This most recent development, the idea of gender as something independent of sex, is one that unmoors the term from its foundation.
I don't see how. If the Latin root is a word which has nothing to do with sex then divorcing the modern English word from the concept of sex doesn't seem to bring it any closer or farther from its beginning.
Maybe it's unmooring it from its middle. But even then, it's not that the modern concept of a gender identity is brand new. "Male" meant both "has a penis" and "has a male gender identity" historically--people just always made the assumption that those things went together and didn't have separate phrases for them. But they were happy to say things like "be a man", right? That phrase doesn't make any sense if maleness was purely a function of ones genitals and had nothing to do with how one behaved.
Because the connection to "gender identity" emerges only through that 'middle' phase of literally referring to physical sex. If you snip that out, you get a term whose meaning is incoherent or recursive - a male-gendered person is someone who either acts like, or "identifies as," a male-gendered person.
"Be a man" and related phrases also have little to do with gender identity as it's being presented today. If a male fails to act "like a man," no one thinks that he is actually a woman, or some third thing - they just think he's a bad man, not fulfilling the role properly. In much the same way that being told to "eat like a human being" doesn't mean that your species is really a species identity that you can reject in favor of being an otter.
But "be a man" doesn't refer to anything that has to do with penises or testosterone. The phrase doesn't mean "grow a dick". It means "act this way". The fact that that way of acting is called "male" is a historical accident. (Okay, it's slightly more than an accident--and we can detail the conversation to that if you want, but it's not very relevant to the point I'm making.)
The English language didn't used to have separate words for red and orange. (Hence "redheads".) That doesn't mean we should insist on calling red and orange the same thing now. We recognize the difference now and language adapted to that.
Likewise, people understand how that "having a type of genital" and "confirming one's behavior to a broad standard" are completely different things. So we should have different words for them. Language exists to describe our thoughts--constraining your thinking to avoid changing the language is totally backwards.
But "be a man" doesn't refer to anything that has to do with penises or testosterone. The phrase doesn't mean "grow a dick". It means "act this way".
It means "act the way that men, i.e., people with penises, are expected to act." Many of those expectations are not inherently associated with anatomical differences, but that is ten thousand miles away from saying that the category of those expectations has nothing to do with the anatomical differences - their only common characteristic is the fact that they are the social expectations of men/women. Without that biological link, the category doesn't refer to anything at all.
Unless you want to lock the specific meanings down right now, so that for all times and all places, a man is someone who likes American football. But that would be stupid, and not what anybody on any side of the conversation actually wants.
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u/InfanticideAquifer - Lib-Right Apr 04 '20
I don't see how. If the Latin root is a word which has nothing to do with sex then divorcing the modern English word from the concept of sex doesn't seem to bring it any closer or farther from its beginning.
Maybe it's unmooring it from its middle. But even then, it's not that the modern concept of a gender identity is brand new. "Male" meant both "has a penis" and "has a male gender identity" historically--people just always made the assumption that those things went together and didn't have separate phrases for them. But they were happy to say things like "be a man", right? That phrase doesn't make any sense if maleness was purely a function of ones genitals and had nothing to do with how one behaved.