#i'm a surgeon man not a linguist

[catboybiologist]

Hi I'm a former high school science teacher and now a doctor. While teaching, I was officially advised to explain that current understanding of gender is that it is complex and that sex is not necessarily the same as gender. I also got told not to mention intersex people outside of explaining that they exist, because tbh 14 year olds need to understand the normal stuff first.

I can also confirm that during medical school I was officially taught that "we refer to patients as male or female because man and woman are complex terms that do not adequately describe our patient population". We also did not use the term intersex at all, we generally referred to either "sex variants" or (in newborns/paediatric patients) we would refer to "disorders of" or "differences of sexual development" (DSDs).

There's not a hard and fast difference between "disorder" of sexual development or "difference", but generally it got called a disorder if it mandated surgical correction (e.g. vaginal agenesis, cloacal exstrophy, severe hypospadias, urethral atresia etc). If you didn't have to operate to prevent irreparable harm, it usually got called a "difference". We try not to recommend operations that aren't biologically necessary, but parents are currently permitted to request them and generally it'll be approved - though if I were the surgeon (which I'm not) I would probably request a different person perform it because I am not comfortable with unnecessary genital surgeries on unconsenting children.

Medicine currently recognises that sex and gender are not synonymous, that correlation is not causation, and that intersex conditions come in a wide variety of forms and functions. We also do not have a clear idea of whether something like hypospadias or imperforate hymen even COUNT as intersex disorders, even if they're definitely DSDs, and it's not very important because "intersex" isn't really a medical term.

Thank you so much for this perspective! I'm really happy, honored, and excited that I got the opinion of a doctor on this stuff.

I do have a couple of poorly articulated, rambly thoughts here, which I hope don't come off as criticizing you, because I'm just trying to build off of what you're saying and possibly get your perspective.

"male" and "female" are still interesting terms to me, and still have some of the same pitfalls as "man" and "woman". This is purely my own opinion, I don't want to falsely represent how scientists and doctors use them, but I personally use them more frequently as adjectives for individual parts of a body. Mostly, I do this to refer to myself. Because... Am I currently male, or female? I have a typical male height, male genitalia, but female physiology, female fat distribution, female hormonal systems, etc. It's hard for people to think of biological sex as dynamic and changing, but if you want to accurately describe me, that's what I am currently.

And yeah, you can totally use male and female to refer to individuals who dominantly have those male or female traits overall. But you have to be ready to get nuanced about it- which is exactly what you're doing here, which I appreciate.

It's also somewhat useful when referring casually to hermaphroditic organisms, although by that point you're probably just using more specific terms. I digress. I'm rambling.

I have a barely-relevant tangent here that I'm gonna put under the cut. There's an interesting parallel here between another linguistic quirk of terminology in genetics.

When a gene varies by a single base pair (eg, one of the As, Ts, Cs, or Gs is something else, or has been deleted or added), it can change the function of the gene. Sometimes, this is called a mutation- which, yes it is. Mutation implies a deviation from the general population, a distinct molecular event that happened which now exists in the gene pool in small numbers.

The trouble lies with assuming what the "default" form of the gene is. When gene A is say, 50% G at a certain location, and 50% T at that spot, it's called a SNP- single nucleotide polymorphism (often pronounced as "snip").

But what's the cutoff? 80-20? 95-5? 99-1? More extreme? What about SNPs

This is purely a linguistic thing, and in scientific contexts, people know what you're talking about based on the context around the words you use.

SNP as a term has p much been around for as long as genetics as a field. Within the field, I don't think anyone cares much, except as a discussion topic to get undergrads interested. However, I do think it's important for scientific communication- mutation has a much different connotation in people's minds than SNP, a term they may have never heard or feel neutrally about. The same can be applied to sex- the way we talk about male/female traits is extremely relevant to public perception. It's very similar to the terminology you're talking about here. And I'm really glad that medicine acknowledges that!!

In general, I think that these linguistic debates can seem trivial to professionals- but it dramatically affects public perception. There's whole other rambles here about how scientists and doctors generally don't know how to talk to non-scientists and non-doctors, but that's a whole other thing.

[spanishskulduggery]

Hi! I'm very curious about something regarding the Spanish language. I'm currently studying A2 Spanish but I had this question and my teacher did not seem too willing to discuss it. Here it goes:

I know that Spanish has, something my Spanish teacher says, linguistic gender. I was wondering how do the people who don't align themselves with the gender binary (masculine and feminine) speak/write in it? I have read this article about Spanish speaking people from US adding "x" Or "@" and people from Argentina using "e" to make the words gender neutral.

Thank you so much for responding, whenever you get to it. Also love your blog. ❤

Short answer, in general speaking terms people are tending towards the -e now because the other two are very hard to actually speak, and because Spanish-speakers feel the -e is more authentic

What you're most likely to see in Spanish is masculine plural as the default, or in written things you might see todos y todas or like un/una alumno/a "a student", or like se busca empleado/a "employees wanted" / "looking for an employee"

If it's something official or academic you typically include both [todas y todas] or you go masculine plural [todos] unless it's specifically feminine plural

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Related, linguistic gender applies to all things, not just people. Why is la mesa "table" feminine, but el libro "book" masculine? Just linguistic gender. I can tell you that most loanwords (that aren't people) in Spanish are masculine, and that there are certain words that come from Greek are masculine, and that -ista words are unisex most of the time... And I can tell you there are some words like testigo or modelo that are unisex and don't change for gender. Aside from that, speaking about nouns and grammatical gender... those particular things are harder to parse for regular people, but if you go into the field of linguistics you can explore that more deeply. Some of it is source language (i.e. "it came from Latin this way") or things like that. And in general when talking about nouns it's unimportant and not considered sexist, that's just how it is.

There is such a thing where it gets a little too far the other way and people will say "history? what about herstory" which is a nice thought but the etymology has nothing to do with gender there

When it comes to people - and when it comes to gendered attitudes - that's where it gets more confusing and more complicated.

I believe there was an experiment where people had French and Spanish speakers [I believe it was Spanish] try to identify how a "fork" would sound. French people gave it a more feminine voice because "fork" is feminine in French, while Spanish speakers gave it a more masculine voice because it's masculine in Spanish.

Whether we like it or not, certain gendered things do influence our thoughts and feelings and reactions. A similar thing in English exists where the old joke was something like "There was a car accident; a boy is rushed to the ER and the surgeon but the father was killed. When they got to the ER the doctor said 'I can't operate on him, he's my son!'" and it's like "well who could the doctor be?" ...and the doctor is his mother. We associate "doctor" as masculine and "nurse" as feminine.

There's a gender bias in our language thought patterns, even though the language changes. And that does exist in Spanish too, to different extents.

There are certain cultural and gendered stereotypes or connotations attached to certain words, many tend to be more despective or pejorative when it's women.

For example - and I know this has changed in many places or it isn't as prevalent - el jinete "horseman/rider", while the female form is la amazona "horsewoman/rider". Because la jinete or la jineta was sometimes "promiscuous woman".

There were also debates about things like la presidente vs. la presidenta or what the female version of juez should be, whether it should be la juez or la jueza

Most languages with gendered language have varying degrees of this, and all languages I'm aware of have gendered stereotypes related to professions or cultural attitudes in some way, and not just for women, and not all in the same way with some of them being very culturally based

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The longer answer involves a bit of history, and I'll be honest, some of it is contested or considered a little controversial in Spanish-speaking countries particularly in the conservative parts (which honestly should come as no surprise)

The first symbol that I know of that came about was the X

First piece of contested history: As far as I know, it was the trans/queer and drag communities in Latin America who started the trend of X. When there were signs or bulletins that had the gendered endings - specifically masculine plural as the default plural - people would write a big X through the O. This was a way of being inclusive and also a very smash the patriarchy move.

Some people attribute this to women's rights activists which may also be true, but a good portion of the things I read from people say it was the trans/queer/drag communities in Latin America doing this.

I've also read it originated in Brazil with Portuguese; still Latin America, but not a Spanish-speaking country.

Where it's most contested is that some people will say that this trend started in the Hispanic communities of the United States. And - not without reason - people are upset that this is perceived as a very gringo movement.

That's why Latinx is considered a very American-Hispanic experience

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The arroba (@) is relatively new. I remember seeing it in the 2000s. I don't know if it existed earlier for gender inclusivity.

People used it because it looks like a combination of O and A, so it was meant to be cut down on saying things like todos y todas or niños y niñas in informal written speech

I remember quite a few (informal) emails starting like hola tod@s or muy buenas a tod@s or things like that

I think of it more as convenience especially in the information age where you never knew who you were talking to and it's easier than including both words, especially when masculine plural might be clumsy or insensitive

Still, it's practically impossible to use the @ in spoken Spanish, so it's better for writing casually. You also likely won't be allowed to use the @ in anything academic, but in chatrooms, blogs, or forums it's an option

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I love the E ending. And the gender neutral form in singular is elle... so it's él "he", ella "she", and elle "they (singular)"

The -e ending is I think became more common within the past 10 years though it might have existed longer than that. These sorts of changes tend to come from the queer or trans communities and tend to be more insular before becoming more of an outside thing that then the general population finds out about

It came about because there are some adjectives in Spanish that end in -e that are unisex. It's not an A, it's not an O, but it's something grammatically neutral for Spanish

It's not as awkward as X, and E exists very firmly in Spanish so it's not perceived as some outside (typically gringo) influence

The good news is, it's pretty widespread on the internet. Not so much in person (yet), but especially in Spain and Argentina at least from what I've seen, particularly in the queer communities and online culture.

The only issues with it are that for non-native speakers, you have to get used to any spelling changes. Like amigo and amiga, but to use the E ending you have to add a U... so it's amigue.

That's because there are certain words where you have to do spelling changes to preserve the sound; gue has a hard G sound like -go does [like guerra]... but ge has the equivalent of an English H sound [gelatina for example]. Another one is cómico/a "funny" which would go to cómique. Again, because co has a hard C/K sound, while ce is a soft sound more like an S or in some contexts TH/Z sound; like centro is a soft sound, while cola is a hard sound

Unless you make it to the preterite forms where you come across like pagué, alcancé, practiqué with those types of endings... or subjunctive forms, pague, alcance, practique ... Basically you'd have to be exposed to those spelling rules or you'd be really confused if you were a total beginner.

It all makes sense when you speak it, but spelling might be harder before you learn those rules

The other drawback is that the E endings are sometimes not applicable. Like in damas y caballeros "ladies and gentlemen" there's not really a gender neutral variation on that, it's all binary there. And while la caballero "female knight" does exist, you'd never see a male variation on dama; the closest I've ever seen is calling a guy a damisela en apuros "damsel in distress" in some contexts where the man needs rescuing, and it's feminine una/la damisela, and it's very tongue-in-cheek

There are also some contexts like jefe vs jefa where I guess you would say jefe for "boss" if you were going the neutral route, but it's a bit weird because it's also the masculine option.

I can't speak for how people might feel about those if they're non-binary or agender because every so often you kind of get forced into the binary whether you like it or not

I totally support the E, I just recognize there are some limitations there and it's quirks of the Spanish language itself

Important Note: Just to reiterate, E endings are the ones most Spanish-speakers prefer because it's easiest to speak and doesn't have the American connotation that X does in some circles

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Where it gets very "Facebook comment section" is that you'll see many Latin Americans traditionalists and conservatives claim that "this is just the gringos colonizing our language" and "grammatical gender doesn't matter in Spanish". They'll say that the "gender movement" is an American feminist movement and that it's a gringo thing and doesn't reflect actual Latin Americans or Spanish-speakers

Which on the one hand, yes, English does have a lot of undue influence on other languages because of colonization, and American influence and meddling in Latin American politics is a big important issue

But as far as I'm aware of the X (and especially the E) were created by Latin Americans

The other issue I personally have is that any time this conversation comes up, someone will say something like somos latinOs and claim that masculine plural is gender neutral

To that I say, first of all, "masculine plural" is inherently gendered. Additionally, there is a gender neutral in Spanish but it's lo or ello and it's only used with "it" so it sounds very unfriendly to use on an actual person... and in plural it looks like masculine plural and everything applies like masculine plural

Second, the reason masculine plural is default is because of machismo. It's more important that we don't possibly misgender a man, so it has to be masculine plural. It's changed in some places, but growing up when I was learning Spanish, if it was 99 women and 1 man you still had to put masculine plural

I'm not opposed to there being a default, and I understand why it's easier to use masculine plural, but some people get very upset at the idea of inclusive language

...

In general, my biggest issues with these comments come when people act like non-binary/queer/trans people don't exist in Spanish-speaking countries, like English invented them somehow. So it's nice to see linguistic self-determination and seeing native speakers using the E endings.