Welcome to Gaia! ::

OK so.... my lecturer talked about gender variation today (we were discussing character design). The definitions in his presentation were something like this:

Transgender: A person whose gender presentation is neither male nor female, but androgynous.
Transsexual: A person whose gender presentation or personality is closer to the opposite sex.
Hermaphrodite: A person with both sexes or elements of both sexes.
Asexual: A person of neither sex.

gonk

ALL of those definitions are wrong. But "asexual" should be "neuter". I mean, you can use asexual to mean "having no sex" if you're also prepared to use "bisexual" to mean "having two sexes" instead of hermaphrodite, but way to pick the worst possible word. I wonder how many of the ~120 students knew it was wrong... Stuff like this is why we keep getting met with stuff like "you mean you can split in two? Hur hur hur."

Grr.

Just wanted to complain. rolleyes I guess I should tackle him about it.

Well, come on. Asexuality can mean "a person of neither sex." There are cases where people are completely sexless.


Edit: Literally.

Yes, it can mean that, like I said. "Bisexual" can also mean "having two sexes". But the terms used to refer to them in humans have always been neuter and hermaphorodite, and both of those would now come under the slightly more respectful heading of intersex. Words ending in -sexual are generally now used to refer to sexuality. It's not as blatantly incorrect as the other definitions he was using, but it's still a bad, confusing word to choose. xp Referring to a human "asexual" as someone without sex organs is something that makes people utterly confused about asexuality as a sexuality, which is why I was going stare .

And yes, he does need a reality check. xd

Yeah, probably. I'll figure out something to say before the next class. surprised