Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Serve Me Up One Of Them Slices O' Life!

Now, according to the Font Of all Human Knowledge, "gender" is a rather complicated term, one which ought to be applied only with a great deal of caution, if at all. I understand that it's supposed to be distinguished from "sex" (even though in most cases, by almost any definition, the two aren't appreciably different), but this question on an online job application had me puzzled:

Now, even if you regard your gender as being different from your sex, couldn't you still be expected to, y'know, know it? I'm just asking.

Maybe they ought to have included a few deep epistemological questions dealing with how hard it is to really know anything, as well as asking whether or not the applicant is currently undergoing some sort of existential crisis.

1 comment:

Cecilia said...

Well, what if you're not exactly sure of your gender at that particular moment? I was once told that gender was how you feel. Well, if yesterday I felt like a man but today I'm not sure if I feel like a man or a woman, shouldn't I put "unknown" as my gender?