It's Clinton’s Sex, not Clinton's Gender.

I’m on a linguistic high horse today; please bear with me.

It’s a buzzword in the current campaign, but can we please stop referring to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s gender? That is, can we cease and desist from describing the Democratic competition as an historic event due to the candidates’ “gender and race,” of the conflict of/between “gender and race” amongst voters, and similar statements?

Let’s define our terms:

When we’re talking of human beings, "gender" indicates (normative) behavioral characteristics, as in masculinity and femininity.

On the other hand, "sex" indicates biological makeup. The female gender does not menstruate, endure menopause, nor undergo pregnancy. The female sex does.

The differentiation between sex and gender was “first developed in the 1950s and 1960s by British and American psychiatrists and other medical personnel working with intersex and transsexual patients. Since then, the term gender has been increasingly used to distinguish between sex as biological and gender as socially and culturally constructed. Feminists have used this terminology to argue against the ‘biology is destiny’ line, and gender and development approaches have widely adopted this system of analysis” (Esplen and Jolly). I would think that HRC, as a second wave feminist, would have noted this distinction between gender and sex that her peers struggled to question and define; e.g., are women innately nurturing, maternal, irrational, weak, and emotional? Are men inherently practical, stoic, authoritative, capable, competitive, and logical? Which set of characteristics suits Mrs. Clinton? Right. Gender = sex / sex = gender doesn’t quite equate.

Every time someone refers to Clinton’s gender, or of how women voters are concerned about one of their gender getting to the presidency, I'm inclined to cringe. This reaction might strike some as petty, or as pedantic, or (horrors!) politically correct, but precision in language is critical. Think of all the associations that resound whenever any particular word is used. Each time a commentator mentions Clinton’s gender in the presidential race, a connotative echo follows that reinscribes the arguments of how and why a woman should be distanced from leading a nation—because of her femininity. It’s a cliché, but Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi, to name but two modern female leaders, should have dispelled such myths (honestly, do you think of Margaret Thatcher as a member of the female gender? As a woman, yes, but as feminine? ).

While discussing the role of sexism and attacking myths about female behavior in Clinton's White House pursuit, perhaps Clinton's supporters could help avoid exacerbating prejudice by not reminding folks, however implicitly, of the woman's gender.

Aside: Then again, replacing "gender" with "sex" might raise some unique problems: it probably wouldn't be wise for Hillary to say, "sex issues" haven't received the same "kind of attention" as racial concerns in the primary campaign, nor would using "sex" help enlist further support from undecided voters: what kind of connotations would “sex” raise when associated with a Clinton?