Before we go further I feel like we should clarify something. A word can have multiple meanings. Take the word "love" according to Merrium-Webster "love" has at least 9 possible definitions. One possible definition is "strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties" another is "the sexual embrace", yet another is "a score of zero (as in tennis)." I don't think anyone who understands these definitions would claim that the underlying concepts behind the definitions hold the same meaning. That is essentially what I am claiming is the case with gender.
@OxTheAutist Even gender studies do not have an innate authority over the definition of "gender." They do have an innate authority if you want to view "gender" through the gender studies paradigm (which is perfectly rational way to view it), but the power to decide the meaning of any word always comes from the community in which it is used. Remember "gender studies" was named after the word "gender", not the other way around. Just because a community names itself after a word does not give it the innate authority to redefine that word, in other communities. Which, reiterating my previous point, is the core of this debate. We have one community that wants to replace the existing definition of "gender" used in other communities, with a new definition of "gender" conceived in their own community.
@Zoe Are you claiming it CAN be viewed through a psychological or biological lenses, or that it MUST be viewed through one of those two lenses? I agree it can be viewed from a health and psychological lenses. But if you are claiming that it MUST be viewed through those lenses then I would continue to disagree.
Second, I think you are misrepresenting how academia views the word "gender". It is true many fields in academia have largely redefined the word "gender" (especially in the social science) during the past two decades. But even just reading the Wikipedia pages for "gender" (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender) and "gender and sex distinction" (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction) you will see that its definition varies greatly between academic fields, and depends largely on its context. Which I believe more closely reflects my argument that "gender" is a word with many meanings depending upon the community in which it is used. Rather than that there is one unified definition of gender, that you seem to claim is supported by academia.
Edited 6/4/2019 01:13:01