User talk:Arbor/gender

Language section

Sorry, this paragraph is hopelessly messed up:

sex (the equipment) is not the same thing as sex (the action) - what you are using here as examples are all sex (the action) uses, which have nothing to do with gender, and while gender is indeed not used as synonymous with that use of sex, this fact is perfectly meaningless to this article.
In German(y), it is not a problem at all to express the difference between sex (the equiptment) and gender, people understand the concept perfectly well. (If I may speak from experience, I actually have less trouble explaining the concept in German than I have in English, or rather, less problems explaining it to German speakers as opposed to English speakers.) The fact that "Geschlecht" is the dictionary translation of both (grammatical) gender and sex (the equiptment) (plus family in the sense of lineage, plus generation, plus class or similar, as in "das menschliche Geschlecht" - the human race, or "das Göttergeschlecht" - the gods, or a family of gods) is no indication whatever for there being a problem with the concept of gender != sex. Do not get too confused over the words alone that exist in a given language, the question is whether the concept of gender != sex exists, or can be expressed and understood, not if there are words analogous to the main definition of gender and sex (the equiptment). -- AlexR 18:50, 26 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Two proposals - not good

Hi Arbor - you are aware that both of us are working on different proposals, are you? That is probably not the best way to do it, we should once more communicate as to what exactly we want the article to be about, what should go in it, and then make only one new version. Because in the end, we will have to settle on one article anyway. -- AlexR 09:00, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. That's why I have solicited the opinions of other editors on the talk page about this issue. But frankly, I still am not quite sure of how even I myself want the page to be -- maybe my vision doesn't work at all. (Many of your comments point to conceptual problems with my idea, for example, and I'm sure there are other things that will come up.) So far, I'm quite happy to play around in the sandbox and try things out. But, as you say, collaboration would be preferable.

Yes, it would be - that would not mean, however, that those contributing can't concentrate on different areas of the article, so basically, once we agree on the basic structure, that should not be a problem at all. Nor would a version we put up preclude any further work on the article, or parts of it. -- AlexR 12:37, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking of that: I would love a picture that displays male-female gender identity, preferably in an interesting way. As you can see on my page, I now have male and female connectors, male and female fruit flies, and I really would like a male and female couple (of homo sapiens) where the categorisation is socially defined or self-identified. Like a butch-femme couple (of identical sex but different (social) gender.) Such an image would be useful for both our pages. I have clicked by finger sore through the transgender lists on wikipedia, but not really found anything. Maybe you have better luck. Arbor 09:17, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Arbor, pictures illustrating that sort of thing are notoriously difficult, and even more so when you want transgender people on them - most are not fond of the thought of seeing their faces on WP, other's don't see the point of it. Cross-dressing has those Dorothy Lawrence pics that might be interesting. BTW, most butches consider themselves to be female, so a butch-femme-couple would still be a female-female couple. Articles like this are notoriously hard to illustrate. -- AlexR 12:37, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Disambuguation page?

Perhaps the Gender article needs to be a disambiguation page? BlankVerse ∅ 09:48, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

BlankVerse, welcome to the debate. That was my original suggestion, see the talk page for gender, where this is discussed at length. I no longer think it's a good idea. Instead, I try to make a page about gender as a classification of STUFF into male and female categories. The idea is to have the page focus on the shared meaning of all the different contexts where the word appears. I am convinced that such a page would be interesting, informative, and very useful in explaining the nuances. Arbor 10:03, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You see, there is another problem - grammatical gender, even if it refers to sex/gender at all, which is not always the case, usualy has three cases, not just two - male, female, and neuter. He, she, it. And if you want to start from there, you need the really early stuff, like when did people start using gender in the grammatical sense. I suspect that were the Romans already, maybe already the Greeks. However, all non-grammatical uses of gender stick to either male/female, or male/female/other, or, as far as I am informed, to even more grammatical genders refering to more than M and F and maybe other; afaik some American Indian languages had 5 genders (of the sex/gender kind)..

So, you are basically trying to open a particularly convoluted can of worms there, and while the subject is certainly most interesting, that should not drown references to what people are actually most likely looking for when they look up gender; and I doubt that would be large texts on grammatical gender, or plugs. I am also somewhat worried whether any large texts on what you have in mind would not constitute original research, which is frowned upon. -- AlexR 12:37, 27 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]