Definition of Grades Oxford English Dictionary

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gender, n.

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Pronunciation:

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Forms:  Middle English gendere, Middle English gendir, Middle English gendyr, Middle English–1500s gendre, Middle English– gender, 1500s 1800s– gener (Scottish); also Irish English (northern) 1900s– gener. (Show Less)

Origin: A borrowing from French. Perhaps also partly formed within English, by conversion. Etymons: French gendre ; gender v.¹

Etymology: < Anglo-Norman and Middle French gendre (Anglo-Norman and Middle French, French genre ) kind, sort (c1125 in Old French), sex, quality of being male or female (second half of the 12th cent.; now obsolete), race, people (c1200, originally and chiefly in Anglo-Norman and Old French, Middle French humain genre , Middle French, French genre humain 'mankind'; second quarter of the 13th cent. used independently; obsolete after 1660), (in grammar) class of nouns and pronouns distinguished by different inflections (c1225) < classical Latin gener- , genus race, kind, also grammatical gender (see genus n. ).

In sense 2b either influenced by, or perhaps independently < , either Anglo-Norman and Middle French gendre progeny, offspring (1265 in Old French; < gendrer gender v.¹ ) or gender v.¹

Compare Old Occitan gendre (1350), Catalan gènere (13th cent. as †genre ), Spanish género (a1400), Portuguese gênero (15th cent.), Italian genere (end of the 12th cent.). Compare later genre n.

The English use in sense 1 follows the Latin use of genus , which in its turn is a rendering of the equivalent ancient Greek γένος genus n. The formulation of the three grammatical genders (τὰ γένη τῶν ὀνομάτων, ἄρρενα καὶ θήλεα καὶ σκεύη ) is ascribed by Aristotle ( Rhetorica 3. 5) to Protagoras.

In sense Phrases 2 after French genre nerveux (1645 or earlier).

On the development of use in sense 3a (now the predominant sense) see the note at that sense.

(Show Less)

Phrases

P1.

1845 Edinb. Rev. Oct. 318   The Helmskringla..has too little moral or imaginative attraction to be ever popular with the 'general gender'.

1908 Caledonian 8 478/1   You can never believe it [sc. claret] an ordinary drink among the 'general gender'. It cannot have been cheap enough or potent enough.

1604—1908(Hide quotations)

Compounds

C1. General attributive.

a. In sense 1.

1855 Bibliotheca Sacra Oct. 716   The gender-forms of the demonstrative.

1869 Jrnl. Philol. 2 209   What more natural or simple means could be adopted to denote the subject of an action..than a gender-suffix.

1881 Amer. Jrnl. Philol. 2 368   Lepsius attributes a more decisive weight to the element of gender-distinction than most students of language are accustomed to do.

1898 J. B. Wisely New Eng. Gram. (1900) i. iv. 109   We distinguish masculine gender nouns from feminine gender nouns by some change in the form of the word.

1933 L. Bloomfield Lang. xvi. 272   Distinctions of number..are merged with the gender-classification.

1969 W. M. Erwin Basic Course in Iraqi Arabic (2004) xx. 194   A small group of words..may function as modifiers of nouns or pronouns..but have no gender inflection.

1994 S. Pinker Lang. Instinct viii. 233   In 'classifier' languages, nouns fall into gender classes like human, animal, inanimate, one-dimensional, two-dimensional, cluster, tool, food, and so on.

2002 Language 78 116   Despite the formal identity of the gender prefixes with four of the morphological class prefixes, there are good descriptive reasons to distinguish them.

1855—2002(Hide quotations)

(b)

1855Gender-forms [see Compounds 1a(a)].

1890 C. C. Long Lessons in Eng. 71 Gender-forms of Nouns. Man, boy, brother, gentleman. Woman, girl, sister, lady, queen.

1988 L. Hutcheon Canad. Postmodern iii. 54   He begins by taking literally the gender form of McLuhan's general label: it is his men who are print-oriented.

1855—1988(Hide quotations)

1945 B. L. Whorf in Lang., Thought, & Reality 79   A gender system that distinguishes living from nonliving things.

1992 Sci. Amer. Nov. 62/3   The vowels i and u proposed for these masculine and feminine kinship terms coincide with the gender system in two major Amerind subgroups.

1945—1992(Hide quotations)

b. In sense 3.

1870 O. S. Fowler Sexuality Restored ii. 14 (heading) Gender states as affecting the form, beauty, etc.

1906 J. E. Ayer Living by Nat. Law 127   Society practically teaches the male half to develop an excessive expression of the gender nature, while girls are taught an even more harmful..restraint in expression.

1931 Proc. Royal Soc. 108 401 (table)    Number of promycelia whose gender distributions were determined.

1978 Washington Post (Nexis) 7 July c14   Letters..from organizations to individuals, sometimes avoid the gender trap with salutations like 'Dear Customer'.

1983 M. W. Ross Homosexuality & Social Sex Roles 2 Gender constructs endure because of their usefulness as symbols in society.

1987 N.Y. Times (Nexis) 5 Apr. vii. 26   Men had to undergo a conversion, sometimes expressed as symbolic gender reversal, in order to find out what submissiveness meant.

1996 Toronto Star (Nexis) 7 June b1 Gender warriors, draw your battle lines.

2002 S. Pinker Blank Slate (Book Club ed.) xviii. 342   Despite their visibility, gender feminists do not speak for all feminists, let alone for all women.

2008 Waterloo (Ont.) Region Record (Nexis) 22 Dec. b4   Masquerading was accompanied by dancing, gambling and gender-swapping.

1870—2008(Hide quotations)

(b)

1975 Q. Rev. Biol. 50 226/2   I cannot understand how a book on human reproduction and sex..can be so consistently insensitive to the gender bias of the personal pronoun 'he' used in the context of any one person.

1996 F. Popcorn & L. Marigold Clicking ii. 181   Some schools in California and Virginia have started girls-only math, science, and computer classes to try to erase gender-bias.

1975—1996(Hide quotations)

1965 R. J. Stoller in J. Marmor Sexual Inversion xi. 206   Is passing indistinguishable from previously described continua of gender confusion?

2011 Sunday Express (Nexis) 30 Jan. 24   Shakespeare's plays are full of gender confusion.

1965—2011(Hide quotations)

1892 Man. for Teachers 77   Some hint was given in Chart II. of the gender differences expressed by the third personal pronoun.

1972 A. Oakley Sex, Gender & Society viii. 189   Sex differences may be 'natural', but gender differences have their source in culture.

2005 Psychiatric Times (Nexis) 1 Aug. 74   A history of childhood sexual abuse may be an important risk factor for understanding the gender difference in depression rates.

1892—2005(Hide quotations)

1981 Jrnl. Women Stud. 6 88/1   Her paper emphasized the importance of analyzing sexual harassment as 'a social practice, a norm, a gender dynamic conditioned by male control over women's minds and bodies'.

2009 London (Ont.) Free Press (Nexis) 28 Aug. c4   The great romantic comedies are about gender dynamics.

1981—2009(Hide quotations)

1971 Acta Sociologica 14 10   The interests of children as a group would be contradictory to..a combination of market economy and gender equality.

1982 E. Kallen Ethnicity & Human Rights Canada x.257   The provisions of the proposed Canada clause would reaffirm Canada's constitutional commitment to racial and gender equality.

2003 D. Nicholls Starter for Ten viii. 67   What if she offers to go halvsies? Should I accept? I want her to know that I firmly believe in gender equality, but I don't want her to think I'm poor or, even worse, mean.

1971—2003(Hide quotations)

1975 Family Coordinator 24 567/2   Intellectual acceptance of gender equity is coming somewhat reluctantly and grudgingly.

2001 N.Y. Times 13 June a24/6   Women's rights groups put the issue of gender equity in prescription drug coverage high on their agenda.

1975—2001(Hide quotations)

1964 Valley News (Van Nuys, Calif.) 29 Nov. 22/2   She has for many years been interested in the field of psychology, particularly in the areas of gender identity and personality expression.

1968 R. J. Stoller Sex & Gender ii. 17 (heading)    The intersexed patient with normal gender identity.

2010 N.Y. Times (National ed.) 12 Sept. (Styles section) 6/2   This was in San Francisco, land of blurry gender identities, where it's common to pass as 'other' gendered—neither male nor female but elsewhere on the 'queer' spectrum.

1964—2010(Hide quotations)

1995 Independent 14 Feb. 12/7   Kimberley Leston's trademark was a wry and knowing take on sex and gender issues.

1974—1995(Hide quotations)

1970 Child Devel. 41 270   A sex-typing process based on imitation of an idealized gender model.

1985 Times Lit. Suppl. 5 Apr. 378/4   Without threatening gender models, she produced poetry good enough to praise.

2005 Courier Mail (Queensland, Austral.) (Nexis) 12 Apr. (Features section) 15   It was an encouraging, wonderfully optimistic time, when..men and women alike recognised how strangely confining gender models had been.

1970—2005(Hide quotations)

1963 A. Comfort Sex in Society ii. 42   The gender role learned by the age of two years is for most individuals almost irreversible, even if it runs counter to the physical sex of the subject.

1995 Daily Tel. 8 Aug. 1/4   By five, girls and boys have already started to 'self-limit' their activities in line with their perceived notion of their gender role.

1957—1995(Hide quotations)

1983 B. G. Reed & C. D. Garvin Groupwork with Women/Groupwork with Men 7   Remaining sensitive to the differences in these definitions and our tendency to confuse them is an integral component in the development of gender-sensitivity in our work.

1994 USA Weekend 16 Jan. 18/3   Much to the frustration of many teachers, gender-sensitivity training soon may be a prerequisite for tenure or promotion.

1983—1994(Hide quotations)

1966 L. Kohlberg in E. E. Maccoby Devel. Sex Differences 105   Our review of early gender stereotypes indicates that by age five-six, children award greater power, strength, and competence..to the male.

2008 Record (Bergen County, New Jersey) (Nexis) 23 Apr. f3   Parents can't do much to get young children to ignore the cultural gender stereotypes they see around them.

1966—2008(Hide quotations)

1966 L. Kohlberg in E. E. Maccoby Devel. Sex Differences 102 Gender stereotyping of social power derives from highly visible differences in extra-familial roles as well as from connotations arising from body differences.

1998 Guardian 22 Jan. ii. 5/3   If you want regressive gender stereotyping, watch any Hollywood schlockbuster with its tit shots and bit parts and bitch/whore/good girl-friend formula.

1966—1998(Hide quotations)

1980 October 12 61   It is by no means accidental that Freud develops these same Aristophanic themes elsewhere, as in the allegory of his gender theory.

2010 N.Y. Times (Nexis) 22 Sept. a25   According to the gender theory that informs this bill, sexist attitudes led society to place a higher value on male-centered fields.

1980—2010(Hide quotations)

1971 Jrnl. Marriage & Family 33 414/2   Sex being one arena of the gender-war, I suspect far more men than women wake up their spouses during the night for intercourse.

2004 Independent 10 Mar. 33/1   For those of us on the front line of the gender war, the hot new issue of girlishness poses a ticklish problem.

1971—2004(Hide quotations)

C2.

1888 Amer. Jrnl. Philol. 9 444   In the direct verbal regimen (as the article or other gender-bearing word shows), either the nominative or accusative may be used.

1898 H. Piatt Neuter in Old French 14   Wherever the lo-le..has a gender-containing antecedent, it will be called masculine.

1979 Feminist Rev. 2 41   An all-woman show would invite speculations as to gender-determined characteristics shared by the women exhibitors.

1982 Amer. Indian Q. 6 108   Mining, sawmill, construction, auto mechanic and railroad jobs are gender-allocated on Western models.

1987 K. Lette Girls' Night Out (1989) 128   You know I'm committed to less gender orientated relationships. But how can we ignore our naturally strong peno-vaginal-interactional rapport?

1991 E. K. Sedgwick How to bring your Kids up Gay in Tendencies (1993) 157   A relative deemphasis of the links between gay adults and gender-nonconforming children.

1997 R. Conner in K. Hall & A. Livia Queerly Phrased vii. 135   Information concerning lesbian and gender-variant women appears to have been suppressed even more successfully than that concerning their male counterparts.

2008 L. M. Diamond Sexual Fluidity ii. 32   Consider, too, the results of several 'natural experiments' with gender-reversed rearing that have occurred in different cultures.

1888—2008(Hide quotations)

b. In sense 1.

1888Gender-bearing [see Compounds 2a].

1912 Amer. Jrnl. Psychol. 23 314 Gender-bearing nouns became also the bearers of the secret of his soul and witnesses of his guilt. Every word denoting sex caused him to falter.

1994 M. Aronoff Morphol. by Itself (1996) iii. 72   The notion of an inflectional affix is not directly applicable to all gender-bearing words in Spanish.

1888—1994(Hide quotations)

1965 R. P. Stockwell et al. Grammatical Structures Eng. & Spanish iv. 103   Spanish uses gender-marked nominalizations for classes of people and neuter for concepts.

2006 I. Neumann-Holzschuh in A. Valdman & J. C. Clement Hist., Society & Variation iii. 254   In all French creoles, natural gender can be indicated either by certain lexicalized items with inherent gender or by the semantically transparent compounding of a gender-neutral noun with a gender-marked lexical item.

1965—2006(Hide quotations)

c. In sense 3.

1961 J. L. Hampson & J. G. Hampson in W. C. Young Sex & Internal Secretions (ed. 3) II. xxiii. 1418/1   He found that boys and girls of the working-class group were not only earlier, but more clearly, aware of gender-appropriate behavior.

2009 Maryland Gaz. (Nexis) 19 Dec. a9   Other members of the..team took pictures of the children with Santa and raffled off age- and gender-appropriate toys.

1961—2009(Hide quotations)

1972 M. L. Stackhouse Ethics & Urban Ethos i. 9   Women's liberationists cite the city as the primary example of aggressive and rationalistic male dominance while arguing that attitudinal and intellectual capacities are not gender-based.

1979 Newsweek (Nexis) 30 Apr. 68   The Court has refused to eliminate all gender-based distinctions.

2006 Irish Times (Nexis) 8 Mar. 16 Gender-based violence takes many forms: rape, trafficking, and domestic violence pervade every society in the world.

1972—2006(Hide quotations)

1968 Trans. 9th Internat. Congr. on Enlightenment 1 (Stud. Voltaire & 18th Cent. No. 346) 470   Since dress is traditionally gender-coded, Eugenie's cross-dressing indicates an act of gender cross-coding.

1984 Pop. Music 4 239   It is at least difficult to maintain that the desires and rhythms of rock and roll are gender coded.

2007 Bitch Winter 74/1   It's absolutely amazing how gender-coded boys' and girls' costumes are.

1968—2007(Hide quotations)

1978 F. Donnelly Big Boys don't Cry vii. 171   There is frequently a discrepancy between gender-forming training in the home and the more permissive handling of sexual matters in the public media.

2001 Moscow News (Nexis) 7 Mar. (Science section) 10   The male bird has a pair of identical gender-forming Z chromosomes.

1978—2001(Hide quotations)

1977 French Rev. 50 947   Partisans of gender-free sensibility may not wish to consider Moreau's femininity/feminism in an analysis of her film.

2009 Atlantic Monthly July 120/3   The Companionate Marriage, in which husband and wife..co-housekeep according to gender-free norms they negotiate.

1977—2009(Hide quotations)

1988 Technol. Teacher Feb. 5/1   Technologies can be studied that are gender-friendly, culture-friendly.

2007 N.Y. Times (National ed.) 4 Mar. ii. 4/1   This Kings County Shakespeare Company production is billed as a 'gender-friendly' adaptation of 'The Taming of the Shrew'.

1988—2007(Hide quotations)

1980 Jrnl. Amer. Acad. Relig. 48 422   The gender of maleficarum is feminine and not gender inclusive.

1991 Drew Mag. Nov. 5/1   We've had an opportunity to review goals that are already in place to create a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, gender-inclusive community.

2008 Africa News (Nexis) 8 Mar.   Fifty six per cent of women feel that their workplace does not have a gender inclusive culture.

1980—2008(Hide quotations)

1984 Contemp. Sociol. 13 414/1   She describes these functions of women's reformatories in the United States in both gender-normative and economic terms.

2005 M. Kackman Citizen Spy 182   She is only truly at ease when she can settle back into the comforting gender-normative relationships of her Felicity-meets-Friends home life.

1984—2005(Hide quotations)

1975 Amer. Jrnl. Nursing 75 1001/3   The middle adult's expression of his or her attributes in relation to a set of socialized expectations is, on a broad level, gender-oriented.

2002 D. Lemieux & M. Möhle in Y. Lemel & H. N. Noll Changing Structures of Inequality (2003) 351   If some traditionally gender-oriented occupations have diminished, formerly integrated occupations seem to become gender-oriented.

1975—2002(Hide quotations)

1967 Jrnl. Sex Res. 3 92 Gender-related imagery in play and daydreams.

1991 Lancet 9 Mar. 612/1   No gender-related..differences have been reported in epidemiological studies.

1967—1991(Hide quotations)

1983 PMLA 98 323/1   A gender-sensitive analysis, then, elucidates dominant as well as submerged or muted conventions by showing the operations of their reciprocal interactions.

2009 N. Fraser Scales of Justice (2010) vi. 114   Feminists must work with other progressive forces to create egalitarian, gender-sensitive social-welfare protections at the transnational level.

1983—2009(Hide quotations)

1968 Ann. Amer. Acad. Polit. & Social Sci. 376 18   The appearance, given names, and play of boys and girls have become less gender-specific since World War II.

2001 R. Hill Dialogues of Dead (2002) xxxv. 377   Hat..said, 'Chairwoman , I think you mean. Or at least Chair-person.' 'That's what you think I mean, is it?' said Dee pleasantly. 'Yet man in its origins was never gender specific.'

1968—2001(Hide quotations)

1977 Child Devel. 48 511/1   The children's ordering of the jobs along a gender-typed ability continuum closely matched reality.

2007 Washington Post (Nexis) 8 Oct. c8   Call it gender-typed indoctrination, if you will, that impels me to hang fresh towels every day or to buy matching bedspreads for all my daughters.

1977—2007(Hide quotations)

C3.

1975 Kingsport (Tennessee) Times 26 Sept. 8 a/4   Why should anyone be made to feel guilty for having mistaken a boy for a girl?.. Thanks for a beautiful gender bender.

1977 Primo Times Aug. 35/1   The Sluts call themselves gender benders. The ten male members of the group spend several hours before an appearance laying on mascara, hairspray, earrings, [etc.].

1980 Economist 27 Dec. 48   The cult hallows ambiguous sexuality: Mr David Bowie, the rock star 'gender bender', is a key hero.

1986 N.Y. Times 5 Aug. c4/4   Inserting paper clips in the holes of two plugs creates an acceptable, if not elegant, gender bender.

1993 Time 22 Mar. 79/1 Riff-Raff was made a year before Neil Jordan's gender bender.

2003 Film Comment Mar. 31/1   She had gotten..beyond the image of the blousy beauty or the campy gender-bender, to a more strong-minded feminine ideal.

2003 R. Krikorian TiVo Hacks xxxiii. 64   You may also need a gender bender to get the end that attaches to your serial port to be female.

1975—2003(Hide quotations)

1980 B. Larson Rock vii. 51   In spite of his gender-bending ways, Sylvester admits that his professional singing career started on the California gospel circuit.

1984 Observer 11 Mar. 47/1   This 'gender-bending', as it has been dubbed, is not news in the world of popular music.

1987 Herald (Melbourne) (Nexis) 11 Aug.   We will have to get used to the gender bending novelty of a lord mayor who is a woman and a lady mayoress who is a man.

1993 Esquire June 34/3   The English have always gone in for gender bending, whether of the old-fashioned music-hall variety (Benny Hill in a tutu) or something more with-it (the Kinks song 'Lola').

2009 MovieMail July 26/3   Theresa Russell cross-dresses as a doomed King in a gender-bending dreamy visualisation of Un ballo in maschera.

1980—2009(Hide quotations)

1986 Toronto Star (Nexis) 31 Oct. d18   There I was, tripping over my French ballroom gown and smoothing the tresses of my platinum-blonde wig—looking for all the world like a gender-bent goofball from the court of Louis XIV.

1993 Vanity Fair (N.Y.) Feb. 56/1   Her rebellious teens, which she spent 'coming out' among the other gender-bent kids who snuck into Philadelphia's gay clubs.

2004 K. Mackendrick Word made Skin 136   These hearts burst out of the body.., defiantly glorious, inside out, genderbent, fucked up, queerly passionate and flamboyantly inexhaustible.

1986—2004(Hide quotations)

1983 Washington Post 6 Mar. h6/3   Boy George, with his urban beachcomber look and gender-blender confusions, manages to fit in and stand out.

1985 TV Guide (Canada) 28 Sept. 12/1 Tootsie..is one gender-blender comedy with more going for it than the standard drag gags.

2008 South China Morning Post (Nexis) 7 Dec. (News) 2 (headline)    Just call me 'hir', says gender blender.

1983—2008(Hide quotations)

1984 Washington Post 11 Mar. g1   Not to mention all those other socio-pop labels—gender-blending, drag, cross-dressing—that have sprung up in the wake of Michael Jackson, Boy George, [etc.].

1994 Amer. Spectator Apr. 73/1   Earhart was distinctly 'androgynous'. Not surprisingly, Ware objects to this word, so she calls androgyny 'gender blending', which means the same thing.

2007 Townsville (Queensland) Bull. (Nexis) 7 July 205   Coco Chanel endorsed gender blending 80 years ago when she plucked a few pieces from the closet of her dapper lover, the Duke of Westminster.

1984—2007(Hide quotations)

1975 Educated Woman (Group for Advancement of Psychiatry) 143   Although there are times when policies, laws, services or attitudes can be appropriately gender-blind, women have some unique needs—for example gynecological services.

1992 T. S. Lebra in S. Kumon & H. Rosovsky Polit. Econ. Japan iii. 417   Their insistence on gender-blind equality is a natural result of their having made it in the predominantly male world through their personal ability and perseverance.

2004 Daily Tel. 14 Dec. 16/2   Lila contrives to put her father in moral danger from the tyrannical king, confusingly played, in a politically correct piece of gender-blind casting, by a woman.

1975—2004(Hide quotations)

1973 Notes 26 488   Men draw more money than women, even in comparable job situations... Music librarians share this unfortunate gender discrimination with other academic librarians.

2003 N.Y. Times 27 July (Washington Final ed.) 8/5   The commission successfully expanded laws against gender discrimination in the workplace.

1973—2003(Hide quotations)

1991 W. Roscoe Zuni Man-Woman i. 21   10 percent [of boys] wanted to be their sisters or mothers. Such a high percentage cannot be explained as an epidemic of gender dysphoria, but simply as a reflection of the prestige of female roles.

2005 N.Y. Mag. 7 Feb. 39/2   Precious Cox..grew up in Harlem with gender dysphoria. By age 3, she refused to wear dresses, play with dolls, or socialize with girls.

1973—2005(Hide quotations)

1974 C. W. Schmidt et al. in J. R. Lion Personality Disorders x. 158   The sexual activities of gender dysphoric patients include the full range of practices of adult sexuality.

1976 D. H. Barrow & G. G. Abel in W. E. Craighead et al. Behavior Modification xix. 353   This behavior disorder is called transsexualism or the gender dysphoric syndrome and is the most severe problem among the sexual deviations.

1980 J. K. Meyer in T. B. Karasu & L. Bellak Specialized Techniques Individual Psychotherapy x. 207   A striking example of this phenomenon from the gender dysphorics, in whom almost everything stands out in bold relief.

1995 Guardian 22 July (Weekend Suppl.) 16/3   The deliberate wearing of facial hair is mostly confined to gender dysphorics, who are taking male hormones as they consider sex change operations.

2002 Church Hist. 71 606   In the 1950s, sex-change operations became available for gender-dysphoric people who could afford them.

1974—2002(Hide quotations)

1991 N.Y. Mag. 21 Jan. 38/1   The central tenet of gender feminism is that Western society is organized around a 'sex/gender system'.

2002 S. Pinker Blank Slate (Book Club ed.) xviii. 341 Gender feminism holds that women continue to be enslaved by a pervasive system of male dominance, the gender system.

1991—2002(Hide quotations)

1987 Christianity & Crisis 12 Jan. 463/1   The dispelling of a more fluid, androgynous imagery.., [the] driving out of metaphorical, mystical, and gender-fluid imagery for God in the mainline Reformation has promoted a number of revolts.

1993 Out June 22/1   Suede inspires Gender-fluid fans to storm the stage and shower 'bisexual but celibate' singer Brett Anderson with hugs and kisses.

1996 Re: Womyn born Womyn in soc.women.lesbian-and-bi (Usenet newsgroup) 13 May   I am not gender fluid, tho I can take on either *role* at times.

2015 Columbia Spectator (Columbia Univ, N.Y.) (Nexis) 13 Oct. 1   Science is also beginning to help us understand the neuroscience behind trans and genderfluid identities.

1987—2015(Hide quotations)

1972 L. Humphreys Out of Closets ix. 164   This technique (also known as 'gender fuck') is a form of extended guerilla theater that may, indeed, be effective in changing the stereotypes that cling to social mores.

1991 D. Gaines Teenage Wasteland vii. 178   Guys played with themes of gender-fuck; they wore gaudy baubles, black eyeliner, and platform shoes to high school.

2003 Bitch Fall 63/2   Representations of queer parents show them to be extremely gender-determinate gay men or lesbian women, without a hint of genderfuck anywhere in the picture.

1972—2003(Hide quotations)

1969 Sunday Post Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin) 21 Sept. b12/3   The 'in' look for boys this fall. Their fashions have not only bridged the generation—but the gender—gap, as well.

1977 D. Morris Manwatching 230   They argue that the gender gap belongs to man's ancient past and is no longer relevant in the modern world.

1982 Newsweek 4 Oct. 19/2   The White House is opening the loophole to help close the 'gender gap'—data that show women are disproportionately dubious about administration policies.

1990 Times Educ. Suppl. 23 Nov. 10/1   The proportion of girls taking the subject at all levels is rising... The gender gap at A-level also seems to have narrowed through the 1980s.

2000 M. S. Kimmel in M. S. Kimmell & A. Aronson Gendered Society Reader Introd. 5   There is significant evidence that the gender gap in love and sex and friendship is shrinking as women claim greater degrees of sexual agency.

1969—2000(Hide quotations)

1950 Language 26 219   The suffix is itself meaningless, hardly more than a gender marker.

1975 Amer. Speech 50 11   Abruzzese and Neapolitan also have final schwa rather than clear gender markers like -o for the masculine singular and -a for the feminine singular.

2002 New Internationalist May 16/2   That Arabic grammar carries gender markers has led even the best Arab grammarians erroneously to attribute gender to the thing referred to.

1950—2002(Hide quotations)

1963 J. Money in A. Deutsch & H. Fishman Encycl. Mental Health V. 1699   It is..in harmony with our cultural mores for boys and girls to segregate themselves... One function of this segregation is that both boys and girls shed any remnants of gender-neutral or gender-identical behavior if custom so requires.

1974 Jrnl. Marriage & Family 36 477/1   An effort was made to include approximately equal numbers of male- and female-related words in addition to a few supposedly 'gender-neutral' terms, such as kissing, buttocks, sexual intercourse, and masturbate.

1975 Jrnl. Philos. 72 731   Such uses of 'man' etc. where a gender-neutral term belongs are instances of a common practice in which the name of a high-status member or subset is used as a generic name for the whole class to the disadvantage of the remaining members of the class.

1987 Amer. Ethnologist 14 790/1   By what kind of political and administrative mechanisms can technology be rendered gender-neutral and of benefit therefore to hard-pressed rural women?

2005 Asian Age 28 Sept. 9/2   Mentions of the 'fatherland', 'great sons' and 'brotherly choruses' should be replaced by gender-neutral terms such as 'homeland' and 'joyful chorus'.

1963—2005(Hide quotations)

1977 Jrnl. Women Stud. 2 12   The norms of proper deference were not intensified by gender politics.

1994 Details Oct. 99/1   Next month, I'm marrying a taller woman... I've had to rethink the strange gender politics of height.

2010 S. A. Fitzgerald in Y. Lee Politics of Gender 106   A normative gender politics which denies that prostitution can be in certain contexts deemed a 'liveable life' for certain groups of women.

1977—2010(Hide quotations)

1995 In Your Face Spring 4   It's about all of us who are genderqueer: diesel dykes and stone butches, leatherqueens and radical fairies.

1995 Washington Times (Nexis) 2 Oct. a8   It's high time 'genderqueers' came out of the closets, out of the shadows and out of the margins.

2004 Time Out N.Y. 21 Oct. 128/2   Dykes, fags, trans and gender-queers are invited to this punk rock party.

2007 M. Tea It's so You 81   A line of subversive, genderqueer clothing that would appeal to female-bodied folk who didn't want to wear feminine clothing.

2010 Curve (Nexis) Mar. 47   I guess you could say my partner is genderqueer. She is comfortable being called 'he' or 'she'.

1995—2010(Hide quotations)

1969 Jrnl. Sex Res. 5 81   After gender reassignment surgery, some previously rejecting fathers become very affectionate.

1991 Lancet 7 Sept. 603/2   Although most gender reassignments are done in countries of the western world, transsexualism occurs in most if not all ethnic groups.

2004 N.Y. Mag. 3 May 66/2 The Opposite Sex..tells..tales of 'gender reassignment'. After each story, sex-change experts and the transgendered..talk things over.

1969—2004(Hide quotations)

1976 A. G. Dworkin & R. J. Dworkin (title of work)    The minority report: an introduction to racial, ethnic, and gender relations.

1983 H. J. Maroney in J. Mitchell & A. Oakley What is Feminism? (1986) 102   This analysis of male-female relations..asserted that the long-term transformation of gender relations required sexual autonomy for women.

2003 Afr. Amer. Rev. 37 170   Lauret argues quite convincingly that Hurston's major influence enables Walker to articulate her critique of race and gender relations in the feminist post-Civil Rights era and to theorize it in the concept of womanism.

1976—2003(Hide quotations)

1973 Change Mag. Sept. 43   Women's studies is but one of several names for a national movement that has neither formal structure nor official bureaucracy. Its other titles include female studies, feminist studies, gender studies, sex role studies and studies in masculinity and femininity.

2006 Vanity Fair (N.Y.) July 145/2   Some sections..are reminiscent of the half-baked ramblings of a 19-year-old majoring in gender studies.

1973—2006(Hide quotations)

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• gena, n. 1826
• genal, adj. 1877
• genappe, n. 1858
• genarch, n. 1879
• genarcha, n. 1649
• gend, n.2 1676
• gend, adj.1 ?1507
• gendarme, n. c1565
• gendarmerie, n. 1551
• gender, n. c1390
• gender, v.1 a1382
• gender, v.2 1825
• gendered, adj.1 1502
• gendered, adj.2 1719
• gendering, n.1 c1384
• gendering, n.2 1740
• gendering, adj. a1398
• genderless, adj. 1840
• genderquake, n. 1993
• gendrure, n. ?a1400
• gêne, n.1 1787
• gene, n.2 1909
• gêné, adj. 1806
• geneagenesis, n. 1864
• genealoger, n. 1654
• genealogial, adj. 1447
• genealogic, adj. 1765
• genealogical, adj. 1587
• genealogist, n. 1605
• genealogize, v. 1602
• genealogue, n. 1586
• genealogy, n. c1384
• genearch, n. 1727
• geneat, n. 1861
• genecology, n. 1923
• generability, n. 1661
• generable, adj. ?a1505
• general, adj. and n. c1230
• general, v. 1797
• general-adjutant, n. 1632

Definition of Grades Oxford English Dictionary

Source: https://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/77468

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