Concepts and Terminology · 3 entries
Concepts and Terminology
A concept entry names an idea rather than a person: an umbrella, a distinction, a framework, a term of art the subject uses to describe itself. These are the words that appear in the definitions of other words, and getting them wrong propagates. Intersex is filed here because it names a set of bodily characteristics rather than a gender, a distinction that half the glossaries on the web collapse, and Third gender because it is a comparative category imposed on roles that do not otherwise share a history.
Where an idea is contested, the entry gives at least two positions with the people who hold them and does not settle the argument on the reader's behalf. Where a term is defined by a specific document, the entry names the document, its maintainer and its edition, because a definition with no owner drifts. Nothing here discusses transition, treatment or eligibility for anything: the catalogue says what a term means and which document defines it, and stops. Gender variant is a case where the word carries the assumptions of the people who coined it, and the entry says whose they were.
Of this kind
All 3 concepts and terminology
3 entries
- Gender variantAn institutional heading rather than a label anybody picks: who writes it, why no dictionary dates it, and what it costs to file it beside the identities.
- IntersexA fact about bodies that nearly every gender list files as an identity, and two prevalence figures thirty times apart from one source.
- Third genderThe comparative term for the gender positions outside man and woman, and why counting up to three is the part that its critics object to most.
Keep going
The other kinds of term
- Gender IdentitiesWhat a person is, as against how they present. Every identity term in the catalogue, with the record behind it.51
- Culture-Specific GendersRoles belonging to particular peoples, recorded on their own terms rather than as versions of a Western category.23
- Gender ExpressionPresentation, not identity. The distinction that most confused searches about this vocabulary are really about.5
Common questions
Questions about concepts and terminology
What is the difference between sex and gender?
In the vocabulary as it is now used, sex refers to bodily characteristics and gender to the social and personal category a person belongs to or identifies with. The distinction is a twentieth-century one with datable origins in clinical writing, and the entries record what each term meant when it was introduced as well as what it means now.
Why is intersex filed as a concept rather than an identity?
Because it names a set of variations in sex characteristics rather than a gender. Most intersex people identify as men or women, some do not, and the two questions are independent. Filing it as an identity would repeat the error that most of the entry exists to correct, and the entry says so in its first paragraph.
What makes a concept contested here?
That published sources disagree about it in print, not that somebody somewhere objects. Where that test is met, the entry sets out at least two positions with the people or documents holding them and leaves the disagreement standing, because a reference work that quietly picks a side is less useful than one that shows the argument.
Does this site define medical terms?
It says what a term means and which document defines it, and nothing more. Terms like gender dysphoria get an entry naming the manual, the edition and the maintainer. Nothing here discusses transition, hormones, surgery, eligibility or outcomes, and there is no guidance addressed to somebody making a decision.