When did the word gender become confused with sex?

The psychologist/sexologist John Money was responsible for the blurring of the definition. In the 1950's, he began using "gender" as a jargon term to distinguish psychological sexual identity from one's physical sex - like many trade terms, his definition had only a tenuous connection with the actual definition of the word. Later, the term was expanded to also encompass the concept of social sex roles. And, as is often the case, the jargon term was slowly assimilated into popular culture. The first main wave of popular use was during the feminist movements of the 1970's. The FDA adopted the term as a synonym for (physical) sex in the 1990's, lending further credibility to its misuse.

A (very weak) case could be made to defend his usage - through back formation - if one takes the almost obsolete secondary definition of "engender" into consideration, that being "to beget or procreate".

pssst...your spelling checker doesn't know the word "conflated," apparently. Doesn't that just burn you up? <g>

My memory's getting a bit shaky about that sort of thing, but I think it's within the last twenty years; and in two stages. The first stage was just incorrectly using gender when sex was meant, and I think that arose out of misplaced delicacy (certainly misplaced today, given the surprising usage of the f-word in public written correspondence). However more recently there's been another trend, less visible to the public, where "sex" is used to indicate genetic/phenotypic male or female, and "gender" refers to a person's internal sense of identity as a sexual being.

Drives grammarians nuts, I'm sure. Drives me nuts and I'm not one. I suspect it would not have caught on so readily had English been a gender-based language, so the word would have been in more common use in its original (dare I say proper?) meaning.

Garner's _Modern American Usage_ (3d Ed, p. 388) is faintly sarcastic but does not take a strong stand on this, somewhat to my surprise; and he does not honor it with one of his "Language Change Rating" grades (where 5 essentially means get over it, it's already happened). And of course his explanation is better than mine. He does quote a 1994 headline using the word sex which he says would probably use gender if written today.

Political correctness: a philosophy dedicated to the proposition that it is possible to pick up a t u r d by the clean end. (source unknown, unfortunately)

First to deal with all people who says I am now not a truly girl considering I can't endure youngsters - my mom had cervical melanoma at 30 and had her uterus eliminated, does that imply instantly she's now not a truly girl? Many females can't have youngsters as a result of a sort of motives, that doesn't lead them to much less of a lady. Second all people is so involved with XX and XY whilst actually there are lots of individuals with different mixtures of chromosomes. You can't be certain of yours till you're established. What you're rather caught on is the outside look alternatively of honestly deciding who the character is. I am now not a "new gender", I am now and constantly had been feminine wherein it counts - in who I am. I am simply getting my frame disorder repaired. You wand to understand why persons seek advice from me a she now? Because they have got no suggestion I was once ever known as some thing else. I attend tuition, belong to membership companies, and perform females's come across businesses and nobody has any suggestion that I am now not a natal feminine. The handiest factor you acquired proper was once that I can't difference my gender (versus intercourse, one is intellectual the opposite bodily). I am now and constantly had been feminine, I can't difference that - what I can do is get my faulty frame constant to check who I am. This isn't mutilation, it's fix (is conjoined dual separation "mutilation", in the end they had been born that manner - through your pondering they will have to be pressured to are living that manner the leisure in their lives)

Thank you, Mr. von der Tann. I have always wondered where the jargon came from. I, too, believe as Alice does, that it became a softer word to use in public. It is humorous because that meaning came into use during the era of so-called "sexual liberation," the "sexual revolution," and "sexual intercourse" as the preferred word for "doing it." And, it was the proponents of these phrases who started to use "gender" because the word "sex" still made people cringe. Ironic.

People didn't want to confuse sex with sex. And gender is a more wider term, but the mind has its way around what a word really means. Words were created by someone else's mind, which can be interpreted differently by someone else's mind.

When forms started putting "sex" where they should have put "gender", except it takes up less space, and people without a high school education tended not to know what "gender" meant.

I was wondering the same question too yesterday

It's just that people gradually began to see 'sex' as an inappropriate term to use in public. Dunno why; they just did. So they started to use 'gender' instead, and it caught on.