I can not help but butt in on a conversation in which it focuses so heavily on a field of study I have engaged in completely and whole heartedly. I will however preface this with the fact that I am not a subject matter expert on the inner culture wars where linguistics have become the battle ground, and am instead only routinely exposed to the angry email from an individual who was unhappy with a choice of word here or there given at a lecture, or in one of the few minor publications under my belt.

I am however quite familiar with linguistics in general, and have much practice using it. This is where the gender argument comes up for me. Gender is a linguistic term used to define the category of words used to refer to a set criteria. For example, the Germanic languages mostly have four genders (In the case of English 3 1/2), and these include male, female, object and neutral. (English lacks the neutral third person pronoun, He, She, It). Some languages contain far more then 3 or 4 genders, although in most languages where there is more then 4 genders, they are normally separated by differing cases, thus the highest number of genders present in the average grammatical and syntactical function is four. Some languages, Chinese for example, have only an artificial use of gender, as in gender is descriptive of attributes versus qualities. This allows the language to function with no complete gender functions in the language.

This brings me to the next point, which is the acknowledgment of the role of culture in language. Culture defines language, and language preserves culture. It is important to remember that out of all cultural adaptations, language is one of the most resiliently stalwart barriers to change. English is not a sexist language if taken in the context of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth century when the large majority of our lexicon was codified in our culture. (I use our here, as the majority of individuals who are reading this seem to be of an English speaking culture, and any exceptions to this rule I mean no offense to.) In todays use though, many of the phrases and words have become outdated as the culture has changed to embrace new ideas. The language is changing to catch up, but that process is slow. Old words rarely give way to new words, and even rarer do old words take to new uses. That being said, language can also change very rapidly when isolated into enclosures. For example, no one would argue that someone from Mississippi uses the exact same version of English as someone from London.

Finally onto the discussion of gender as qualitative label. I will be blunt, there is no such thing as a gender label. Sex is the proper form to discuss the biological attributes of an individual in relation to its role in reproduction, however outside of the pristine language of the isolated scientific community, which much like the individual from Mississippi and London, is its own little sub language of English, the division between gender and sex is much more vague.

As an Anthropologist, when the issue of Gender Identification comes up, I avoid calling it gender. Like I said in the beginning of the sentence, it is Gender Identification. Some, mostly sociologists, have shortened to just gender, and this is whence the confusion is born. Compound that with Victorian English (This is where the 1850's come in.) in which the word sex itself was not a word for public use, the common man had to come up with a socially acceptable word for sex. Gender made the most sense, and was thus chosen. This nearly 200 year old linguistic shift is the final piece in this confused puzzle.

When we speak of Gender Identification, especially from any individual with any linguistic background at all, it is important to recognize the connections people assign to singular words and err on the side of caution and use descriptive phrases (Gender Identification, for example.) or definitions.

Otherwise we end up with arguments which distract from the greater object of science, which is the accumulation of knowledge and understanding. Language change forced for the sake of perceived social correctness is not change at all, but the subjugation of one cultural group over the other. In fact, it often flies counter to the objective one seeks to complete.

interesting, but what exactly do you mean by gender identification? you talking about words? (like table is male, window is female?) or behavior (wearing a dress is female)?

Behavior. Gender Identification is what social roles and preconceptions does a member of a particular sex ascribe to.

I'm not willing to read past the first page of posts on this thread, because if all three pages are actually naught but semantic debate on a single term I'd have to kill myself.

Grats, troll! You necroed a peacefully dead thread just so you could tell us you wouldn't read it?

I agree, please. Let the thread die. Think of the crying kittens.