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[JohnFKennedy]

My goodness Americans need to get over all these race issues. I'm so tired of the ignorance of Americans. Gosh we are such a stupid country.

Race is as real as gender. Sorry but it's not an "issue" you can really get over.

What do you mean by 'real'? Both race and gender are ultimately social constructs. They are 'real' only in the sense that we take and understand them to be 'real'.

[JohnFKennedy]

Sorry, perhaps I should clarify my statements; there are specific genetic differences between men and women, but that relates to sex rather than gender. The two words are not perfect synonyms. Sex is that which defines the physical and genetic differences between men and women, whereas gender is a term with a more cultural and social implication. Hence many languages have 'genders' - in French, for instance, nouns are masculine, feminine or neuter. One's gender can be different from one's sex. Here's the OED definition:

In mod. (esp. feminist) use, a euphemism for the sex of a human being, often intended to emphasize the social and cultural, as opposed to the biological, distinctions between the sexes.

My point was one of linguistics, rather than a scientific one. Dead0Man sort-of touched on my point regarding 'race' in his post. When scientists discuss subgroups of homosapiens they tend to use the term 'population' rather than race. Genetic differences between these 'populations' have emerged not simply because they are of a different 'race' but because of the different pattern of breeding which is in turn conditioned by their geography. Take, for instance, the prevalence of sickle-cell anaemia in the sub-Saharan African population; it stems from a common ancestry.

By contrast, race is a term that is primarily used in a physiognomical sense to describe one's appearance. What is really interesting is that it is possible for white parents to have a black child (and I think vice versa also) by virtue of a long dormant genetic trait. I say that race is a social construct because it is the significance that we have applied to this genetic differences and in some cases invented ourselves. Take, for instance, the Hutus and Tutsis. Tutsis were generally thought to be tall and slender while Hutus of a medium and more muscular build, but these supposedly genetic differences are far from concrete and it is generally difficult to tell the two apart. Of course, the problem lies not with different genetic characteristics, but with the significance that the Belgian authorities attached. In fact, many specialists have viewed the historic difference between Tutsi, Hutu and Twa as primarily socio-economic: Tutsi were those with a sizeable herd of cattle, farmers were Hutu, and hunters and artisans were Twa. The problem was that when the Belgian colonialists arrived they created these new racial taxonomies and created a hierarchy from them. Cards were issued to the indigenous population informing them of their 'race' and they were told of their differences. It is from this colonial policy that the origins of the Rwandan genocide can be seen, because not only did they emphasise these racial differences, but they also used them to create a racial hierarchy. The Tutsi were seen as the most 'westernised' of these races and thus the most fit to rule.

EDIT: On unisex bathrooms, I don't fully recall arguing for them - although I do remember a discussion of them a long time ago - but my opinion on the matter would be similar to dead0man's.

[JohnFKennedy]

Yeah, sorry I didn't elaborate in my original post - it was just a quick one I made before I went to bed last night. It's the influence university is having on me. I have to use precise language - like the gender/sex division - or else I get called out on it and so I've started to become more aware and conscientious about it. Gender and questions of masculinity and femininity are really in vogue in academia at the moment, particularly in my subject (History), and so it is something I've had a lot of contact with recently.

What I find really interesting is the link between the language of race and the language of gender in colonial ideologies. For instance, the Ndebele people were admired by the British for their masculinity whereas others were regarded as effeminate and thus a threat to the racial purity of the British. You also get people like Freud linking the two - his Character and Anal Eroticism essay concludes that Africans, Pacific Islanders, and Aboriginals all lacked a period of sexual latency which moderated their desires, something which was then used to justify colonialism as a means of ensuring they 'do right' by their women. These issues became even more pronounced with the arrival of European women.

Anyway, sorry for the initial lack of clarity (and also this little digression). Questions of identity fascinate me, particularly when it comes to self-definition. My supervisor on twentieth-century African history commented on white South Africans self-identifying as 'African'; they may not look like what we would commonly term 'African' but who are we to tell them that they are not?