It's not that it "cuts you off from reading a huge body of feminist literature, where the distinction is simply taken for granted." It just makes you not believe the conceit, which you shouldn't because it's not all that useful.
boddi
On 12/2/05, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
>
> ravi wrote:
> >
> > At around 2/12/05 1:01 am, Travis Fast wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Then we have C. bodi repeatedly using the word gender in a way only he
> > >> does. Yoshie explained to him how gender has come to be used:
> > >> simplistically, to indicate man and woman, not male/female.
> > >>
> >
> > I think I suffer from the same usage tendency as C. bodi. I like the
> > word "gender" to indicate, well, gender, and not the word "sex", and
> > that's hopefully not just because I am a prude.
> >
>
> Your preference simply won't work in practice -- it cuts you off from
> reading a huge body of feminist literature, where the distinction is
> simply taken for granted. Your preference tends towards the
> Humpty-Dumpty theory of language. (A word means what I want to mean.)
> There is a good discussion of this, if I'm remembering correctly, in
> Donald Davies, _Articulate Energy_.
>
> Carrol
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