sarah jeong

@binarybits It's not a rarified concern. It's a foundational distinction for the existence of many people.

@binarybits Heck, it's a foundational distinction for everyone's existence, but trans folk bear the burden of having to be aware of it.

@binarybits People who misuse sex/gender haven't thought critically about the words' referents, and don't have skin in the game, either.

@binarybits When language is tied up with self-identification, there's a strong presumption that the self-identifier is "correct."

@sarahjeong The conceptual distinction is important! But that's a separate question from what the word "gender" means.

@binarybits No, it's not. Language is often shaped by "specialists" and "experts" because otherwise we lose conceptual distinctions.

@sarahjeong If not we can't "lose" something we never had.

@binarybits That's getting semantic. And has anyone agreed with you that this is a "rarified" distinction?

@sarahjeong I think ~270 million people agree with me, but I haven't done a poll on the subject. :-)

@binarybits I'm sure the incredible irony has occurred to you: you're the lone Twitter holdout claiming the rest of us comprise small group.

@sarahjeong People who follow the two of us on Twitter are not a random sample of the population!

@binarybits Certainly not. But you still only have speculation to back your assumption that it's a "rarified" distinction.