On Mon, 01 Aug 2005, Adam D. Barratt wrote: > On Mon, 2005-08-01 at 22:12 +0200, fabienne s wrote: > > so i'm interested in what you think here on the list about > > including someone's gender (i *think* that's what he meant by > > "sex" below) in the debian developer's database? > > No, he meant sex :-) In English (at least in British English) gender > is a grammatical concept, whereas sex is a biological concept It's moderately more complex than that. Gender can refer to any categorization of things, from the grammatical, to the biological; even computer connectors have gender. Sex is generally reserved for the categorization of things based on their reproductive structures (and various activities related to those reproductive structures.) So in this case, either word works properly; 'Sex' merely being more specific; 'Gender' often being more polite. Don Armstrong -- I'd sign up in a hot second for any cellular company whose motto was: "We're less horrible than a root canal with a cold chisel." -- Cory Doctorow http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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