It looks like it was Ruth Bader Ginsburg who 1st swapped “sex” for “gender” - what a mistake…

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[–]missdaisycan 8 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

And so, Ginsburg did use “gender.” Other people, especially feminists, followed suit. There was no intention to avoid biology in the usage change or to have sex mean gender identity.

Different times and perspectives than now. Professional women's discomfort with setting a document filled with the word "sex" in front of men. 1- keeping men's attention on the issue (rather than on his own sexual interest) and 2- early 70s there was still stigma of women speaking directly about sex and anatomy. The landmark book "Our Bodies, Ourselves" came out in 1970. I remember, in my area of the US, there was quite the furor over it. No doubt the concern was to keep the concept without the stigma.

[–]MarkTwainiac 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I have heard this story before. Frankly, I don't give it much credence.

To accept that this story is true, we have to believe several things:

a) That in arguing a landmark civil rights case in court, the highly trained attorney RBG, her attorney husband and all the rest of the legal eagles they consulted and who read their briefs decided to let the supposed recommendation of the secretary who typed up their briefs be the last word on the topic.

This strikes me as a most peculiar thing for all these brilliant legal minds to do, given that using "gender" instead of "sex" would not only have made their arguments less clear, it would have been in direct contradiction to the USA's 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex - not on the basis of gender.

b) That in in 1970, female typists and secretaries were held in such high esteem that a secretary typist working at Columbia University - at the time long known to be a bastion of snobbery, racial and socioeconomic/class prejudice, sexism and extreme educational and professional credentialism - would have held sway over a bunch of extremely ambitious attorneys and law faculty who'd trained at Harvard University, another bastion of snobbery, racial and socioeconomic/class prejudice, sexism and extreme educational and professional credentialism.

Sorry, this smells like bullshit.

Academia - even academia populated by supposedly "progressive" and egalitarian people - is incredibly hierarchal. At Ivy League institutions, secretary typists have never been held in particularly high esteem, including in 1970. If a secretary typist back then had been permitted to throw in her two cents about a legal brief she was typing, whatever she might've said most likely would have been entirely ignored.

c) That at ultra-liberal Columbia University in the heart of ultra-liberal New York City in 1970, it was routinely the case that adults - be they secretaries, typists, law school faculty, attorneys - were all squeamish about using the word sex to mean both sexual acts and reproductive categories.

More bullshit. In 1970, the sexual revolution had long been underway, second-wave feminism was thriving, and sex and sexual politics were constantly in the news and openly discussed by everyone. Hence, Kate Millett's 1970 book was called Sexual Politics, not Gender Politics; Shulamith Firestone's book, also published in 1970, was called The Dialectic of Sex, not The Dialectic of Gender. Back then, everyone talked about sexism, sex stereotypes, sex discrimination, sex roles and so on. No one talked about gender!

Similarly, Norman Mailer's 1971 book was called The Prisoner of Sex and Alex Comfort's 1972 book that would become one of the best-selling books of all time was called The Joy of Sex.

Maybe in some religiously conservative parts of the USA far from NYC and LA, some people in the 1970s were squeamish about using the word sex to mean sex. But that certainly wasn't the case in places like Manhattan, especially amongst intellectual circles and industries like the press and publishing and professions like law, particularly amongst the segment of law professionals focused on fighting sex discrimination.

The July 11, 1969 issue of TIME Magazine, one of the leading news outlets in the USA at the time, bore the headline "The Sex Explosion." I was 14 year-old-girl growing up in a strict Roman Catholic household at the time. In my house, parish and convent school, no one fainted or clutched their pearls or rosary beads at that TIME headline, just as no one blinked an eye about all the other material - much of it sanctioned by the RCC - that spoke of sex not gender to mean sex in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

FFS, "Deep Throat" was a mainstream movie and media sensation in 1972. You really think that in 1970, the intelligentsia generally and Ivy League law school faculty in particular in New York City were squeamish about speaking of sex to mean either a series of acts/behaviors or the reproductive class/category?

d) That in mounting a landmark sex discrimination case, high-powered and highly educated attorneys on the law school faculty would have deferred to a secretary-typist's recommendation to use "gender" as an anodyne substitute for "sex" even though those highly educated attorneys would have known that doing so would fly smack in the face of the history of the women's suffrage movement and first-wave feminism - all of which spoke of sex, not gender, as can been seen from looking at the language used by tons of women ranging from but not confined to Susan B Anthony, Alice Paul and Simone de Beauvoir.

In 1872 and again in 1894 Susan B. Anthony said: "No self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her sex."

The wording of the USA's proposed federal Equal Rights Amendment that Alice Paul began campaigning for in the 1920s reads as follows in language that was put into place in 1943: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."

This act was passed by the US Congress and sent to the states for ratification in 1972.

Simone de Beauvoir's landmark book first published in 1949 and a perennial bestseller around the world from then was called The Second Sex.

[–]lestratege 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Simone de Beauvoir's landmark book first published in 1949 and a perennial bestseller around the world from then was called The Second Sex.

That's because in French, the word gender "genre" has only the grammatical meaning, at least until the last few years. Or it means "kind" as in "my kind"

Arguing that the word "sex" was still used in 1972 or even after does not invalidate the claim that someone started using "gender" in its place in 1972. The word "gender" does increase in its use in the 1970s, probably because it starts to be used as more than "grammatical gender".

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gender%2Csex&year_start=1900&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=1&case_insensitive=true

[–]materialrealityplz 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

In 1970? Weren't they the same thing back then? Even when I was a kid, 'gender' was basically like a euphemism for 'sex' (though maybe I was just too young to understand, idk).

It was through gender studies/queer theory and shit in academia they became separated and the bullshit arose.

[–]MarkTwainiac 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I was born in the USA in the mid 1950s, and was very aware of the struggle for women's rights as well as American English language customs in everyday usage, in the press and in more academic contexts from the mid 1960s on. I worked as a journalist and editor in mainstream media in the 1970s, 80s and 90s; published widely in a diverse outlets (women's mags, The Nation, The NYTimes, LA Times); wrote books for major publishers; appeared on TV to talk about sexual politics... The only time in the 60s, 70s and 80s I heard the word "gender" used was when I studied foreign languages.

I have pored through all the journalistic and literary style books (AP, Newsweek, NY Times) I have from the 70s and 80s, all the major second-wave feminist texts , all my own writings and the writings of colleagues & journalists I admired from back then... and nowhere is gender mentioned. Sex is the term everyone used, and all the style guides said to use.

Same goes for my family's vital records: I have birth certificates, death certificates, and extensive health and insurance records for my family going back to the dawn of the 20th century, more than 120 years. All these records say SEX, M or F. None says gender anywhere. There is no difference between the vital documents for a great aunt who died in 1928, my mother who died in 1980 or my sister who died in 1998: their birth certificates and death certificates - issued by different US municipalities or states - all say SEX: F.

To my knowledge, the replacement of sex with gender began in the late 1980s. This exchange of letters from the NYTimes in late 1990, early 1991 sums it up:

Letter from Sidney Weinstein, December 10, 1990:

To the Editor:

The term "gender" is increasingly misused as a substitute for "sex." Does "gender" appear to reflect a greater sophistication, or reluctance to use a term with a possible indecent connotation?

"The Gender Gulf" by Louis Harris (Op-Ed, Dec. 7) misuses the term three times (not counting the headline), including this: "the generation gap is less evident and the gender gap more acute." Among the same day's letters, one ("Sexism on Sesame St.") misuses gender five times including "gender imbalance."

"The Careful Writer: A Modern Guide to English Usage" by Theodore M. Bernstein (New York, 1965) states, "gender is a grammatical term, denoting (in English) whether words pertaining to a noun or pronoun are classed as masculine, feminine or neuter. It is not a substitute for 'sex' (but then, what is?). Indeed, in some foreign languages 'gender' often disregards sex. In German, for example, 'Weib,' The word for woman, is neuter; in French 'plume,' the word for pen, a sexless article, is feminine. To use 'gender' as if it were synonymous with 'sex' is an error, and a particularly unpardonable one in scientific writing."

From Fowler's "Modern English Usage" edited by Sir Ernest Gowers (Oxford, second edition, 1965):"Gender, n., is a grammatical term only. To talk of 'persons' or 'creatures of the masculine or feminine gender,' meaning 'of the male or female sex,' is either a jocularity (permissible or not according to context) or a blunder."

I can only assume you have elected to permit this misuse, despite a valid and useful distinction between the terms. SIDNEY WEINSTEIN Danbury, Conn., Dec. 10, 1990 The writer is editor in chief, International Journal of Neuroscience.

Letter from Sol Steinmetz, December 28, 1990:

To the Editor:

Contrary to Sidney Weinstein's assertion in " 'Gender' Can't Replace 'Sex' (but What Can?)" (letter, Dec. 27), the use of the word "gender" to mean an individual's sex is well established in English and recognized by current dictionaries as standard. The term "gender gap," which Mr. Weinstein deplores in Louis Harris's Dec. 7 Op-Ed article, is itself firmly established; and it is clearer to speak of a "gender imbalance" than of a "sex imbalance," which could be taken for a hormonal disorder.

The two usage guides Mr. Weinstein cites are 25 and 65 years old (the quotation from Fowler is from the first edition, 1926) and have been superseded by guides that have kept pace. Mr. Weinstein might have checked the revised Oxford English Dictionary (second edition, 1989). It shows that "gender" has been used as a synonym for "sex" since the 1300's (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote in 1709: "Of the fair sex . . . my only consolation for being of that gender") and that a use that stresses the social and cultural over the biological differences between the sexes has steadily grown since about 1960.

An O.E.D. citation highlighting current usage is from A. Oakley's "Sex, Gender and Society" (1972): "Sex differences may be 'natural,' but gender differences have their sources in culture."

SOL STEINMETZ Executive Editor Random House Dictionaries New York, Dec. 28, 1990

Perhaps I was asleep then, or I have amnesia now, but I do not recall that in the 1960s, 70s and most of the 80s "gender" was widely used as a substitute for "sex." And none of the books and catalogued periodicals in my library support this claim.

[–]BEB[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I didn't click on the link to the LA TIMES (I hate its stance on gender issues so try not to give it clicks) provided by the Tweet's author, but the Tweet's author, who's a law professor (I think retired), says that Ginsburg's recounting of the sex-to-gender replacement story is in the LA TIMES article and also another source that she names.

I didn't track down that source either, but again, the Tweeter is a law professor. I read her Twitter because she provides legal background on US GC court cases.

Maybe Ginsburg made up the sex-to-gender replacement story after the fact? But apparently she did tell it.

[–]MarkTwainiac 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I don't doubt that Ginsburg told this story, apparently many years after the fact of when it supposedly happened. I just don't buy that it's an accurate recounting. The first time I heard of it was in the RGB movie.

I'm not trying to impugn RBG or attribute nefarious motives to her, but nothing about this anecdote rings true to me. Again, to me. This is just my opinion. And my experience with people as we age: memory plays tricks.

The attorney recounting the story, W. Burlette Carter - and I follow her on Twitter too - was born in 1961, so you'd think she'd have some historical perspective.

But on the other hand, her bio says she grew up in Denmark, Georgia (an unincorporated community with a population under 1,400 in 2020) and attended Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA, a very small (total enrollment 1,000 or fewer), female-only, Christian religious (Presbyterian) college. Later she went on to Harvard Law.

So in 1970, the transmitter of this second-hand story about an event that supposedly happened that year in Manhattan, NYC was a nine year old in rural Georgia. In 1980+ she was still in Georgia in what can be described as a rarified, female-only, somewhat cloistered and narrow southern Christian exclusive environment.

I'm sure W. Burlette Carter is very smart, but I don't think her recounting of a story she heard/has been told should be taken as the gospel truth. I also don't think she was or is in a position to have any idea of what the norms were re sex and language in intellectual circles in secular New York City in 1970. Nor would she have any idea what the milieu was like, or which mores and parlance prevailed, at a male-only Ivy League university in NYC in 1970 either.

[–]MarkTwainiac 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

BEB, just because someone posts something on Twitter whose gist seems GC doesn't necessarily mean it's true or 100% accurate.

I have noticed that you often urgently and rather breathlessly post/paste things on this platform and sub from Twitter without showing a shred of skepticism, and without giving any verification or providing any analysis. From this, I've gotten the impression that you see the posts you're pasting as bulletins from on high whose veracity is a given and beyond question just coz they are "GC".

I don't think this benefits "our side." A lot of BS gets posted on Twitter and other platforms, even by/from/about people whose views in general you and I would most likely agree with.