Are you an English speaker? If so, have you ever wondered why there appear to be multiple words to describe a single concept?

I want to point out that most of the time, this is because the words in question do not mean precisely the same thing.

There’s a rub—it’s something I’ve touched on more than a few times in past. Whether fortunate or not, language is by nature, dynamic.

What that means (at least in part) is, my explanation for the particular word pair I’m going to discuss not being perfectly synonymous will be argued to be incorrect by others.

Diving into discussion, I want to consider why (as you might’ve surmised by the title of this article) the reason for the existence of the words “sex” and “gender.”

When I began this piece, I intentionally introduced the idea of English speakers. This was because I wanted to talk about the concept of dealing with languages potentially foreign to such folks.

If you went to high school (and maybe even previous levels of education to that) at the time I did (ending in the early eighties) or before, you were probably required to take courses training you in at least the basics of another language.

In my case, it was German (that was one of multiple options in the school I attended in Australia at the time).

I then took the time to learn at least about (and to some degree, far more comprehensively than that), multiple other languages.

Because of my connection to Koreans and folks of Hispanic origin (which I won’t get into in this post), I learned to read and write Hangul (Korean), some Kanji (Chinese), and Spanish.

I also took an interest in Russian, taking the time to learn to read (not well, mind you) Cyrillic.

In some of the languages listed, there’s an almost instinctual simplicity I’m not calling anything like a bad thing.

In other languages—notably for me, German and Spanish—things were a little more complex.

To be fair, in Spanish as a rule, how you say it is how you spell it (unlike English without a doubt).

Even so, in both Spanish and German, even the definite article(s) can be counted male, female or in the case of German, neutral.

In Spanish for example, if you’re discussing a man, you would be talking about “el hombre.” For a woman it would be “la mujer.”

But here’s the thing, if you’re talking about the door over there, you would say, “la puerta.”

And for that dog you want to bring into conversation, it would be “el perro.”

The definite article (in English “the” in all these cases), would be “el” or “la” depending on the gender of the noun (“el” for things “gendered” male and “la” for those gendered female).

Adding to this, if you’re discussing a group of dogs (whose sex is mixed between male and female), you use the expression “los perros.” Los being the “plural masculine article.”

Funnily, if you know they’re all female, it’s completely fine to use “Las” (the plural female definite article).

It gets even more complex in German, where you have to decide the gender and the case (nominative, accusative, genitive and dative) to determine which definite article will be used.

Keep in mind, that this is but the beginning of the use of gender.

Another example is, in Spanish, most masculine nouns end in “o” where most female end in “a.”

Is a door really male or female? No, that’s just a “quirk of the language.”

This is part of the reason I disagree with those trying to “sell the idea that” sex and gender are synonymous.

Sex talks about physical characteristics that can be identified by science.

We cannot ignore that there are people and animals exhibiting both sets of characteristics. On the whole though, this is extremely rare.

As a general rule, both humans and other animals are very obviously one or the other.

It seems to me, the distinction(s) between the two terms couldn’t be more obvious. Again, being generous, it’s surely true others can point to definitions to either or both, that do not match those I’m using.

However, I’m not sorry to say this is how I understand these terms.

You have every right to disagree with my take on things. That said, you cannot really argue what I’m saying is any less true.

At the very least, you have to realize the distinction between gender and sex.

In my view, gender is (at least largely) a “lingual mechanism.” Sex on the other hand, is a tool used in science to describe actual physical differences between two distinct groups.

Sex is a scientific term, as I get it, gender is not.

For those who take issue with what I’m saying here, I’d like to know how and why that’s the case.

Please do me the favor of not just yelling “you’re mistaken!” While you’re at it, please present reasonable, logical arguments.

In case you’re wondering, yes I do have “ulterior motives” here.

It’s my desire that folks stop using the term “gender” when what they really mean is “sex” (and to the extent they do so, vice versa).

Gender was never intended to talk about sex. Sex wasn’t a linguistic tool in part used to describe inanimate objects.

The result is, terms like “gender fluid” are nonsensical.

Is that a “male and female door?” Not according to the definite article used to describe it in Spanish!

Is that door actually female or male? Equally, this is not the case.

You may think it’s reasonable to use these ideas interchangeably. Permit me to strongly disagree with your doing so.

In case you hadn’t noticed, what has happened here is, we’ve totally destroyed the idea of people using the idea of gender to describe themselves somehow being either the opposite sex, or “gender fluid.”

Don’t like that? Sorry that’s true, but that doesn’t change my viewpoint on the matter (nor the facts surrounding what I’ve put into this article).

Okay, here’s hoping life is going well for you. If not, I stand firm in the hope they move in that direction over the course of time.