sex, not gender

["Alan Gillanders" <>]

"Cutting a sociolinguistic explanation short: as far as ornithology is 
concerned, birds have a sex, but no gender."
If Jonny had said 'as far as English based western ornithology is 
concerned,' I would not have thought to enter the discussion and still 
hesitated. Now that it has hotted up I'll add my two cents worth. Beyond or 
as an example of what Phillip said I want to tell you about cranes on Cape 
York Peninsula.
In the Wik languages there are two words used for cranes. One of these is 
just a name word and the other a contraction of 'red legs' (which is why my 
family did not accept that the Sarus arrived here recently). A bit like with 
us, the crane word could be used for both but the red legs word applied to 
Sarus. If pushing an informant on the difference I would be told that the 
red legs were males. This was definitely [the spell checker changed a 
misspelling of mine into 'defiantly' and it almost escaped my attention] a 
gender thing and not a sex thing. They would have seen and noted family 
groups of the "males." There are ascribed that gender because of their 
greater size; everyone knows that males are bigger.
Sex clearly does not equal gender. It is interesting the way people are so 
proscribed by social restrictions and norms. This is one of the things which 
makes ethnobiology so fascinating a subject.
Regards,
Alan 

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