Posted: Oct 01, 2010 11:00 pm
Humans only.
The word "gender" may be interpreted in different ways by different people, but only has reason to exist at all to the extent that it means something different from "sex", as in biological maleness or femaleness. Sex is a simple fact of physical classification, whereas gender is about social and psychological factors concerning sex.
Since such factors, as far as we can tell, don't enter into the lives of non-human animals, I don't see how the word "gender" could meaningfully be used in relation to such animals. I'm happy to be proved wrong, if you can show how it's relevant to distinguish between an animal's physical sex and the social conditioning and interpretation of that sex within their group. But thus far I don't see it.
The word "gender" may be interpreted in different ways by different people, but only has reason to exist at all to the extent that it means something different from "sex", as in biological maleness or femaleness. Sex is a simple fact of physical classification, whereas gender is about social and psychological factors concerning sex.
Since such factors, as far as we can tell, don't enter into the lives of non-human animals, I don't see how the word "gender" could meaningfully be used in relation to such animals. I'm happy to be proved wrong, if you can show how it's relevant to distinguish between an animal's physical sex and the social conditioning and interpretation of that sex within their group. But thus far I don't see it.