Talk:Gender/Archive 2

message: This link:  Gender, Poverty and Development
Was added by an editor whose only contributions have been to promote World Bank Group organizations (The Development Gateway Foundation was started by the World Bank). We have recently uncovered significant edits promoting this group of organizations (see this WikiProject Spam discussion). In the interest of our neutral point of view policy and conflict of interest guideline I've moved the link here for other editors to consider. Thanks. -- Siobhan Hansa 13:12, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Developmentgateway.org external link 

message: I've just come round to this page after a few weeks absence and well, its quite different.  Some of the edits need a little discussion - particlauarly the intro. (see diff).  Anyone who knows me will probably at first be surprised at my objections, I began a major rewrite of the gender studies page in December so I do understand what i'm talking about.  The changes to the lead paragraph made by Vita Baddenbold while accurately reflecting a gender studies point of view hamper this article rather than improve it.  The reasons for this are as follows 
#Gender in the sense refered to in the new lead paragraph exclsuively refers to human gender relations - Gender in terms of this article is supposed refers to every use of that term.  
#The information in this current header would be suitable for a beginning a section about human gender not this whole article - it is not a suitable artcile leader because of its length (see lead section style guide).  
#The leader as it stands gives too much weight to one meaning of gender as opposed to the others.
While I disagree with many of the comments made by 207.47.160.180 above they are right to query the change.  Might I also point out that the previous lead formed the article that was rated GA and A class on the WP 1.0 scale.  I suggest that the lead be reverted in part to that of the revision as of 23:51, 15 February 2007.  The points recently added about transgender issues need to be kept--Cailil 22:56, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Unless there are any objections I will make this revision Tuesday April 3rd.--Cailil 00:34, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As promised I've revised the introduction.  I've also expanded the section Feminist Theory with information on how and why Gender studies regards 'gender' as a distinct term from sex.  If also changed the section's title to In Feminist and Gender theory since feminist theory and gender studies are not one and the same thing.  This edit retains the information about gender that Vita Baddenbold sought to add but makes sure that the lead paragraph is balanced and takes account of all meanings of teh term more equally--Cailil 20:14, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The intro 

message: I read so many horrible pages on the Web everyday - not only on Wikipedia :-) - that I just have to shout out at how beautifully done this page is.  Everyone who contributed is to be congratulated.  And that's coming from someone who formerly would always go "gender?? gender my eye, it's sex!  Gender is a grammar term."  An enlightening article.  Thank you all.
:And thank you! Wiki is about serving readers with reliable information and clear verification trail. So nice to hear feedback from readers, especially positive feedback. Have a great day. Alastair Haines 13:21, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: thank you

message: As the GA "to do list" includes the question, without asking for expansion, clarification or deletion. I would like to propose that the section stay, with a caution. The caution is that if other languages are to be mentioned, this needs to be done via an appropriately sourced summary, with maybe some clear examples. There are too many languages to cover all in detail, but that is not really needed.
The reason other languages are important is because not all languages have the sex/gender semantic domains that English has, nor the same etymology. It is a common error to think that sex and gender are distinct or interchangable concepts, because the words are distinct or interchangable in English. Actually, the concepts are distinct, but related, hence the blurriness of terminology in English at times. I think it would be fascinating to discover that a Chinese dialect has totally distinct words for, say, biological sex, gender stereotypes, erotic activity and for 'yin' and 'yang' type essential, biological and social distinctions all rolled into one. The fact that Chinese distinguishes between all would not mean those distinctions are real. Perhaps the vocabulary has a view of "essentialist gender" that includes biology and sociology, but perhaps Communism sought to change this.
Probably the way to do it is like with grammatical gender -- list a few examples of languages that represent the handfull of avaialble possibilities. We would only need a few languages each that distinguish, or fail to distinguish, between biology and behaviour. Alastair Haines 23:31, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Other languages revisited

message: Should these two sections be merged into one? FilipeS 23:49, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Filipe, I think that makes sense. Some people define sex as biological gender. Instead of quibbling over terminology, which has been fairly thoroughly covered, we can just write up what biological studies are showing about the biological processes underlying gender distinctions. Alastair Haines 16:40, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I obviously changed my mind on this one. I've tried to give a brief summary of a huge topic area -- sexual differentiation -- by keeping it to the minimum number of things needed to explain the biology of gender. I hope now that the Bio of g section serves as a kind of "summary in advance", connecting the language issues to the scientific results. I've also tried to connect Behaviour to Sociology so that part flows on naturally too. Alastair Haines 16:40, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

text: Actually I recently learned that both the AMA and WHO define sex as biological and gender as psychological (http://www.who.int/gender/whatisgender/en/index.html).  There should be a reference at the top of the article disclaiming that, and linking to biological sex for the many who aren't medical professionals and thus end up making that mistake in ignorance.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.175.159.243 (talk) 16:38, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Sex and biology of gender

message: The second sentence of the fourth paragraph reads: 'Such thought, leave alone entail gender equality, in fact obliterates any material distinction between the male and female altogether.'  I've no idea what meaning is intended by the words between the comma's. Pugsworth 08:11, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Edit needed under 'Spirituality'

message: *Language is a big issue in the literature in two ways.
:#oversimplifications like gender="euphemism for sex" and gender="grammatical category only" are widespread in the literature, but erroneous and cause confusion. Hence etymology needs careful treatment in this article (in fact, more than most dictionary entries would permit).
:#distinguishing biological gender (sex), gender role and gender identity helps clarify otherwise ambiguous references to gender, so long as the distinctions are not considered absolute and pressed too far — they are intimately related, hence overlap, in much of the literature.
Perhaps the first section should be called Language of gender || Biology of gender.
*There is considerable literature on the subject that champions either reform or perpetuation of traditional gender roles. Much of this talks of nature v nurture without actually interacting with biological science. Since biological science has produced a huge array of results demonstrating that both nature and nurture are relevant to various elements of gender, it would seem that this is the neutral place to start — place published science on the table before discussing published opinions.
;Conclusion
At the current revision, the article falls into three sections:
#clarifies the concept of gender, utilizing the history of language related to it;
#introduces the current precision in terminology, which summarizes objective measures of differences; 
#traces the causal chain through the microscopic sciences up to the social sciences.
;Summary
Gender appears to be a side-effect of sexual reproduction on the human brain.
A personal reflection. Brains are where nature and nurture meet. They are very complex. They provide the basis for exceedingly diverse human creativity and flexibility. However, they also impose constraints, as any stroke victim knows.
Members of this review committee reserve the right to blame other members of the committee for any errors in the conclusions, while retaining the right to appropriate for themselves personally any praise given to the committee for its conculusions.
Signed, on behalf of the committee, Alastair Haines 04:03, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Main Issues in Literature

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thread_title: Automatic addition of "class=GA"

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thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:AHD.jpg

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thread_title: Image copyright problem with Image:Beauvoir.jpg

message: A considerable quantity of text has been added under Sociology. It's great to have this extra material, however it needs to be edited to reduce repetition of "gender as social construct", which now must be repeated in the article about a dozen times overall! It also needs to be clearly flagged that this is only one POV (even within Sociology), and the view must be attributed to reliable sources (which are not hard to find of course). However, much of the recent addition is assertive of the views as if they are uncontroversial fact, which is not of course the case. Where they are theories they need to be presented as such, where there is evidence, the interpretation of evidence needs to described as such. Wikipedia is addressed to a different audience than sociology text books. As indeed other sciences need to be written up in a way suited to the encyclopedic medium. Alastair Haines (talk) 00:42, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Additions under Sociology, POV tag

message: I think this article has fused with a bad term paper. Can someone revert a superior version? My small brain is lost. The perspective jumps around and it feels like a thesis at times. Some sentences seem unnecessarily complex for the scope of this article and the formatting gives the impression that is was ripped from some other source.
The historical meaning of gender is something like "things we treat differently because of their inherent differences".[12]
Money refers to attempts to distinguish a difference between biological sex and social gender as "scientifically debased", because of our increased knowledge of a continuum of dimorphic features (Money's word is "dipolar"), that link biological and behavioural differences.
Hence the, then plausible, theory that these differences might be explained by arbitrary cultural assignments of roles. However, Money notes concisely that masculine or feminine self-identity is now seen as essentially an expression of dimorphic brain structure (Money's word is "coding"). The new discoveries have an additional advantage over the theory of cultural arbitrariness of gender roles, as they help explain the similarities between these roles in widely divergent cultures (see Steven Pinker on Donald Brown's Human Universals, including romantic love,[14] sexual jealousy,[15][16][17] and patriarchy). [18]
"It is well established that men have a larger cerebrum than women by about 8–10% (Filipek et al., 1994; Nopoulos et al., 2000; Passe et al., 1997a,b; Rabinowicz et al., 1999; Witelson et al., 1995)."[30][31]
The term "woman" has chronically been used as a reference to and for the female body; however there is much controversy to the usage and definement of "woman." What we fail to do is see the qualitative analysis that explores and presents the representations of gender; what feminists challenge is the dominant ideologies concerning gender roles and sex.
It goes on like this.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.98.147.137 (talk) 02:52, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article seems... 

message: Wiki article on SEX uses the term "Intersex"
DSD is a term coined by the Chicago consensus group. The originators consider that it has failed to remedy the problem it was invented to solve . Read Karkazis "Fixing sex" . There is dispute amongst theorists Diamond et al as to a suitable term. VSD and others have been proposed. Intersex organizations consider that it further pathologises an already overpathologised minority . 
For consistency Intersex is the preferable term, or at least link to Disorders of sex developement  article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorder_of_sex_development so that users can see that it is a controversial term.
Gina  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.217.8.128 (talk) 10:17, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Dear Gina, thanks for the references, refs are always helpful of course. Article does link as suggested, it also notes that terminology is not stable. "Disorders of sex differentiation" is yet another term, used by the US National Library of Medicine - Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). I'd support you were you to add another term to the article. I don't feel the need to add it personally, since the articles on DSDs seem a better place to document the current plethora of terminology. Alastair Haines (talk) 09:22, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  DSD 

message: On third sex/gender
There are already Wiki articles on this maybe they should be added to "see more" section. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_sex
Gina (Ginavampire (talk) 23:37, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for this suggestion Gina. I'll check that intersex and third sex (third gender?) are linked within the article. The usual rule is that relevant crossreferences within Wikipedia are linked rather than noted under See also. Alastair Haines (talk) 08:19, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needs more links 

message: The human choice of gender was recently defined as mental conditioning occurring naturally ( may be epigenetically influenced) and voluntarily without pressure that ranges from a very short to a very long term basis.  REF: 'Isidro T. Savillo's Statement on Choice of Gender, 2009'
The source doesn't meet Wikipedia's criteria.  This page looks like Savillo's home page, which means that it is an acceptable source for information on Savillo but not on anything else.  This doesn't mean that we can't include Savillo's ideas, though.  We'd just have to explain who he was and say where the information was coming from: "Isidro T. Savillo, President of International Society for Molecular and Cell Biology Protocols and Researches, Inc., gives his own definition of gender as '[his def.]' "
My bigger problem with this quote is that there's no context explaining what either Savillo or the poster means by "the choice of gender." I can't tell if it refers to gender identity or if someone out there thinks that human beings decide whether to be male or female.  The source material provided no helpful context. Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:38, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: To use this quote, though, we would need some source explaining what he means by "the choice of gender." Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:20, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Where and whether to put Savillo

message: I never state that "gender is a colloquialism" (not in that way), but plenty of people state that it is used in the colloquial sense, as in interchangeably with sex, to denote the condition of being male or female. You have also stated it as a colloquial use, Darkfrog. I don't object to your change in the lead (to "In ordinary speech"), but what is the reason for the change?
Is it because the Colloquialism article says, "A colloquialism is an expression not used in formal speech, writing or paralinguistics" and  "Colloquialisms or colloquial language is considered to be characteristic of or only appropriate for casual, ordinary, familiar, or informal conversation rather than formal speech or writing"? Flyer22 (talk) 23:54, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, Flyer.  That is why. "Colloquial" does not mean, as I thought it did, "ordinary speech." As such, the word "gender" meaning "state of being male or female, sex" is appropriate for formal use in certain contexts—say, a formal paper about some other topic that simply mentions people's gender in passing. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:54, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: "Colloquial" can mean ordinary speech, as in "characteristic of or only appropriate for casual, ordinary, familiar, or informal conversation rather than formal speech or writing," but that is why I get what you mean. "Gender" is often considered appropriate for formal speech. Flyer22 (talk) 23:59, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not a [[colloquialism]]?