Basic knowledge 101

Joe Malchow '08 reveals his ignorance and presumptuousness again, getting peeved about the word 'gender' again:

The word gender is a pet peeve of mine. Hark. The word 'gender' does not refer to the classification of a human being as a man or woman.

'Sex' is the only English word that means that. 'Gender' exists to classify male and female nouns in romance languages. It has, for a reason uncomprehensible by me, been co-opted by feminists and PC'ers who don't want to use the proper term.

OK, Joe, I will try to make this extremely clear for you. Let's say you called some guy 'effeminate' because he was a liberal, and because you're conservative and by extension very manly. What about him made you call him 'effeminate'? (You know he has male genitalia.) It's not a matter of sex, it's a matter of GENDER that made you do that. Gender is a word that refers not to biological sex, but to cultural ideas and norms held by everyone in some form or another, deriving ultimately (but not wholly) from biological sex. Male and female have to do with peepees and vaginas. Masculine and feminine have to do with gender. Think hard, Joe, and recall if you have ever used the words 'masculine' or 'feminine' in reference to something other than Indo-European noun-classification systems. (BTW, Romance languages are not the only ones in the world, not even the only ones with gender!) If you have, you've already been talking about 'gender', you just didn't know it! Isn't that something.

This dictionary entry should help, too:

gen·der
2. Sexual identity, especially in relation to society or culture.

If you don't know what you're talking about, don't talk about it, and for God's sake, don't blog to the world about it.