I forget, which is more woke, defending the females being regularly beaten in competitions by biological men, or the transgender women who are being discriminated against (and have won a combined 15 state titles in various running events since 2017)?? Conn. high school girls file federal suit to prevent transgender athletes from competing https://www.washingtonpost.com/spor...-suit-prevent-transgender-athletes-competing/
I don't really think I could either. Up until a couple of years ago I'm pretty sure they were used interchangeably on every form I ever filled out. Google says sex is biological but gender refers to cultural positions? Were these always the definitions and we were all just using it wrong (like elevation and altitude) or has their been a redefining recently?
Ever since we understood more of the science behind both, which is a lot longer than most people realize.
Its something that is taught in high school biology, not sure if everyone is required to take biology though. There has been no redefining but many people just assumed they were the same thing until trans stuff became mainstream.
I have a degree in biology from 2007 and taught biology at a local college in 2012. At that point it was not in the books. At least not in the books we used.
Every single riner post is always couched in his narcissistic belief that literally everyone else on Earth is disingenuous and has no true beliefs. He's a fucking kook
Yeah I guess if I thought I was the only one on the planet with honest opinions I'd probably be a whack job too
Lol. I would definitely take the money but I think it's more that this is more of a human culture discussion and we didn't spend to much time on that, outside of A&P. One thing I did just read that resolved some confusion that I had was that gender doesn't originate from the word gene but from the word genre. That makes way more sense and leans into my appreciation for more precise language.
The way you're framing it is more cultural, e.g. what you've observed on forms, but the terms are very much scientific with lots of peer-reviewed research serving to define both completely different terms.
I don’t think I’ve ever known a time that gender and sex meant the same thing. That’s not to say they haven’t incorrectly used that way. Sort of how irony and coincidence are used incorrectly interchangeably. Just because people used the the wrong word doesn’t meant they aren’t actual meanings to the words.
I'm not disagreeing but noting that it isn't necessarily something that would fit into a typical general biology course. It's more of a culture or behavior niche. There are vast amounts of research done in those fields but doesn't really fit in between mitosis and the Krebs cycle.
Agreed. We have all these specific words that mean things but in common parlance they are used incorrectly, which to my mind at least, makes communicating ideas more difficult. Like literal and figurative. I know language lives and evolves but are these actually the greatest french fries you've ever tasted or is this hyperbole.
It could have changed I spose. I went with a double of bio and geo but then pursued geo for graduate degree because I didn't want to be poor forever. That said it's not an understanding of the field, it's that sex vs gender wasn't part of any of the commonly used biology/zoology text books in 2007 nor in the ones we had at the College I taught at for a bit. The reason why is certainly debatable of course.
I can buy it not being in a general intro biology textbook, but it's rather surprising to not come across this topic when completing a bio major. Textbooks do lag the literature and societal pressures do play a role in what's included or not included. It's also quite possible you had profs who didn't want to touch on the subject matter due to the societal side of things. The science is there and it's well-established while also continuing to build upon itself (that is how science works, as you know). I don't know what else to tell you or where you're really trying to take this beyond your own educational experience.
Gender studies is located almost entirely within the social sciences. There is some bleed-over into biology departments but not much.
This is true, though I don't think it's all that directly applicable to the conversation at hand. There's a major difference in how the concept of gender is handled between the two fields, and the intricacies of sex are much more within the realm of biology and medicine. Naturally, gender studies will dive into the intricacies of gender more and also go outside the realm of what many consider the natural sciences. Social sciences still have tremendous value; they're just a different approach. It's still crazy to me that you wouldn't come across the scientific difference between sex and gender while obtaining a biology degree, but it is what it is.
See this is an example of using a word incorrectly. Saying “these are the best fries I’ve ever eaten” isn’t hyperbole because they very well may be that. Saying “these are the best fries ever made” would be an example of hyperbole.
Not really trying to take it anywhere I guess was just targeting your vibe that it was "just my opinion" that it wasn't in a textbook. Fair enough, I was aiming for "omg these are literally the greatest fries ever."
I bet it wouldn't take 3 minutes. Do you think you could give an explanation, of any time length, of why sex matters in physical competitions much more than gender?
Out of curiosity, do any of the rest of you have bio degrees? After this discussion yesterday I reached out to more than 20 degree holding biologists from around the world. Not one of them remember it being taught in undergraduate biology though a few heard of it from human sexuality courses (non bio). The most recent graduate was 2014. 2 of them are currently highschool biology teachers. Both said it isn't in the text books. One says she has a discussion about it anyways that she had to get approved by the administration and it was a bit of a shit show. Either I have some odd sampling bias (7 states and 4 countries) or it's much less wide spread in biology courses than was suggested here.
Biology, no. Heavily related to biology, yes. Two of them. I also just taught a cell biology course (the seminal cell biology textbook only covers sex; sex is clearly defined and has no relation to the scientific definition of gender).
Why couldn’t you fathom his biology textbooks not covering the sex/gender dichotomy, when the textbook you use to teach cell bio doesn’t cover it either?
Because a biology major typically goes well beyond an introductory cell biology course A good program should go well beyond textbooks as well
I can’t imagine it being mentioned in anything other than an introductory course, and then only as a passing note. Certainly it wouldn’t be a testable subject. It wouldn’t have any relevance for molecular bio, bio chem, bio engineering, biomechanics, astrobiology, bioinformatics, botany, zoology, microbiology, pharmacology, etc... Maybe you’d get into it during a deep dive of a discreet subtopic of sociobiology or sexual selection evolutionary theory if that was your thesis topic, but it’s not that difficult to imagine going through a rigorous bio program and avoiding heavy doses of behavioral/cultural psych and gender issues.
Where were heavy doses ever mentioned or implied? I think it's completely reasonable and correct to say it's not a critical part of the study of biology, but acting like you never learned or even heard of the difference? Yes, that's shocking to me, but maybe I was just lucky in my studies. We can only speak from our experiences. I get the sense that Huck wants to use some (false) sense of only recent, supposedly only societal, distinction being made as a crutch for the discussion in this thread, which is borderline gross given his background, considering the broader literature out there. (Sorry, that's a nasty run-on sentence)
Yes, I took middle school biology, high school biology, undergrad biology, and graduate biology. It was a very basic concept.
Bio undergrad and grad school. Showed your posts to my sister who has a PhD from a top medical research school and she didn’t believe that you had a degree in biology and was appalled that you taught. And she means no offense. Again maybe my random school district in the middle of nowhere taught science and yours didn’t but that’s where we are at, there’s no real debate on the science end of things.
Because that was taught at a high school level and an undergrad level. Some things don’t need repeating when everyone understands it. You don’t cover 2+2=4 in diff eq.
Exactly, it is such a basic concept that it shouldn’t be covered for more than 10-15 mins in a course.
I bet white nationalist supporting Talking Head likes a bunch of posts that support his weird narrative that have nothing to do with science. And then he will be too chicken shit to defend his white nationalist viewpoints.
I was a bio major. At no point was the difference in gender and sex ever mentioned. I knew of the difference but not from a school course.
The original comment was that it was in highschool biology curriculum which, though I didn't teach there, I would assume would be general.
I think you do love to project. I finished undergrad in 08 and grad 10 and to the best of my memory it wasn't in the textbooks nor was it mentioned in discussion. Nor was really anything else that would fall into more of human culture than biology. In genetics we went over all the various sex chromosome potentials in humans but also other animals which weren't characterterized by x/y. Gender, and it's difference from sex, wasn't discussed. Biology of reproduction would be another place where if it was to be brought up might be a place. It was neither in the text nor the discussion. Animal behavior was the third course where maybe it would have appeared but really there wasn't much on human behavior in the class. But like I said, I'm open to the possibility that I just don't remember it so I reached out to all of my various biology friends to check their experiences and found a similar result. Whether it's been something that was understood in gender studies courses, psychology courses, human behavior courses for a long time would be a different story. I'll be down at my Midland house in a week or so and think my old gen bio text is down there and I'll check. I'm not sure why any of this would be considered gross or why there is this level of aggressive posting though. I think we can all agree that the national discourse has changed dramatically over the last decade.