Language changes with the times. This is why the Romance languages, that is those that evolved from Rome’s Latin, eventually differentiated into French, Spanish, Italian, etc. In times such as ours, there are many changes due to advances in technology, or even threats like the novel corona virus.
When I was in school, we were taught that words were categorized by gender while people were described by sex. Sometime, oddly enough either during or shortly after the Sexual Revolution, someone decided that using the words people and sex together was unsightly, offensive, or something. People suddenly were categorized by gender, just like words.
By doing so, even your great-great-aunt Prudence wouldn’t be offended. Of course she grew up referring to people by sex and probably lived on a farm on which the animals repeatedly engaged in scandalous behavior.
In any case, we have it all modernized.
However, in other languages the gender and word thing didn’t go away. The Romance languages still assign a gender to nouns as do the German language. In German, a fork is feminine, a spoon masculine and a knife neutral.
We still have vestiges of the gender comment in modern English. A ship, for example, is referred to as she.
But what’s important is that we keep people and sex apart.*
I wonder if any guy has told his significant other, “Wow! You look really gendery tonight?”
sfnowak 