you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]catoborosnonbinary 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I prefer to use female/male to refer only to biological sex, but I recognise that female/male are often used to refer to gender. For example, female/male on identity documents is a social sex (i.e. gender), because if you can change it with a legal document, it is a social construct. Female/male are also more convenient because they do not connote age like woman/girl or man/boy.

Language is messy and our dictionaries are descriptive not prescriptive. There are experts, but no authorities, on the meanings of words, which emerge from use.