You

[eldin raigmore]

The word "gender" is used in ways that do not refer to grammatical structures or biological sex. I'm surprised that you do not know this.

Hmm?
Is the word "gender" as used by CBBers to describe themselves while introducing themselves, being used in a way that refers neither to grammatical gender nor to biological sex?
If so I am at a loss to tell what it means when it is not accompanied by a definition.
So people would need, when telling us what their gender is, to also tell us (or, at least, me, but IMO any reader) what they mean by "gender".

[Egerius]

(People arguing over an exact meaning of a word.)

Guys: Language is arbitrary. Let it stay that way or we're gonna die from exactomania.

[thetha]

Hmm?
Is the word "gender" as used by CBBers to describe themselves while introducing themselves, being used in a way that refers neither to grammatical gender nor to biological sex?
If so I am at a loss to tell what it means when it is not accompanied by a definition.
So people would need, when telling us what their gender is, to also tell us (or, at least, me, but IMO any reader) what they mean by "gender".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender

[Ahzoh]

The word "gender" is used in ways that do not refer to grammatical structures or biological sex. I'm surprised that you do not know this.

Hmm?
Is the word "gender" as used by CBBers to describe themselves while introducing themselves, being used in a way that refers neither to grammatical gender nor to biological sex?
If so I am at a loss to tell what it means when it is not accompanied by a definition.
So people would need, when telling us what their gender is, to also tell us (or, at least, me, but IMO any reader) what they mean by "gender".

I was under the impression from my Anthropology class that gender is a social construct that refers to the mental and social identity of the individual that is influenced by the individual's culture's expectations of what their sex should be (e.g. Males are strong, tough warriors, women are hardworking waterbearing mothers).
Gender does not refer to biological sex, but rather the mental identity of the individual as they correspond to a sex.
When I say my gender is "male" I am not only imply that I am biologically so, but that I exhibit an identity and traits that are considered "masculine" as according to my culture, and likewise Teddy probably identifies with parts of both elements of the genders.

At least that's how I see it...

[eldin raigmore]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender

In that case, as in the case of grammatical gender, the main replies should be "masculine", "feminine", "neuter", and/or "epicene"; not "male" or "female".
(Of course the genders shouldn't be restricted to those four.)
"Male" and "female" are biological sexes; not genders.

... gender is a social construct ...

Yes it is. Everything in language is a social construct.

[Ahzoh]

We no longer care for the prescriptivism of the word "gender"...
This is a linguistics BOARD, but this particular forum is not linguistic...

[sangi39]

Updating again, although nothing much has changed, so this is more of a filling out sort of thing:

Alias(es): Sangi39 (I used to go by Wikim3, but I don't use that at all now)

Location: North Yorkshire, England, UK (if you know the McDonalds just of the A1, you know where I live)

Date of Birth: August 2nd 1989

Gender (or "sex" if you prefer): Male

Sexuality: Bisexual (predominant hetero- leanings). Not openly, well, apart from a handful of close friends. My family certainly don't know, at least not from me telling them.

Marital Status: That's a complicated one. I'm still technically married, since neither of use can afford the divorce right now (it didn't work out, so surely we should get our money back ), and I've kind of started seeing someone else after 6 months of being single, but I don't actually know what's going on there. We'll see.

Education: BA Archaeology 2:1

Occupation: Shop Assistant... still...

Political Ideology: General Left. More specifically, I seem to be running along the lines of a social democrat.

Religion: None, atheist. Generally speaking, though, it hardly ever comes up.

Interests: Hmmm, conlanging, obviously, archaeology, history, linguistics, astronomy, physics, anthropology (specifically kinship, marriage, social structure and the like), drinking (mostly with friends, but I will, sadly, drink alone), board games, generally nerdiness really.

Favorite Music: Metal... Black, Death, Groove, Thrash, Doom, Folk, Symphonic, but nothing like Iron Maiden or Metallica and I'm not a huge fan of Black Sabbath either (they're the three bands people have said "oh, like..." most often when I say "Metal"). I also like NDH and NFH, Industrial Metal and even some industrial music in general as well as SOAD and RATM.

Favourite TV Show(s): The Big Bang Theory, Firefly... ummm... I actually don't watch a lot of TV any more...

Favourite Film(s): Star Wars: Episode IV (can't really go wrong with it), pretty much all of the recent Marvel films and Serenity. Oh, and almost anything by Tim Burton.

Favourite Book(s): I almost exclusively read non-fiction (relating to my interests above), but I love Terry Pratchett's Discworld books and some of Neil Gaiman's stuff as well.

Natlang Education: GCSEs in Russian (a*) and German (b) (now watch as I remember a total of two words of each ), some Welsh in primary school in southern Wales and two years of French in high school alongside German.

Favourite Natlang(s): Possibly Old Norse, Faroese and Icelandic as well as Finnish.

Favourite Conlang(s): Purely on the basis of its amazing script, Naduta Sal's Rawang Ata also seems pretty cool.

Conlangs: Proto-Sirdic

Where do you see yourself in ten years?: I would honestly prefer not to answer this question. Given that ten years ago I thought my life would consist of being a professional archaeologist, possibly married with a couple of kids, rather than doing a job that I could have done in college and on the way to being divorced and childless at the age of 25, there's a pretty big part of me that's kind of given up, at least career-wise. In terms of relationships with people, I'm a little bit more hopeful

[eldin raigmore]

Using Ahzoh's definition of gender

... gender is a social construct that refers to the mental and social identity of the individual that is influenced by the individual's culture's expectations of what their sex should be ...

I'm going to update mine as well.
I'll turn it into three fields.
Biological Sex: Male.
Grammatical Gender: Depends on the language. Most languages don't have gender, so, in them, I don't have a gender either. Most languages that do have gender have a gender-system (partially) based on biological sex; in them, I'm masculine if they have a masculine gender, non-feminine otherwise. All languages I know about that have gender but don't have sex-based gender, have animacy-based gender; in them, I'm animate human.
Social "Gender Identity": I don't have one. I strongly identify as animate and as human; but I know of no culture's expectations of what should follow from being male that I don't find silly. I am biologically male, but that's as far as it goes.

---

While I'm at it I might as well also be more precise about my sexual orientation, and split it into two fields too.
Sexual Preference: Hetero.
Sexual Behavior: Historically hetero, but might as well have been asexual for at least the last ten years.

[TheCranberry]

Hi guys! :) I figured out this would be as good a place as any for my first post.

Alias(es): (The)Cranberry (now take a good guess which berry I like best :P)
Location: Austria, EU
Date of birth: June 4
Gender: Male
Occupation: Student
Interests: languages, politics, history, books, tennis
Favorite music: rock, classic rock, hard rock, a bit punk rock and metal
Political ideology: culturally and economically very much to the left; the term socialism fits quite well
Conlangs: Tharnana, currently in the making, my first one
Other hobbies: meeting with friends, watching movies, some video games
Where do you see yourself in ten years? I honestly have no clue

[k1234567890y]

update:

Sex(Biological): prefer not to say
Gender(Social): prefer not to say
Gender(Grammatical): you decide :)

[Ahzoh]

Gender(Grammatical): you decide :)

I'll just pin you down as "seahorse"

[zyma]

[…]

[Luan]

Alias(es): Luan, AmroPlay, amrothelenion, DJ Amro, kmein
Location: Hesse, Germany
Date of birth: 10/22/1999
Gender: male
Occupation: student
Interests: conlanging, music (DJing), video editing, programming, mathematics
Favorite music: House
Political ideology: ...
Conlangs: Derrovian, Aliranjo, Aluzâni, Riviaro/Peiturian, T̥ent̥aut̆, Daneian Family, Aruan Family
Other hobbies: see Interests
Where do you see yourself in ten years? Don't know.

[Avo]

A fellow Hessian! Welcome.

[Tuslaven Kukristo]

Alius: Its a mystery
Location: Texas
Date of birth: You will never know
Gender: Shhhhhhhhh...
Occupation: School
Interests:Religion, Language
Favorite music: Contemporary Christian
Political ideology: Right Wing Conservative
Conlangs: Teeverb Kuluxem (Verbalux)
Other hobbies: Rubiks Cube, Programming
Where do you see yourself in ten years? Hopefully a pastor, if the Lord so calls

[Prinsessa]

Alias(es): Prinsessa, Sko
Location: *Skaþinawjō
Date of birth: the seventh month that's not the seventh month
Gender: yes
Occupation: no
Interests: a few
Favorite music: always musics
Political ideology: dum what is that
Conlangs: da one wiff da dum verbses and dat other oen
Other hobbies: no
Where do you see yourself in ten years? dead

[eldin raigmore]

Where do you see yourself in ten years? dead

Gosh, I hope not, Skógvur!
What's the reason behind this pessimism?
If you're planning to die of old age, I'm way ahead of you, and I don't plan to be gone in ten years.

[Prinsessa]

Where do you see yourself in ten years? dead

Gosh, I hope not, Skógvur!
What's the reason behind this pessimism?
If you're planning to die of old age, I'm way ahead of you, and I don't plan to be gone in ten years.

Old age seems like a scary prospect.

[Ketumak]

(following the recently expanded format … )

Alias(es): Ketumak
Location: Harrogate, North Yorkshire, UK.
Date of birth: 1960
Gender: Male
Occupation: Librarian (cataloguer of material in Romance lanaguages)
Interests: conlanging, conworlding, philosophy, politics, reading, writing, walking, exercising
Favorite music: mostly folk and jazz, plus a bit of Afrobeat and MPB. I also still keep faith with some 70s and 80s rock and reggae acts
Political ideology: Liberal Democrat (Still. Just). (pre-LDs, Mrs. Ketumak and I were members of the youth wing of the old Liberal Party during their “Green Guard” era)
Religion: Anglican
Sexuality: Straight
Marital/Family Status: Married with one adult child
Education: Philosophy degree
Favourite TV Show(s): Have I got news for you and Mock the week (both satirical news quizes).
Favourite Film(s): LOTR ; Potter ; Pan's Labyrinth the original versions of Rollerball and The Whicker Man a lot of comedy: East is East ; Bend it like Beckham ; most Monty Python
Favourite Book(s): Anything by Roddy Doyle or Graham Swift especially Swift's Waterland ; also The prisoner of Zenda. In comedy: Tom Jones and Cold Comfort Farm. In fantasy: LOTR ; His Dark Materials ; Potter ; Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
Natlang Education: GCSE Spanish, “A” level French, short courses in Portuguese and Italian, some self-taught some Basque
Favourite Natlang(s): I like bits of a lot of languages, but most of all Indonesian
Favourite Conlang(s): Zompist's Lé, also Radius Solis's Delta Naidda
Own Conlangs: my good ones are Õtari, Classical Leheitak and Lemohai
Where do you see yourself in ten years?: Much as now, but planning for retirement

Also Skógvur, I second what eldin raigmore said. I can't speak for old age yet, but middle age is definitely worth sticking around for. You've more wisdom, more resources, perhaps children or more responsibility at work and yet still got your health.

[eldin raigmore]

Date of birth: 1960

Kinda nice to know someone here is about my age!

Favourite Book(s): …. ; Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

You too? I really loved that book; and other stories she wrote "in the same universe".