants which have no place here. The rest seemed interesting enough, and I tried to reword it, but in doing so I became convinced that I had actually no idea what was meant by the term. Maybe somebody who wants to fight for this concept would like to try to re-insert a paragraph, hopefully with a more transparent explanation. Arbor 09:38, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

You're being too generous... that section was clearly added by someone who was interested in promoting a POV, not improving this article. Catamorphism 10:27, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. But there is lots of good information on WP that was originally contributed by POV-pushers. In itself that is not a problem, as long as other editors massage the material into an NPOV presentation. Arbor 11:07, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Maven's word of the Day

It is an odd reference - can we replace it with something more serious? Anyone feel strongly about keeping it? - Samsara _contrib ^talk 22:02, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree, it doesn't contribute much. Be bold! Catamorphism 22:21, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I made the change and also nominated for WP:AID. - Samsara _contrib ^talk 22:51, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I put that in originally. The examples found by MwoTD (Harper, NYT,etc.) were all good, informative, and relevant. Since I myself didn't check those sources, the reference to MwoTD is standard procedure. The point made by the removed paragraph is certainly a very good description of current use. Unless we find a better description of current use, I see little reason to remove it. I did find a sterling reference for this useage shift within academia (Haig), and have made good use of it. But the article still needs a usage description outside of academia (for example, in the press, of which Harpers, NYT, etc. are good examples). We could dig out such examples ourselves, but why should we? We want to avoid Original Research. Arbor 11:41, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

The etymology section looked very patchworkish with all those indented literal quotations. Can we somehow make it look more flowing and coherent? Ideally, we want this article to be more than a collection of random quotes, and we should avoid giving that impression, even if unfounded. I'm fine with keeping it if we can make it look smart. - Samsara _contrib ^talk 21:15, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Grammatical gender revisted

To revive this thread, I'd like to take up Arbor's last suggestion to add to the article an explanation of "the possible lack of coherence between grammatical gender and natural gender of a sexed object".

From the first sentence: "...gender refers to the masculinity or femininity of words..." — but as 193.136.232.3 above pointed out, it doesn't. Linguists have adopted a convention of using the terms "masculine" and "feminine" to describe classes of nouns in those languages that have a partial semantic relationship between these noun classes and male/female distinctions. But they don't usually describe the "masculinity" or "femininity" of the noun (eg. Die Maschine, the machine, is feminine in German). I think some confusion could have been avoided if linguists had called it "grammatical genre" instead of "gender" (maybe with "alpha class" and "beta class" nouns)!

The second sentence reads: "The classification into masculine and feminine is analogous to the biological sexes of male and female, often by physical or syntactical analogy, linguistic decay..." — I don't see how die Maschine is "feminine" by physical or syntactic analogy to the biological sex of female. As for linguistic decay, I'm not quite sure what that means, but to me it implies that long ago there was a semantic relationship between femaleness and a root word that evolved into the modern word "Maschine". I don't believe this is actually how Maschine became a "feminine" noun.

The "Grammatical gender" paragraph is good, but the examples imply a necessary relationship between natural gender and grammatical gender. I don't mean to seem pedantic but I think pointing out the distinction actually says a lot about the social import of non-grammatical gender too. If there is no objection to my ideas, I will have a go at rephrasing the lead section and the garmmatical gender section. ntennis 11:21, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

First, I am not a linguist either, but die Machine is likely an example of "syntactic analogy" (your brain and mine wants to treat Maschine as it does die Kusine, which is obviously feminine).

Second, my own version of the Grammatical Gender section spent a lot more time on explaining how the grammatical genders came up in the first place, and what they have to do with sex. See [1], mostly stolen from the old Encyclopeda Britannica, IIRC. In the current version of our article, this linguistic-historical perspective is absent. (To my regret. I would like to have it back because I think that is the important perspective on grammatical gender for this page. I completely understand that Grammatical gender as a linguistic category can and should be understood without ever worrying about the relationship between natural and grammatical gender—for all intents and purposes there is none. In effect, it's really a discussion about whether we want the subsection on Grammatical Gender to be an introduction to Grammatical gender, or to the phenomenon of using gender terminology to classify word classes. I would prefer the latter, because I think this article would become more interesting. But I certainly understand the merits of having the Grammatical gender section be about, well, grammatical gender.)

Third, I bemoan the existence of the concept of "grammatical gender" (instead of "noun class") as much as the next person. It is a useless (and even misleading) labeling.

Fourth, by all means, go ahead with your edits! No reason to seek permission. Arbor 11:45, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, will have a go at it :) Thanks for the link to old version. I'm a little confused by the "syntactic" analogy from Kusine to Maschine — wouldn't the analogy be phonological? ntennis 12:20, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Urk. I am on really thin ice here: I guess the phonological similarity of Kusine and Maschine makes the grammar engine in my brain treat them syntactically the same: zwei Maschinen (plural), der Preis der Maschine (genitive case), etc.. Hence it makes sense to treat them as the same noun class. Whether all syntactic analogy derives from “sounds-like“... no idea. Arbor 13:50, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi. Another non-linguist here, but my native language has genders. Actually, the confusion between grammar and sexuality is the other way around. The word "gender" was used first as a grammatical term, in antiquity. See the note on etymology in the main page about gender. It's we modern folks who, in these gender-conscious times, assume that the sexual meaning is the natural one, and the grammatical meaning is a perversion of it. I don't speak German, so I can't really explain why Maschine is feminine, but I will say this: it's also feminine in French, and I think it was feminine in Latin. Could German have got the word from French? (English seems to have got "machine" from French; notice the unusual spelling). Or perhaps it has something to do with the fact that -in is a common feminine suffix in German (unstressed, though). Grammatical gender is first and foremost a convention. There's no use in looking for symbolism in it. It just isn't there. Here's an interesting opinion on the origin of genders in Indo-European: http://www.zompist.com/lang21.html#28. :) 193.136.232.3 17:40, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that the term was first used in antiquity about grammar. The terms gender/masculine/feminine (or rather, their Greek equivalents) certainly existed before Aristotle used them for nouns. It is Aristotle's "fault" that we are using the analogy to the sexes to classify words. Arbor 06:00, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps, but the term did not originally have an exclusively sexual sense, either. Gender = kind. The origin of the word is exactly the same as that of the biological term genus. FilipeS 13:48, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Of course. The terms male and female are the "problem". Not the word gender. Arbor 15:22, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I see what you mean, but may I point out that the terms used in liguistic contexts are "masculine" and "feminine", usually in conjunction with "gender" ("masculine gender", "feminine gender")? I would think this clears any ambiguities... FilipeS 16:15, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussing the definition

OK, User:Ntennis has opened up the can of worms that is the definition of the very term. This is great, and I am sure the page improves from it, but maybe we can discuss some issues here—just to prevent a tedious and potentially confrontational edit war. Some of the things that are important to me:

1. Gender should not be a term that is defined for homo sapiens in the first paragraph. (Currently, it's in the second sentence. I liked my own, very general definition that used lots of concepts (words, things, organisms). The second paragraph would be a great place to give extra attention to homo sapiens. The third paragraph of the introduction would be a great place to point to controversies.
2. The fact that "some people" use gender in contrast to sex is important, but not important enough for the very first paragraph. Because at least as many people use gender as a synonym for sex. In fact, many more do. (See the paper I linked that actually studies this.) The idea that gender is not sex is (1) new, (2) confined to English, (3) confined to certain parts of the social sciences. It cannot become the norm here. I want the article to explain this, in fact I have written a good part of that explanation myself, but we need to be careful to not have this article "take sides". What we could do, after a first paragraph that aims to explain the germ in general, is "Gender is used both as a synomym for (biological) sex and also in contrast to sex as a ...". Or something like that. I am sure I have such a formulation in there already.
3. What I would really like is to have the first sentence end with "... classification in to masculine or feminine, or sometimes, the lack thereof". Except that is not very elegant or clear. But I would like to say "mostly masculine/feminine, but sometimes neuter (as in grammar) or common (as in grammar or transgender studies)". A better wordsmith than me needs to have a go at that.

Arbor 08:05, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your response! First, I can put your mind at ease about edit warring — it's not my style :) Think of my edit as an offering that others can take or leave as they choose. I've tried to incorporate your suggestions into the lead section. hope it's an improvement? I went with "male" and "female" rather than "masculine" and "feminine" to avoid confusion. A feminine male would still give their gender as male when filling out a form. ntennis 08:31, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

P.s my dictionary (the standard one that came with my operating system) defines gender as: "the state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones) : traditional concepts of gender | [as adj. ] gender roles."

I think this is a great idea, and I would just like to point out that in grammar gender is not necessarily restricted to masculine, feminine, and neuter. In fact, gender (or noun classes) may have no relation at all with sexuality (see Bantu languages). By the way, I was thinking of rewritting the article on grammatical gender a bit, which is still a little messy. Take a look. FilipeS 11:36, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Grammatical gender into fem/masc/neut (as introduced by Aristotle) makes sense primarily for Indo-European languages. (See my "old" Grammatical Gender section linked above.) For other language families, the preferred term is noun class. Arbor 12:52, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

A few problems with that: in their evolution, some IE languages have merged two genders. For example, the masculine and the feminine have merged in Dutch, leaving the "neuter" and the "common gender" only. It seems inconsistent to stop using the word gender just because of that. Also, some authors argue that Proto-Indoeuropean itself originally had only an "animate" gender and an "inanimate" gender, the former giving rise to the masculine, and the latter giving rise to the neuter and the feminine. Finally, languages from other language families also have fem/masc genders, for example Afro-Asiatic languages, and Manchu. FilipeS 13:44, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

That's exactly the kind of stuff I want the Grammatical Gender subsection to talk about. You should have a go at it. Arbor 15:23, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problematic edit by anonymous user

Later gender theorists has come to abandon this distinction, to appreceate the flexible nature of gendered behaviour. R. W. Collins, Randall Collinson and Jeff Hearn are major spokesmen for seeing gender as a sort of "doing"; The individual does his or her gender in ways that emphasise their gender, and this is what gender is about.

I've removed this contribution because I have a number of problems with it. Who are these people? Why are they the most prominent spokespeople for gender as performance? (I would think Judith Butler would be high on this list.) Are the names misspelled? Because I get nothing from Google for "Randall Collinson" gender, and nothing relevant for "R. W. Collins" gender. Also, the statement is somewhat POV - it seems to assume that gendered behavior is flexible. (This happens to be my POV, for what it's worth.) Finally, grammar and spelling need attention. FreplySpang (talk) 15:56, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Third gender

Just a few thoughts on this. In Thailand the "lady-boys" are apparently considered as a third gender (based on what I've heard from travellers who've been there).

In Indonesia, transvestites and transexuals (who dress as female or perhaps take hormones to become more feminine) are called "waria", a compound of the word for woman (wanita) and man (pria). The level of social acceptance is surprisingly high and a waria can even become a local celebrity (based on my observations in Surabaya, East Java). However, I couldn't say that they are actually considered a third gender - I'm not clear on this. Also the term is very broad and includes gay men who don't identify as women, but find this to be one way of expressing themselves which is socially accepted. --Singkong2005 02:59, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Have added refs for this section and linked to the article third gender. ntennis 01:21, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gender and development

I'm focused on articles such as International development, and others covered by the WikiProject International development. I know that gender is a very important issue. Having women participate is important to the success of projects. It's also been important in the success of some/many microfinance programs. So I feel there should be much more information on this, within articles such as International development & Participation (decision making), and possibly even in specific articles. Are there articles on this already, which I have missed? Thanks --Singkong2005 05:29, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I think this article should act as a kind of portal, which briefly summarises and branches off to other relevant gender-related articles via links. I think gender in international development deserves a mention here. Would you like to contribute something on this? ntennis 01:21, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Cool. To be honest, I don't feel up to the task, but I'll have a go. I'll put some ideas down here, and after getting input/correction they might be ready to be transferred to the relevant articles (esp. Gender & International development): Here's the first attempt:

"Gender, and particularly the role of women, is widely recognized as vitally important to international development issues. This often means a focus on gender-equality, ensuring participation, but includes an understanding of the different roles and expectation of the genders within the community.^{[citation needed]}

"As well as directly addressing inequality, attention to gender issues is regarded as important to the success of development programs, for all participants. For example, in microfinance it is common to target women, as besides the fact that women tend to be the over-represented in the poorest segments of the population, they are also regarded as more reliable at repaying the loans. Also, it is claimed that women are more likely to use the money for the benefit of their families.^{[citation needed]} "

It still needs work. Feel free to edit the above, use it to edit the article(s), or add suggestions here. I may not have time to do much more for a few weeks. Thanks --Singkong2005 16:41, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I've made a start - won't be able to do much more for a while, though. --Singkong2005 00:01, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Online resources on "gender and development"

I also did a bit of a web search, but it would have taken hours to get anywhere much. Here's what I found interesting:

• Gender, Development and the HIV Epidemic seems interesting. added. --Singkong2005 00:58, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
• I'm not sure about this "virtual bookcase": Bridge - Mainstreaming Gender Equality - it can give good results using the search box, if you know what you're looking for. But some of the articles are very dry, wordy, institutional documents on extremely specific topics. If your eyes are glazing over and you have no idea what the document is saying, it may not be your fault.
• The World Bank Participation Sourcebook - I looked at this years ago, and learnt a lot. Refers to gender issues, esp in Gender Issues in Participation. (Do this search to find more references to gender in the Participation Sourcebook). --Singkong2005 16:41, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "biological sex"

Arbor, I noticed you reverted my change to the sentence: "Since the 14th century, the word is also used as a synonym for biological sex". I felt that "biological" was misleading, as people at that time probably didn't see sex as biologically determined, but rather some other kind of innate state of being. The quotes that are used to illustrate the point also don't back up a biological interpretation: "The Psyche, or soul, of Tiresias is of the masculine gender"; "the sun is there assumed to be of the feminine gender" and "black divinities of the feminine gender". Is there another way we can phrase this? ntennis 08:00, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

That's a good point that I had missed. The thing I want to make clear is that gender is a synonym for sex where sex means biological sex (as opposed to sexual intercourse). It's really a double problem with sex itself having multiple meanings. I agree that biological is pretty misleading when we talk about the poetic sense. Maybe we should just use a disambiguation link? Or "Gender is used as a synonym for sex, i.e., for the division into male and female." Division of what, though? Not of nouns or of colour schemes. Not of organisms either, because Sun is not one. By all means revert me if you have a good solution. Arbor 15:57, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] First sentence

The first sentence was recently changed, from (1) to (2):

(1) The word gender describes the state of being male, female, or neither.

(2) Gender describes a classification using masculinity and femininity. While this classification often is a dichotomy, some contexts allow a concept to be neither masculine nor feminine, or both masculine and feminine.

Now I like the first version better, but them I'm biased. ;) My main concern with (2) is the use of "masculine" and "feminine" as opposed to male and female. If asked what is the gender of a feminine man, would most people answer "feminine"? Or man? What about gender-specific services? Does a women's help line cater only to feminine people? I understand that some people see male and female as referring to biological sex, but the counterpart with gender is not masculine and feminine, but girl/woman and boy/man. However I would still prefer male/female (and neither/both), because we don't talk about man plugs and woman sockets, but male and female ones. Also, "a classification using masculinity and femininity" is kind of vague; if I didn't already know what gender is, I'm not sure this would help pin it down for me. What's wrong with "the state of being..."? --ntennis 23:13, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

P.s Suggested slight modification to #1 (let's keep it simple): The word gender describes the state of being male or female, or sometimes neither or both.

ntennis 23:19, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

The state of being male or female (or sometimes neither or both) is already covered by the word "sex". Given that this is an article about gender, not sex, it is necessary to acknowledge the subtlety and ambiguity of the issue right from the beginning. In your example of plugs and sockets, this is an example of an unfortunate linguistic error that is nonetheless the common usage and needs to be documented. But, the fact that people usually incorrectly refer to plugs as having "gender" rather than "sex" shouldn't tell us anything about how we describe gender in general, any more than common misspellings of words suggest that we need to change how we spell those words. As for the question of what the gender of a feminine man is (if by man you mean someone who has a typically male body and was born that way, with no additional information), I wouldn't be able to answer that question without asking hir. Catamorphism 23:58, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Catamorphism; no, we cannot do that. WP is not a usage guide. You and I may think that the concept of gender (as being different from biological sex) is useful, helpful, brilliant, or whatnot. But gender is a synonym for sex, as well. This article needs to acknowledge that fact. The challenge here is to write an article that gives an overview of everything that has to do with gender in all its connotations. I think thats doable and would make a brilliant article. (I have laid out the reasoning behind that idea many times on this talk page, and there was a Peer Review that came to the same conclusion.) This needs to be an inclusive summary-style article, not a narrow one.

ntennis: Both solutions look fine to me, I have no opinion. (The really short suggestion is great. Let's have a sweet opening sentence, not an opaque one.) However, the link masculinity points to a different, and in some respects better and more relevant article than male. You are a good wordsmith—can't we link to both? ".... of being male or female, neither or both. By analogy or convention, the concepts of masculinity and femininity have ...". Arbor 07:13, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Catamorphism and Arbor for your thoughts. Catamorphism, I may have not expressed myself clearly. I understand the sex/gender distinction. By a man I didn't mean a cisgender man, I meant any man — someone with a gender identity and social identity as a man, regardless of how typical his body is or was when he was born, or even if he is feminine — his gender is still male. "Woman" and "man" are genders, and femininity and masculinity are characteristics associated with them. I don't see how saying plugs and sockets have a "sex" is any more accurate than saying they have a "gender". Surely, if sex is about biology and reproduction in organisms, and gender is a set of social norms and conventions, the opposite is true! Any ideas on how we can approach consensus? ntennis 10:39, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, as no more discussion was forthcoming in nearly a month since the post above, I've restored the original wording, which was at least preferred by two editors and objected to by one. Hope further discussion can find a version all are happy with. Note that we still have links to masculinity and femininity in the lead section, and an acknowledgement of the difference that many hold between sex and gender. ntennis 02:01, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Connectors and fasteners

I removed the following text from Connectors and fasteners. Extended explanations are best left to the article Gender of connectors and fasteners, which is linked from the section. --Singkong2005 00:09, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't agree. The points about hermaphrodites and plugs versus male is exactly that the current article is about (namely, why and how are things classified into genders, and how this often does not quite work along the male–female dichotomy). Those are great examples. Moreover, the article Gender of connectors and fasteners has little chance to ever evolve into something more than three paragraphs, so there is no need for it existing in the first place. I suggest to keep all the information at Gender and redirect the connector article hither. In fact, originally the material was all here, but was refactored into a separate article by editors who wanted Gender to be only about sociology. I do agree that the section you removed would benefit from a more concise presentation. Arbor 06:18, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I see your point - interesting points about gender classification and "only about sociology." It seems we agree that extended descriptions aren't suitable if they're just lists of types of connectors etc. Descriptions of the relevance to gender do belong in this article (assuming there's sources for these views, or if they are simple, uncontroversial observations). If you want to rewrite and put it back, I support that. I'm still inclined to think that the separate article, Gender of connectors and fasteners, is needed, so that there's a place for stuff that's more relevant to those interested in technical/trades/hardware issues. Cheers, --Singkong2005 01:56, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Two comments

1. "Some theologians have described the Holy Spirit in feminine terms."
Indeed this statement is true,
but it does not represent either historical mainstream theology,
nor the majority view among current theologians.
This is a big subject, and the sentence above isn't adequate as a summary.
This is an extreme analogy, but it's a bit like summarizing cosmology by saying,
"There are people alive today that believe the world is flat."
Just a tip-off from a baby theologian (me).

2. I think the German section is very helpful.
It helps clarify the difference between concepts and terminology.
There are three distinct concepts in "gender debates:"
(a) physical characteristics
(b) personal identity, and
(c) social role.
The German identifies these unambiguously.
However, when reading English writers on the subject,
one needs to be aware that there are sometimes ideological loadings
associated with differing systems of terminology.
Personally, I would keep the German section,
and edit the English section down to a minimum.
Alastair Haines 14:41, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pink Think citation

It says "need citation" for the sentance about pink changing from a masculine color to a feminine color. This citation could be from the book Pink Think, but I don't have time to look up all the info to make the citation. If someone else wants to do it, I'm sure it's in there, in the first couple of chapters.

Dfziggy 20:21, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re music

Mention should probably be made of feminine and masculine cadences. I don't have time to get into this at length, however. Dysprosia 09:45, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fruit flies? wtf?

Why are two fruit flies pictured here? Wouldn’t a creature more identifiably male or female be more appropriate (assuming the purpose is to show a male and female)? The caption sounds like it belongs in an article on fly biology. —Frungi 04:21, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Genus

A hidden comment on the Etymology section asks for a confirmation of the following:

Gender comes from Middle English gendre, from Latin genus, all meaning "kind", "sort", or "type". Ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European root gen, which is also the root for "kind", "king" and many others.

Well, this is not exactly validation, but here's what I found at List of Proto-Indo-European roots:

*ǵenH₁- (*ǵénH₁ō [1ps]) → to give birth → Gk. genos, Lat. genus, Eng. cyn/kin; cyning/king

FilipeS 22:55, 19 November 2006 (UTC)