Sex and Gender

* Robert S. McElvaine (“What Ever Happened to S-x?” Commentary, July 22) offers an insightful and nearly thorough explanation of why the word sex should be preferable to gender when discussing our male and femaleness. However, he overlooks two crucial things. First, language is dynamic. The meaning of words is constantly changing. Dictating language by referendum rarely works in American English.

Second, perhaps the reason why feminists prefer not to use the word sex has less to do with biological differences, as McElvaine asserts, than with the connotation of what he calls the secondary meaning of sex . Women are constantly defined in our society by their ability (or inability) to arouse sexual feelings in men--they are objects of sex. It seems only natural for feminists to rebel against words that define a woman according to her actions in the bedroom. It is too limiting.

NATALIE DuPONT

Burbank

* The reason the word gender is preferable to sex , as used by contemporary feminist criticism, is quite simple, and has nothing to do with the reasons proffered by McElvaine. The word sex is ambiguous, since it can refer to both the act and the sexual difference; on the other hand, the word gender refers only to the difference. It is unambiguous and specific.

JULIAN PALLEY

Irvine