Actually, it absolutely is a linguistic oddity that something for which there are separate words in one language only has one word in another.

And as for the specific invention of gender as a reference to the cultural perception of sexes, I do believe the bigger issue with that line of reasoning is that thinking of sexes from a perspective of culture is a rather new idea. It wasn't really a topic during the first half of the 20th century, was it? Does that make it invalid? Carcinogens and microplastics and multiply resistant bacteria were also not topics back then, but that wouldn't make you argue that they're not valid issues, would it?

Oh, and it absolutely always was valid that the meaning of a gender isn't inherent to that gender, even if we didn't quite realise it for a while. If you think otherwise then you'll have to offer some form of argument as to why the various gender roles we've come up with across human culture over the span of human existence were all inherent to the biological sexes. And since the gender roles have varied over time and cultures while the sexes have not, I assume you can see the issue with trying to make that argument?

Oh! So we can “Mix & Match”, “Nothing Removed”, “Saints Row did it too!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zEU_X8We7g

CyberWoke2020

You're putting in a link to some clown called Lucas who seems to be having a hissy-fit because there's no label above the male body type saying that this body is in fact male. That's about as far as he came before I got bored of listening to his whiny attitude.

And what's up with the people commenting on that video? So much dimwittery going on there, with highly upvoted comments establishing how there are only two genders, so apparently the German langauge does not exist. Also a bunch of intellectual lemmings arguing that biological sex and cultural understanding of sexes is totally the same thing, even though it self-evidently is not the same thing.

I did check Lucas' other videos briefly, and it seems like he was one of very few losers who attended a straight pride thing. What the fuck? Also some more anti-SJW whiny noise and apparently some ordinary political BS, though frankly I'd lost interest in finding out what he was saying at that point.

Bottom line, that bloke does not exactly strike me as someone I'd trust to do any kind of mental exercise for me, his style seems to be more about entertaining and excessively aggressive hot takes on situations than about conveying information, and his follower base seem to be more into Fox News style pre-digested conclusions than actual nuance.

It may depend on what you mean by oddity, but I strongly disagree. It is true that some languages have multiple words for the same object, to apply nuance, where other languages are much more ambiguous. The first example that comes to my mind, is the reputedly many Inuit words for snow. But there is a good reason for this: Inuits' lives are largely governed by snow; so I would not call that an oddity.

Now I am open to the possibility that there are languages that have different words for sex, each with a different nuance, though I don't know of any. It is certainly not the case in English, Dutch, German, French, Latin or Greek, which are the languages I've been taught; and I am skeptical that it is the case for any other Western language (discounting neologisms of the last ~60 years).

Moreover, I believe that if such examples do exist in some language, the nuances they apply to sex will not be a distinction between biology and cultural perception, since no such dichotomy has ever truly existed in any single culture.

The reason carcinogens, micro-plastics and multi-resistant bacteria have become terms, is because they are actual physical objects and concepts. There is a lot of proof for them, and one would have a hard time trying to realistically get out from under them. Their existence is demonstrable by the fact that one can achieve improvements to health by using our concept of carcinogens and multi-resistant bacteria, and one can make materials with novel properties with the concept of micro-plastics in mind. Even if our understanding of these things are merely highly incorrect models, they are good enough to actually provide a demonstrable effects.
The same cannot be said for "gender identity". It is not physical, it is not real. It is a portmanteau for a bunch of constructed terminology and unscientific theories. The whole splitting up of cultural perception of sex from biology is a new idea and an unfounded delusion.

If I understand correctly what you are saying, I would counterpoint that it has never been valid to say that the meaning of a sex is not inherent to that sex. We haven't come to any realizations, we have come up with an abstract thought experiment and forced it upon society as some new found aspect of reality.
To quote Lovecraft scholar/archivist Donovan Loucks talking about the (non-)existence of the Necronomicon: "How can one argue against this? It can no more be disproven than it can be proven. It’s purely an opinion, with no facts to get in the way. Then again, I’m of the opinion that gravity is caused by countless invisible, chartreuse devils jumping up and down on things. Go ahead—disprove that. Better yet, try to consider me among the sane for having such a crazy belief..."

It is not necessary to argue why the sexes, which are fundamentally different, naturally take on different roles to match their sex. These roles do vary somewhat from culture to culture, I agree. So if you want to call that a cultural interpretation, then yes. But this cultural interpretation is never distinguished from biology by a single culture: different cultures just have different views of the biological strong and weak points.
Distinguishing fundamental biological facts from roles dictated by such a cultural interpretation, only occurs when you create a situation where several such role divisions are entertained simultaneously. And then it is sufficient to speak in terms of role interpretation as distinct from the facts of biological sex; no need to create a separate word for this -- at least apparently not, since most languages didn't. And more importantly, certainly no reason for the hijacking of a pre-existing term such as gender, which already has a clear meaning, restricted to noun classification.

Yong Yea doesn't understand the backlash, that doesn't mean it isn't justified.

The Danish word for gender and sexes is the same, and it can also mean both pretty and ugly, depending on how you use it. That does not really have any underlying meaning, it's just how the language developed. Thus a linguistic oddity. In some other languages, the same word is used for both the biological sexes and the cultural perception of them. In other languages there may be more words. It does not mean a thing in itself. And in English, as you are clearly aware, the words sex and gender superficially appear to mean the same thing, but they do have a difference of nuance, even if one might not agree with it.

As for gender identity being unreal because it isn't a physically tangible thing, neither is our sentience and a bunch of other fluffy things. Feelings, moods, spiritual stuff... None of that is tangible but you're not going to argue that just because you can't reach out and touch God then He must be false?

But "gender" is artificial, I agree completely. So does the gender studies crowd, as it happens. Gender has no meaning outside of human societies, because all it describes is something intangible observed within human societies. Gender is a social construct, biological sexes are not. Yes, I went there. Sorry, but you did go Lovecraft on me. :-)

You are suggesting that there is no separating the cultural understanding of gender from the biological sex, but that is in itself part of the cultural gender discussion and entirely unrelated to the biological aspect of sexes. So clearly that is something that could do with its own word, in order to not drown in double and triple meanings. A new word could have been found, but they didn't. They repurposed "gender" and that's where we are. It is what it is. I think we might run afoul on the word "inherent". Suppose the male gender was inherent to the male sex. That means all the fluffy stuff we talk about regarding the male gender, the behaviors, attitudes, duties, roles, beliefs, interests, and so on, all of those are inherent to being biologically male. What does that mean? The way I see it, if the word "inherent" is to not be meaningless then it has to mean that we find it all males and we do not find it in any females.

Is that the case? I would not say so. Therefore all the fluffy bits cannot be said to be inherent to that sex. We can talk about certain traits correlating strongly or less strongly with one or the other sex, and we do, but there are clearly more factors in play than just the sex. And so we arrive at the concept of a gender spectrum rather than a gender binary, specifically meaning that there are a whole lot of different ways to be a man, a whole lot of different ways to be a woman, and a lot of people who mix and match masculine and feminine traits and thus exist somewhere between the two main segments.

That's really all the gender spectrum thing means, AFAIK. It doesn't remove the concept of being a guy, it just adds a bit more nuance to it so non-traditional guys (for instance a metro guy like Ronaldo) can also be a guy while those who aren't very accurately described as guys can be more accurately described as something else. Personally I think they've overdone it a bit with the fancy terms but this isn't my field and gender studies terminology is really not my war, so frankly I'm not worked up over it. The basic concept seems reasonable enough, though.

At a personal level, whether I'm described as a binary man or as a male sex person who identifies as male and who displays a fair few masculine traits by people I don't know and don't care about? It has as much significance to me as back when they had that whole discussion of whether to demote Pluto to a plutoid or keep it as a planet. It didn't really change Pluto, after all. I think of myself as a guy and of Pluto as a crappy little planet but if other people want to use different terms that mean essentially the same thing then what is it to me? I understand each word individually but I'm not sure I understand the sentence. Biological facts would be "men on average have greater muscle mass" or "women can give birth" and things to that nature. And you are right, such facts do have a very strong effect on the gender roles and thus the whole gender discussion.

But we are not hunter-gatherers anymore. You don't have to be physically imposing to survive a hunt and bring home food. You do not need to be a towering giant to defend the clan, because an M-16 really does not care. We are also not in a population crisis where child mortality is high and having a maximum number of offspring is paramount to our survival as a species. And so the biological facts are not quite as important to our individual roles as they might once have been.

Additionally, we are not really living in closed cultures anymore. Trying to argue that the different nuances of "being male" across cultures is actually just the same gender, male, is not really going to work out when those cultures blend together and you have all the various forms of male living around one another. Then it adds up to different kinds of males. How does that work if we're arguing that gender is binary and that being of male sex clearly defines all the cultural meanings of "being male"?

And how do we deal with the outliers? There are absolutely modern men that aren't very "manly", wouldn't you say? Prince? Bowie? Trump? How do we deal with those? Do we reject them as unnatural aberrations, wash our eyes with bleach, and pretend they don't exist? Or do we find a model where they can fit in also?

What it boils down to is that seeing gender as a spectrum rather than a not-quite-binary binary simply makes all the mental gymnastics a whole lot easier.

No, it doesn't quite work like that. Random people do not get to throw random YT clowns saying angry nonsense into a discussion with the underlying premise that if people with opposing viewpoints don't take the angry shouty YT guy seriously then a coherent argument has been made.

I don't know this Lucas guy, I don't know why I should take him seriously, and there was no obvious indication of a correlation between what he's raving about and what the facts of a particular situation actually are. If someone wants to use the opinion of a random guy called Lucas as an argument then that person first has to establish why I should give two shits what this Lucas-guy thinks.

You can make the same argument against Yong, if you want. Personally I don't care what Yong's opinion is either, though, so if you're hoping to rile me up that way then that is a wasted effort. :-)

Its a last thing i hoped for. Still you looks looks pretty riled to me, judging on way you expressing yourself...

Nah, couldn't really be more calm without falling asleep. It's just that my phrasing changes depending on who I'm talking with, and you don't really feel like the person who'd appreciate a more nuanced wording.

I did watch his video on it, but there is one point that you might have missed. At one point he mentions the 'gender spectrum' which is a slip that likely means he buys into the nonsense that caused the removal of gender in the first place. There are only two options when it comes to gender, two options don't need a 'spectrum'. So forgive me if I'm a little skeptical of his video.
Wrong, gender is the same as biological sex. Or at least so closely linked as to be indistinguishable. That's the problem, trying to suggest gender and sex are separate things. What you're defining as gender here is actually 'gender roles' in society, not gender itself. Don't change the definitions of words. Gender itself is the biological sex of an individual, the gender roles of that sex are a reference to the roles related to the sexes as you mention here.

Gender roles are a social construct, gender itself is biological reality.

Part 1/2
I would agree that using the same word for 'male/female' and for 'ugly/pretty' seems a linguistic oddity, though I can see how one could have arrived there :p (Incidentally, which sex corresponds to which degree of aesthetic pleasure?) But I still don't agree that it's odd to use one word for sex and its cultural perception, since they have always been two sides of the same coin. Like you say, whether or not there exist languages with multiple words for different nuances of sex, is not meaningful, or rather, is not sufficient reason to declare that languages which don't share this feature possess a linguistic oddity...
Like I said before, in English the words 'sex' and 'gender' do not have the same meaning, they have nothing to do with each other. I know what you are getting at, but using 'gender' to describe either sex or role interpretation is an abuse of language that I will have no part of. It's like saying 'gay' does not mean something akin to 'colourful/cheerful/flamboyant', or queer does not mean 'odd/weird/strange/bizarre', or that rainbows can now only be used in reference to the alphabet soup-crowd. It's hijacking of pre-existing terminology; if you need a new word, then coin a new word (and I will use my right to not acknowledge its existence), but don't take an existing word and strip it of its meaning.

While I don't want to imply that nothing intangible can be real, as a scientist I would say that there is actually a good case to be made for arguing against the objective existence of most intangible/fluffy things. I do believe in God, and I do believe in a fraction of the things theologians present as 'evidence' for His existence, but I would be very hesitant to say that it constitutes evidence. I can understand the logic that leads people to say God does not exist, and it's not (always) bad logic -- though it is again something you can also not be certain of. (The quote I gave before from Donovan Loucks, himself a christian, would apply to God too.)

If there's anyone you don't need to apologize to for saying that, it would be me ;) But going by the proper use of 'gender', I would of course say you are wrong, because it is a linguistic construct. I agree with Devoras that you seem to be using 'gender' to refer to 'gender roles' (or more correctly 'sex roles'), though (s)he is also wrong in saying 'sex'='gender'.
Anyway, I agree that 'sex roles' (that is the collection of stereotypes and characterizations attributed to a sex within a given culture) are a social construct. I would go even further than you, and say that they have no meaning outside of the specific culture in which that role interpretation exists. I do not agree, however, that they are limited to human societies: animals also exhibit role interpretation, which can even differ from breed to breed or colony to colony (e.g. which sex hunts, or both? which sex takes care of the young, or both?)

I did not mean to suggest that it is impossible to separate biological sex from 'sex roles'; but that there never used to be a dichotomy between the sex of your physical body and the sex of your mind/spirit/soul. If someone called a man effeminate, they meant that he is fulfilling roles associated with women in that culture. There wasn't any of this modern 'woman trapped inside a man's body' nonsense.
I agree a new word should have been found, and it fact it kind of has, namely 'gender role' (which should be 'sex role'). But I'm not sure what you mean when you say 'it is what it is': if you mean, people will be idiots and insist on abusing words, sadly yes; but if you mean, now that this word is being abused, everyone should conform to its misuse, then no.

Obviously, there are more things than an individual's biological sex that determine their behaviour, but why does that require the introduction of spectrum? Just say, every individual is unique... People even change over time, this has nothing to do with one man being/behaving more like a woman than another man... maybe that guy just like cooking/gardening/childcare more than the other -- no spectrum necessary!
People don't "exist between" masculine and feminine, or man and woman, they are either a man (if they were born with XY chromosomes) or a woman (if they were born with XX chromosomes), or a very few unlucky ones may have a serious genetic defect and be hermaphrodites (if they have XXY chromosomes).

I agree, at a personal level it doesn't really matter, but insults never really do... (What's gonna happen if you feel insulted? Are you or the other guy magically going to develop cancer? No, so it doesn't matter.)
But it's the implication that matters, the implication that there can be something that is not a man or a woman (and was not born a hermaphrodite), the implication that it is possible to be a woman who identifies as a man, or vice versa.
It matters because you are being taken away the freedom to think for yourself: if I identify as a woman, I must be allowed in the women's bathroom; if he identifies as a toddler, he can't be a pedophile; if she identifies as a cosmologist, then she must be allowed to be nominated for the MIT's Infinite Kilometer Award... See, it doesn't work, yet all these examples have really happened!
I try to live by the very simple rule of thumb, that each individual should be given as much freedom as is possible without encroaching on the freedom of others. If you want to identify as a woman, go ahead, it's your prerogative, but I am at liberty to say you are wrong and nature disagrees with you.
(Incidentally, about Pluto: I agree the whole discussion was really blown up, but the reason why Pluto is a planet and not a 'planetoid' is because the IAU voting was rigged. So, that doesn't mean it can never be demoted, just that it never legally has as of yet ;) )

Part 2/2

What I meant, is that as long as you only entertain one role interpretation, there is no reason to distinguish between the sex and the role, but when you are introduced to a different interpretation (such as the conquistadors who reputedly discovered female warriors in the Amazon) then there is suddenly a reason distinguish. Like I said, in one culture sex and roles are two sides of the same coin; then you are introduced to another culture, and you learn that even though the number on one side of their coins is the same as on your coins, the head on the other side is a different head.

Why would it not work out? It was never a problem before. Males are male, whether they like doing things that you associate with men or with women. The difference between individuals is great enough, to explain such differences, let alone the differences between cultures. This is especially true nowadays, when the biology of the individual is much more important in defining you, than the biology of your sex...

Yes, there are definitely men that I would call less manly than other men. And I can guarantee that they are completely different ones than those you would pick (I for instance find Trump very manly). And that's okay, because everyone is different and entitled to their opinion; even though, it's also wrong from a factual point of view, because one man cannot be more manly than another, they are both men.

exactly this. What's the point of the advance customization when I can't see my character 99.99% of the gaming time?

Through a good application of trolling on a vulnerable subject, you can cause them to become upset. This can raise blood pressure, increase cortisol levels, and just all around make them feel bad. It won't magically make them develop cancer, no, but it can make them have a bad day. If you upset a person enough online, usually only those that are easily offended, you can also damage their personal relationships. If they become curt with the people in their social circles or significant other, or are seen as ill and cranky at work, all of these things can have a negative effect.