The Doctor
I’m not surprised you are confused. I was too. And so is BFD writer Kevin, if his recent article is anything to go by. That is the point. To take words that have a natural everyday meaning and give them a secret technical meaning that only the “experts” understand.
I’ve seen it before. It is rife in philosophy and in legal studies (note I purposefully have not written “the law”). And words like sex and gender are so important in our everyday lives (we would not exist without them) that we need to be clear about just what we are talking about.
The problem is that dictionaries, especially online dictionaries, have fallen for the naturalistic fallacy. This fallacy says that what is – ought to be. So just because the word “gender” is used by some people interchangeably with the word “sex” then that is the way it should be. In other words, “gender” means the same as “sex”. The ruler becomes rubber and flexes to whatever measurement we wish to measure. Or so the argument goes.
But, I argue, what is – ought not necessarily to be. There is a proven way to obtain the meanings of words in English that has been reliable and unchangeable for centuries: invaluable for scholars, theologians and laypeople alike. Bible scholars have relied on the “law of first mention” to interpret the Bible in a consistent and fruitful way. This method relies on the uncanny coincidence of a definition being to hand in the very verse whenever a new word appears in the bible.
A great example (and apropos for our topic) is the definition of “man” in Genesis 1:26-27 “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” But that means that the word “man” applies to both males and females. Hmmm. That’s not what we have been taught (at least not for a while). And there are two kinds of man: male and female. This difference could be referred to as “sex” or “gender” if we believe what we are told by modern “experts”.
Unfortunately, the King James bible does not feature the word “sex”, but it does have “gender” in Leviticus 19:19 “Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind.” In other words, procreate or give rise to. This definition is confirmed in 2 Timothy 2:23 “But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender [create or give rise to] strifes.”
This means that gender has quite a different (albeit related) meaning than the gender studies professor or HR department gives it. You cannot choose your gender because to gender is a verb not an adjective.
How about the word sex then? Since the Bible does not help, then let us turn to the Bard – another failsafe source of English meaning. A search on OpenSource Shakespeare easily demonstrates that sex refers to the state of being male or female per Genesis 1:26-27.
We can conclude, then, that man has two sexes: male and female, both of whom can gender all kinds of confusion. Especially by changing the meanings of words.
Of course, if you are not a man (created male or female) then none of this applies to you. But it might be worth figuring out what you are, because only men have rights, and by claiming you are something different, have you given up your rights?
