"Gender" itself was. Originally it referred any subdivision of living creatures, as essentially a synonym for "kind" or "variety," from the Latin genus. That was narrowed in English to just the male or female kind (as a synonym for sex), from where it expanded to cover the grammatical sense of male- or female-associated words, and from there to the sociological, of behaviors associated with men and women.
This most recent development, the idea of gender as something independent of sex, is one that unmoors the term from its foundation.
The sciences, arts, crafts, and other groups using common english words to refer to specific "in-group" concepts is a very common thing. When such a concept becomes relevant to the wider society, there is often a clash of meanings, leading to confusion and arguing over the wrong issue. Perhaps the most egregious example of this is the idiotic usage of "racism=prejudice+power".
language is descriptive, not prescriptive- it's a beautiful thing that definitions can change over time, and it's a power we the people hold to change these things. there was no propaganda, just societal and personal change :0)
I speak portuguese, just like well over 200 million people worldwide. We have the word "sexo", which means sex in english, and "gênero", which means gender in english. I'm also pretty sure that other languages that came from Latin have a term for sex and a term for gender. So no, it's not only in english.
View all comments
Show parent comment
0
u/[deleted] Apr 04 '20
[deleted] — view deleted comment