Re: Gender

De: John Cowan <cowan@...>
Fecha: Jueves 22 de Octubre de 1998 16:05

>Raymond A. Brown wrote:
>
>> I assume we are using 'gender' with its original and proper linguistic
>> meaning and not in the way it is, IMO regrettably, now so often used as a
>> euphemism for 'sex'.
>
>Well, I'll be a bit contentious here, and say that the meaning of "gender"
>to which you refer is logically as well as etymologically sound.  As
>you of course know but others may not, "gender" < "genus, gener-" =
>"kind, class, category".   We may therefore sensibly speak of gender
>in nouns whenever they are divided into categories that engender (:-))
>differences in the surrounding syntax.
>
>Likewise, those who speak of "gender differences" between persons are
>referring not to biological sex but to socially constructed categories
>which often have some connection to biological sex but are by no means
>determined by it.  "Masculine" and "feminine" are names of genders,
>either of nouns or of persons: they are not the only possible names.
But many programs for personal information management, like Outlook, have a
"gender" option which would classify your contacts between male and female.
Actually it doesn't bother me in the English versions of the software...
maybe because if been influence about "gender" meaning sex.  But I kinda
hate when in the Spanish version the option is translated _ge'nero_... even
if Spanish only have two genders (ge'neros): _masculino_ and _femenino_ the
word _ge'nero_ does not quite fit in my brain structure for _classifying_ my
contacts that way.

It maight be becouse the fact is most common to hear about
_el_ge'nero_humano_ in general, no grammatical situations than
_el_ge'nero_femenino_, and what would be called _gender_war_ in an English
composition, would be called _guerra_de_los_sexos_ in a Spanish one.  (Maybe
not in a translation.)

-- Carlos Th