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comment by steve
steve  ·  2184 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why Are Gender Reveal Parties a Thing?

please help me understand the current definition of "gender" vs. "sex". Somewhere along the way, I feel like the definitions have evolved, and have gained some emotional gravity that I'm ignorant about. I don't want to go around offending people by using the wrong term in the wrong way. (and I'm being completely genuine and vulnerable here).





Quatrarius  ·  2183 days ago  ·  link  ·  

the gist of it is "sex" is what you are from a reproductive-y, chromosome-y perspective and "gender" is the role you play socially - e.g. little XX humans don't pop out the womb as "female", that's the set of behaviors / expectations 'n' all that that get placed on you when society sees you have a vagina

people are born as whatever sex they are and get assigned a gender associated with their bits, then later their "gender identity" (their own sense of what set of behaviors / expectations align with them) develops and either matches the gender assigned to them or not

people that have a gender identity = assigned gender match are cisgender (although that word isn't well liked sometimes)

people that have a gender identity =/= assigned gender mismatch are transgender

I personally don't think that "gender reveal parties" matter one iota for reference but if you wanna be finicky then yeah "sex reveal parties" would be a better name - who gives a shit frankly

steve  ·  2163 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I appreciate the insights. I think I must have just grown up thinking the word "gender" itself had a different definition. #themoreyouknow

Quatrarius  ·  2183 days ago  ·  link  ·  

it's a silly example but it helps me remember: back in the day pink wasn't associated with femininity and it wasn't a gender-related thing, but somewhere along the line pink became associated with one gender and suddenly little girls like pink

they aren't born liking pink inherently, they're encouraged to like it by society - in contrast they aren't encouraged to have ovaries and shit like that, they just have it

the characteristics of sex are the characteristics of sex; gender is anything you want it to be because it's arbitrary