Sir, - In the interest of the English language I am writing to you about sex, not about the thing itself but about the word sex. My query is this: how can we account for the fact that whereas sex is so highly valued, pursued and relentlessly publicised, the word sex is being steadily displaced by the word gender?
Why is it that a word so concrete, so rich in its connotation, so enormously suggestive as sex, is being steadily displaced by gender, a word so abstract, so jejune and so limited in its appeal?
I know that we may legitimately nuance what we are saying when we speak of masculine and feminine features and traits, but the present almost universal equating of sex with gender is absolutely illegitimate. What Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth said was: "Unsex me here, ye gods . . .", and certainly not "Ungender me here, ye gods . . ." - Yours, etc.,
Patrick McCann, Portlaoise, Co Laois.