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Comment by dwmbt | Hacker News Reader

great rebuttal, i learned something new! i wonder, do you happen to know how this might impact the conversation between gender and sex being two different descriptors? i'm unsure of how to go about looking at the etymological origins of both words, so help in that regard could prove just as useful. thanks.

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I don't think the etymological origins of the words really impact the current conversation. The meaning of words depends on how they are used, and "gender" today have quite a different meaning when talking about human gender identity than when talking about grammar.

Two different descriptors of what?

i've found that there are arguments being had between people my age that sex is a biological descriptor (M/F) and that gender is a looser, more amorphous descriptor. for instance, you can be born a man (your biological sex) and identify as non-binary (your gender). i'm interested to see how the origin of the words could contribute to that discussion.

Various philosophers, such as Wittgenstein, have pointed out that much of what sounds like discussion only exists because one can arrange words into grammatically sensible sentences. That doesn't mean the discussion is actually about anything. People who know the words “Earth” and “flat” can theorize about whether the Earth is flat, but it’s a waste of time to pay any attention to them. A “non-binary” “gender” is just a noise with no idea attached to it.

> A “non-binary” “gender” is just a noise with no idea attached to it.

Are you talking about grammar here? Because in many (most?) languages gender is not binary.

I was replying to something. Just read the comment I was replying to. Also, yes, many languages have more than two genders. That’s a non-binary gender system. But no particular word in those languages is “non-binary”.

Words can certainly change gender over time or be non-gendered if that is what you mean. But it doesn't make any sense to say that a word is non-binary in a trinary gender system like in Latin.

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